McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 1960

Mohr is generally credited with having published the first clinical report (in 1840) of pathological obesity in man resulting from a tumor at the base of the brain (cited by Brobeck, 1946). Thereafter, although similar cases appeared in the literature from time to time, no particular interest was shown in localizing the effective lesion until the early nineteen hundreds when a heated dispute arose as to whether damage to the pituitary or to the hypothalamus was responsible.  Read more

Biography, it appears to me, is as old as the conscious experience of man and has its roots in the instinct of self-preservation: “and even the behaviourists might allow” that it is this instinct that' consciously or unconsciously motivates man to struggle in defiance of total annihilation by either natural or social forces to preserve himself and his heritage. One of the ways in which it expresses itself is in the desire to commemorate outstanding individuals whose lives have been found to be remarkable and useful in society.  Read more

The purpose of the present investigation was to demonstrate transformation in the genus Rhizobium, using strains of R. meliloti and R. trifolii as the test organisms. The initial work was directed towards an understanding of the metabolism of these organisms and the selection of stable mutants suitable for use in such a study. Five chloramphenicol-resistant strains of R. trifolii were obtained by a "Crystal Violet-tolerance" technique developed during the course of the present research. Suitably resistant strains of R. meliloti could not be isolated. Streptomycin resistance was subsequently selected for among the chloramphenicol-resistant strains.  Read more

In Blake's work there is a consistent statement concerning the unity or man's psychic, ethical, and cognitive experience which, we believe, is still largely valid. The purpose or this study is to discover, by an investigation or all Blake's writings -- his lyrics, epics or prophecies, marginalia and letters -- what this statement is, and to set down its skeletal structure. Blake believed that man's imagination forms and gives unity to his experience.  Read more

The airplane has one great advantage over all other forms of transportation: only a short time is required to construct the facilities necessary for its operation over a wide range of the earth’s surface. China is a vast nation: the huge size of the country and the resulting distances combine with the total absence of modern transportation to create a particularly strong demand for air transport. This is an urgent need, especially since the country' s economy, industries and trade cannot develop without transportation.  Read more

When Thomas Hardy undertook to write tragedy he invoked an old tradition. A review of the traditional theory and practice of this genre clarifies Hardy's tragic philosophy and techniques. This definition in the Poetics is the usual starting place. For Aristotle tragedy is a serious, complete work of art, which uses poetic and prose techniques to enhance the audience's enjoyment. It should be in the form of a drama rather than a narrative, and should stimulate the emotions of pity and fear in the onlooker.  Read more

A diffusion cloud chamber and its ancillary equipment were constructed and used to investigate the energy spectrum of fast neutrons produced by bombarding deuterium in the chamber with 85 Mev protons. Reasons are adduced to show that these fast neutrons are the result of an exchange collision caused by a Heisenberg type of force in which the spins of the nucleons are also exchanged. There is, however, disagreement with the calculations of Gluckstern and Bethe, who predicted a much narrower energy spectrum for the fast neutrons than we found by experiment. We suggest reasons for the discrepancy.  Read more

Radioactive nuclides are identified through the emissions given off in passing from one energy state to another. The type of emission and its energy is characteristic of the nuclide. The unstable nuclide may reach stability in a number of ways. These are dependent on several factors, among them being the excitation energy, nuclear spin, nuclear composition and nuclear shell structure. One of the most common ways for an active nucleus to reach stability is by emission of electromagnetic radiation.  Read more

The purpose of this investigation was to study the ability of various anterior pituitary hormones to act as antigens, and if antisera to one or more of these hormones could be obtained, to carry out immunologie studies on such antisera. Since pituitary hormones are proteins there is reason to believe that they must have some antigenic ability under the proper circumstances.  Read more

Part I of this thesis is mainly concerned with the determination of a necessary and sufficient condition for a compact space X to separate the Euclidean space R^(n+1). We shall find that a compact space X separates R^(n+1) if and only if there exists a non nullhomotopic mapping of X into the n-sphere S^n. We also prove in part I some of the well known theorems of topology, like “Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem” and “Brouwer Invariance of Domains Theorem”.  Read more

From the earliest times it was known that the administration of various natural substances to man and animals had a pronounced effect on their physiological behaviour. Following the rapid development of chemistry during the latter half of the eighteenth century, many attempts were made to isolate the physiologically active substances in the natural products used in medicine. The progress in organic chemistry during the nineteenth century provided the means to study the structure and synthesise derivatives of many compounds of therapeutic value isolated from natural products, such as morphine from opium and quinine from cinchona bark.  Read more

There are a number of reasons for the choice of the epidermis of the mouse as the site for experimental tumour production in this study. Experimental epidermal tumours have been studied so intensively that a vast amount of useful information about them is available. The past work has characterized these tumours so well as to give a firm foundation to any expansion of previous achievements. There are furthermore some specific reasons for the use of this tissue of the mouse in experimental carcinogenesis.  Read more

The purpose of the work reported was to investigate the suitability of whale meat, whale liver, cod-fish products and of a dry meal mixture for the formulation of a mink ration. Until required for feeding, all the marine products were stored frozen. Chemical examinations of the frozen feeds for keeping quality over a prolonged period of time, demonstrated that storage conditions were adequate and that the levels of vitamin E remained remarkably constant.  Read more

Une coupe où l’on boit à longs traits… un banquet où l'on vient s'asseoir… telles sont les images poétiques par lesquelles on a coutume de représenter la vie… à moins que, pour les imaginations plus moroses, ce ne soit une douloureuse vallée de larmes. Pour André Malraux, l’existence est 'comme un cancer… une tiédeur de mort dans la main’ et nous verrons que ce n'est pas, chez lui, pure figure de style.  Read more

Most previous research on second-language acquisition has been guided by the belief that the acquisition of skill in a second language depended almost completely upon linguistic aptitude and since substantial validity coefficients have been obtained with most aptitude tests (5, 9, 11, 26, 50, 56), the postulation of a concept of "linguistic aptitude" see as warranted. On the other hand, many researchers have argued that other variables such as motivation, interest, personality, etc., are probably of equal value in determining second-language achievement (15, 17, 18, 24, 28, 41, 42, 46, 50, 52, 54), however such of the research concerned with …  Read more

For nearly a century it has been known that the presence of sodium sulphide improves the yield and properties of pulp prepared by extracting wood with caustic soda under pressure. However, little has been learned about the mode of action of the sulphide. Recent studies of the action of sulphide on lignin have been carried out with the entire wood. However, it is now possible to free lignin of all carbohydrate without any apparent damage to its solubility in pulping liquors. By cooking this lignin with aqueous sodium sulphide solution, and studying the yields and the sulphur contents of the …  Read more

The Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects in its publication "The Canadian Automotive Industry" states that prices and taxes"… have an obvious, though frequently obscured effect on passenger car demand. Their impact is largely a function of disposable income levels, without a consideration of which their actual levels are virtually meaningless… A precise attempt to correlate prices and taxes with passenger car sales is beyond the scope of the present study, and in any event would probably assist little in accomplishing its main objectives.  Read more

The Ss in this experiment were 30 naive, male, albino rats of the Sprague-Dawley strain, weighing 200 gm. to 211 gm. at the start of the experiment. The animals were maintained five to a metal living cage, in a constant temperature and humidity roam, in which there was an automatic 12-hour alternation of darkness and light. Food and water were available in the living cages at all times throughout the experiment.  Read more

Abnormal concentrations of metals in peats have been frequently reported in the literature. One of the earliest reports is from Townsend (1845). He mentions a bog in western Ireland that contained sufficient copper to warrant mining; over 300 tons of copper were mined from the peat ash. The copper originated from small veins occurring in the surrounding rocks. Lovering (1927) reported on spongy masses of native copper in a peaty deposit near Cooke Montana. Forrester (1942) and Eckel (1949) have described copper bearing peats in Montana and Colorado.  Read more

The relationship between Horace and the new regime of Augustus has been the source of many varied opinions. Some critics, especially those of the nineteenth century, have deplored the abandonment of the poet's early Republican principles in favour of the rule of Octavian. [...]  Read more

The first method of introducing coordinates into a Desarguesian projective or affine plane was given by von Staudt (6). In the present thesis we discuss an elegant method which was introduced by J. André (2). Similar methods of introducing coordinates are discussed by Artin (3) and Baer (4) and (5), who start from different systems of axioms. We also show the standard theorem that coordinates may be introduced into an affine plane if and only if it can be embedded in a three-dimensional affine space.  Read more

The major purpose of this paper is to de scribe certain . aspects of Eskimo culture as it appears at Sugluk. It is considered by rq ad:risors at Mc:Gill1 and others interested in the path of Eskimo culture in present day contact situations, that the primary object of research on the Eskimos should be to collect data, as complete as possible, on the culture in varying situations. The culture is changing fast in a1l areas, and important phases and events are often over in a few years. Many stud- . ·' 1 ies have taken place in the last few …  Read more

Living in an era of summits and far-reaching experimentation, are we to believe in the aphorism of Oberling that cancer is the failure of medicine? The death statistics of the more advanced countries like the U.K., the U. S. A. and Japan tell us that cancer to-day is the second greatest cause of death. The death of about 10% of all human beings is due to this dreadful and very ancient disease. This is in vivid contrast to the success of preventive and social medicine in these countries.  Read more

Wood is composed of three main components, namely cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose is the chief constituent of the cell wall of all land plants and is composed of D-glucose residues linked by (1->4)-B-glycosidic bonds to linear macromolecules of considerable length (2.5 u). Lignin is a three-dimensional polymer based on phenyl propane units, which are connected in a number of different ways and whose structure is still not known in detail. The hemicelluloses are the polysaccharides which accompany cellulose and which are easily hydrolyzed by dilute mineral acids.  Read more

In 1947 and again in 1954 Jacob Fine and his associates emphasized that in severe haemorrhagic shock replacement of the blood lost was not enough to guarantee a survival of the experimental animal 9,36,89. He pointed out that factors come into play which result from haemorrhage but cannot be corrected by transfusion. This concept was reiterated by Moyer who made the point that death and morbidity in severe hypovolemic shock is undoubtedly due to a lack of perfusion of vital organs but that simple replacement of fluids is not enough to renew this flow.  Read more

The attenuation of radar weather signals by intervening precipitation is difficult to estimate by radar methods. Rainfall rates observed at a point in the path of a storm approximate those along a section through the storm; this is the basis in estimating attenuation frequencies at 3.2 cm wavelength for a summer’s storms at Montreal. It has been found that attenuation along a radar path increases with increasing target intensity: expected attenuation over a 30 mi path at 3 mm hr-1 is 3 db, at 80 mm hr- 1 is 14 db. Power can overcome the limitations imposed by attenuation upon …  Read more

The elucidation of the nature of host pathogen relations is a problem of great theoretical and practical importance. One of the most promising lines of research for this problem seems to be in the field of physiological studies, in which the affects of infection on the metabolism of a host plant are studied. In most cases, metabolic studies which have been carried out on the nature of disease had to be performed on detached organs, detachment of which prevents the movement of materials in and/or out or the organ from taking place, i.e. prevents translocation.  Read more

It is well known that halos of altered rocks surround many deposits of sulphide and other ores. These halos are characterized by a mineralogical and, or, chemical composition which is different from that of the rocks farther away from the deposits. [...]  Read more

It is an obvious fact that the welfare of a community is bound up with the well-being of its children. Therefore society was concerned with providing equality of educational opportunity, particularly during the early years of formal education. The majority of Protestant English-speaking children in Quebec benefitted from this objective, but one group of handicapped children, the deaf, were not so immediately affected. Since one child in one thousand suffers from deafness, this group does not form a large part of our society and many people, while aware of their existence, seldom come in contact with them.  Read more

Forest resources have been important in Canada's development since the early days of European settlement. However, the exploitation of the forests for the manufacture of pulp and paper is relatively recent. For only in the 1860's were commercial methods for making pulp from wood developed. Prior to this, a pulp and paper industry had been growing in a small way, but based on cotton and rags. Information on this early development is very scanty.  Read more

This thesis is an attempt to map out some of the battlefields in The Faerie Queene on which are fought the wars between reason on the one hand and the passions and senses on the other. This war seems to be the core or backbone of the moral allegory of the poem, despite the fact that the relationship to Aristotle has received rather more critical attention. In accordance with this belief, I shall be treating the figures of the poem as if they were intended to be more or less realistic representations of human beings, not abstract figures whom we …  Read more

In the law of compensation it is generally recognized that a causal relation must exist between the loss or damage for which compensation is sought and the act or omission of which complaint is made. If the person suffering damage cannot establish such relationship one of the main conditions for receiving compensation is unfulfilled. In this study, however, the expression "cause of damage" has another causal relation in view. It concerns the chain of causation leading up to the phenomenon, for example an accident, which is the established cause of the damage.  Read more

This thesis describes an investigation of the forces causing swelling of Ca-montmorillonite clay in water and salt solutions. Studies on swelling of clay can yield results which are of value to a basic understanding of the behaviour of clay under compression. While the following experiments deal primarily with montmorillonite, most of the concepts will hold for any swelling clay. Good agreement of measured swelling with swelling calculated from osmotic forces of repulsion has been obtained for montmorillonite saturated with monovalent ions, the lack of agreement when the ions are divalent raises interesting questions.  Read more

Man finds himself in a world and free. Either or both of these experiences may be illusion but, in the first analysis,he must accept both as real. The modern exponents of some scientifio theories which deny the existence of freedom would do well to remember that men of unquestionable intelligence, such as the medieval scholar Shankara, have accepted man's freedom and denied his world. There is no a priori justification for denying one whileaffiraing the other.[...]  Read more

In May 1959 a preliminary report on the contents of the Hardinge Manuscripts, at present deposited with the Redpath Library of McGill University, was prepared. The initial survey revealed that teh collection contained a large amount of correspondence, together with a variety of manuscripts which to that date, (May 1959), had been given only a cursory examination. in the apst year, (1959/60), fuirther work on the collection has been undertaken and complete lists of the manuscripts contained therein are now available. [...]  Read more

The perpetuation of the species has always been the concern of mankind, and especially of biologists. It was not suprising therefore, that with the advent of the histological technique in the mid-nineteenth century, the origin and continuity of the germ cell line, and the development and structure of the reproductive organs became of great histological interest. Thus it was that the origin and development of the sex cords, and the origin and development of primordial germ cells received extensive coverage in the literature. The problem of the primordial germ cells has received thorough and exhaustive treatment in many mammalian species.  Read more

These words of Hegel may be taken to express the basic outlook of the "possibilist” geographer of today as he seeks to understand the nature of the relationship of man to earth. Only as men, as individuals or groups have been possessed with an idealistic philosophy associated with a concept of God, the State, or just the urge to enter new lands, to "conquer" nature, do they become truly geographically efficacious. As Professor Crowe has said "effective" man is the concern of geography not the total number.  Read more

The Old Testament: The Spirit worked to create the People of God. But the Spirit was given only to certain individuals to work for the welfare of the Nation-church. The prophecies concerning the Messianic Age included the belief in the full outpouring of God’s Spirit upon the whole Church. The New Testament: Christ Jesus worked in the power of the Spirit. After the Ascension, the Father, in Christ's Name, sent the Spirit to be with the Church. The witness of the Spirit to Christ is made to the world through the Church, which He guides, teaches, and sanctifies. The Church …  Read more

A representation of degree n of a group is a homomorphism of the group into a group of nxn matrices with coefficients in a given field K. The image group of matrices is necessarily a sub-group of GLn(K), the group of all non-singular nxn matrices with coefficients in K. Two representations t and t, necessarily of the same degree n, are equivalent if there is a matrix T € GLn (K) such that T t(g)T-1 for every g € G. Equivalent representations are to be regarded as essentially the same.  Read more

Bilingualism has been investigated by linguists interested in the phonemic and grammatical interactions of two or more languages used in the same community. The psychologist's interest centers on the effects of two sets of semantemes upon verbal behavior and thinking. Weinreich (1953) in a recent review of the literature reports several studies in which two types of bilingual systems are identified.  Read more

One of the contributions of postwar pure mathematics to applied sciences is connected with the theory of generalised functions (distribution theory). In fact, applications of this theory are numerous in physics, in nonlinear mechanics, in fluid dynamics, and in field theory. Furthermore, dubious tricks (more than 50 years ago, Heaviside introduced his rules on symbolic calculus in a daring report, where mathematical operations that are hardly justified are performed in the solving of problems of physics; Dirac delta function; differentiation of non-differentiable functions; the free use of diverging Fourier series and integrals;) physicists have resorted to up to now are …  Read more

The Nutritive Value Index Has used to determine the effect of stage of maturity on the feeding value of Timothy hay when fed to sheep. The Nutritive Value Index was found to be highly significantly correlated with forage protein content and with the energy available for productive purposes. A significant decline in the feeding value of Timothy hay was observed with advances in stage of maturity. The close relationship between the Nutritive Value Index and the digestibility of cellulose in vitro indicated the usefulness of the latter procedure in predicting the feeding value of forages.  Read more

The steel industry today is faced with rising costs in every phase of production. The capital cost of a blast-furnace complete with coking ovens and all other raw material facilities is in the order of $40 million and up. In addition, each ton of raw material delivered to the blast-furnace carries the cost of removal from the pit or mine, plus the high cost of transportation by boat or by rail. Packard (1) reports that the United States steel companies spend nearly $20 million in research annually, for two main reasons.  Read more

Industrial growth, population increase and rising living standards have drastically increased the world's demand for fresh water over the last few decades. Present supplies are adequate to meet the needs in many areas, but there are numerous locations where shortages already exist. As growth and development continue this problem will almost certainly become more acute and an effort is being made to evaluate possible ways of easing the situation.  Read more

Labeled thymidine which is known to be a precursor of DNA may serve in the classical function of radioactive precursors - to indicate the time and place of synthesis of DNA. But due to the special properties of DNA, the usefulness of labeled thymidine may be vastly increased. DNA is perhaps the most stable substance within a cell, and unless the cell undergoes mitosis, the same molecules of DNA will remain in it indefinitely. If these molecules happen to be labeled with radioactive thymidine, the cell can be traced by this label for weeks or months and its fate thus …  Read more

Cross sections of (p,pn), (p,p2n) and (p,p3n) reactions in Au 197 have been measured by activation techniques for incident proton energies from the reaction thresholds to 86 Mev. Curves of cross section as a function of proton energy show similar shapes for the three reactions, and they rise from apparent thresholds at 16 Mev, 21 Mev and 30 Mev respectively, to peak cross sections of about 180, 145 and 150 millibarns for proton energies 30 Mev above their apparent thresholds. The cross sections then drop slowly for increasing proton energies.  Read more

The function of this thesis is to establish that a certain type of basic epistemological position, concentrating attention on the notion of truth involved, implies certain definite limitations on the further development of this type of position. The plan followed is to outline the argument in general terms in Chapter One, then, to bring home the point in a specific context, I describe (Chapters Two and Three) the relevant position taken by C. I. Lewis, in the first two books of his "An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation". [...]  Read more

The choice of the present topic in the field of modern Egyptian historiography has originated from interest aroused by a fifteen years residence in Egypt. It has been brought to fulfilment through the opportunity provided by the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, for the study of the Muslim World and the problems involved in the clah of ancient traditions and values with modernity.  Read more

It is the purpose of this thesis to examine the concept of psychological maturity in the light of the Christian estimate of man. Over the past thirty years the term maturity has become part of the idiom of the day. In the strictly biological sense maturity means the teaching of a terminal point on a scale of growth. An animal is mature when it has reached the point of growth at which it can fulfil the fundamental functions of maintaining itself, and reproducing its species. [...]  Read more

A theoretical study of positron annihilation and scattering in helium has been made. [...]  Read more