McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 1995

In independently derived drug resistant sublines of the mouse lymphoid tumor P388, multidrug resistance (MDR) is associated with the exclusive overexpression of the mdr3 gene, which occurs either from a single copy gene (P388/VGR-10) or after gene amplification (P388/ADM-2). The mechanism underlying mdr3 overexpression in these cells was investigated. Nucleotide sequence analysis revealed the presence of several putative cis-regulatory elements in the genomic region overlapping the transcription start site of mdr3. However, the 5$ sp prime$ end of mdr3 mRNAs was shown to be altered in the MDR derivatives of P388, indicating that the normal start site is not used …  Read more

The experiments reported in the present thesis investigated the effects of lesions to the anterior nuclei of the thalamus (ATN) on the acquisition of two spatial, working memory tasks performed on the eight-arm radial maze. In the task used in Experiment 1 and 2, the animals were required to discriminate and remember all the eight arms of the maze simultaneously. Lesions of the ATN produced impairments in the acquisition of this task, but the degree of impairment depended on the amount of damage within this region. In the task used in Experiment 3, the animals were required to discriminate and …  Read more

Varma, Daya R. (Supervisor)  Read more

The texture of electrodeposits has attracted increasing interest, as it is recognized that it is a possible to benefit from the texture and to improve the various properties of electrodeposits or electrolytic coatings. For example, the corrosion resistance of materials is affected by texture. If appropriate textures are introduced in electrodeposited coatings, their corrosion resistance would be enhanced and the coatings will therefore have a longer service time. Texture development during electrodeposition is still poorly understood, and this makes it difficult to control the texture formation during the electrodeposition processes. In order to better understand the texture formation during electrodeposition, …  Read more

Chinese immigrant women constitute a wealth of untapped potential for Canadian society. Unfortunately their talents have not resulted in self-actualization after immigration. This is because they are among the most disadvantaged groups, being discriminated against on the basis of race, class and gender. Chinese women encounter difficulties in integrating into Canadian society. The two major barriers are: the immigration policies towards Chinese, especially in previous generations, and the women's inadequate language skills, even today. In the preparation of this thesis, an appreciation of the obstacles faced by Chinese immigrant women was gained by reviewing the relevant literature and government documents. …  Read more

Bruce, Lennox, R. (Supervisor)  Read more

Patients with systemic amyloidosis frequently show gastrointestinal (GI) tract and adrenal gland involvement with amyloid. However, the evolution of amyloid-related pathological changes in humans is unknown. Conversely, although GI amyloidosis has been described in casein-stimulated mice, the chemical nature of the GI amyloid have not been carried out. Here we report studies on these and related aspects using alveolar hydatid cyst (AHC)-infected mouse model of reactive amyloidosis. Paraffin sections from the adrenal gland, stomach, small and large intestine were obtained from AHC-mice at different time period post-infection (p.i.) and stained with Congo red or immunohistochemically with antibodies against mouse AA …  Read more

Rehabilitation and reconstruction of dilapidated houses in the Old City is now the central issue of urban development of Beijing. On the one hand, it relates to the life of 800,000 people who live in old and dilapidated houses in the old residential quarters; on the other hand, it directly deals with the issue of preservation of the image of the old city. Starting with three pilot projects in 1988, 37 Stage One projects have been completed and some projects of further Stages are in the process of being built within the urban renewal program. However, the result is not …  Read more

This thesis describes a new framework for collision detection. The key result is a novel parametrization of the motion space from which collision information can be directly inferred. In the development of our approach, we present an original exposition of the looming detection problem, in which we extend the notion of focus of expansion (FOE). The parametrization procedure involves a prior velocity estimation stage, for which we propose a new 4-D plane-fitting algorithm for calculating the normal components of velocity. This method is not only simple and direct, but also provides for a reliability measure to evaluate the goodness of …  Read more

Chin, Jik (Supervisor)  Read more

An optical fiber bending sensor and a quasi-distributed optical fiber sensor, where isolated sensing regions can be designed to sense strain, bending, etc., are developed as sensor candidates for smart civil engineering materials and structures. Both sensors use two-mode fibers. With the same two-mode fibers, acousto-optic frequency shifters are developed as the main components to accomplish these sensors. Elliptical-core two-mode fibers are chosen to improve the stability and sensitivity of the sensors. A perturbation theory approach is used to investigate the sensing mechanism of the bending sensor. A system to simultaneously measure all the sensing regions of the quasi-distributed sensor …  Read more

The research work presented in this thesis involved an examination of the structure and function of the protein products of the measles virus (MV) P cistron. At least three protein products of the P cistron have been identified in MV infected cells. The largest of these is the P protein, which is translated in a canonical manner from genome faithful transcripts. The V protein is translated from a secondary population of edited mRNAs, and the C protein is generated via alternative translational initiation from both P- and V-specific mRNAs. Previous work in our laboratory had identified and characterized the cellular …  Read more

Rabbani, Shafaat A. (Supervisor)  Read more

The first part of my thesis dealt with the physical mapping of human chromosome 2 employing the yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) cloning system. To generate a chromosome 2 YAC sublibrary, over 1,000 interspersed repetitive sequence (IRS)-PCR probes were generated and used to screen the CEPH midi YAC library and approximately 2,000 chromosome 2-specific midi YACs were identified. These YACs were divided into 223 YAC groups, i.e., sets of unordered overlapping YACs, and using publicly available contig analysis software, a tentative order of YACs within each YAC group could be established. To order YAC groups, the chromosome 2 YAC sublibrary was …  Read more

Glucocorticoids and somatostatin both influence a broad spectrum of biological activities and their actions are cooperative in growth control, pancreatic islet function, immune suppression, and stress response, e.g. in vivo studies indicate that glucocorticoids may act through somatostatin to suppress growth, growth hormone secretion and inflammation. Recent studies have suggested that glucocorticoids influence somatostatin production but the precise nature of this effect has remained unclear. In this thesis, I characterized the actions of glucocorticoids on somatostatin gene expression and their molecular mechanisms of action in three consecutive studies. (1) I started with an investigation of the in vivo and in …  Read more

The effect of maternal dietary glucose on perinatal phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) gene expression was investigated in this study. Pregnant rats were fed isoclaoric diets containing graded levels of glucose (0%, 12%, 24% and 60%) from gestation day 2 to lactation day 15. The developmental profiles of PEPCK gene expression in fetal and neonatal liver and kidney were analyzed by northern blot. In the liver, feeding glucose free and glucose restriction (12% and 24%) diets precociously induced PEPCK gene expression at day 21 of gestation. In the kidney, PEPCK mRNA (2.8 kb) was detected at birth in the glucose free group, …  Read more

A novel algebraic method is used to determine the intersection between two bi-quadratic surfaces. The underlying idea is to deal with functional decomposition by reducing the order of high-degree functions and thereby overcome the problems common to other methods.  Read more

China's education has experienced a series of challenges since 1978, when the Chinese Government started to reform its political and economic systems, and implement the so called "open door" policy. In the rapidly changing social context, private education reemerged along with the development of the market economy. Recently, elite private education has caught wide attention in both China and overseas. This research adopts a case study approach to examine the development of private schools in China. This research is based on an elite private school in Beijing, where the researcher stayed for two weeks in order to collect data. Interviews …  Read more

Misclassification of disease and/or exposure is a common and potentially serious problem in epidemiologic studies. The impact of misclassification may be profound and may invalidate results. Despite the fact that there have been a number of articles published on the significance of misclassification bias, many epidemiologic studies are carried out with little attention paid to this issue either in the design or the analysis. The goal of this thesis is to provide clarifications on issues surrounding misclassification of exposure in case-control studies. Specifically, the conditions under which misclassification is likely to occur, the potential impact on effect measures and how …  Read more

Jacques Godbout, writer and filmmaker, always had a critical look over Quebec society in his thirty-five-year career. The object of our study is to analyse the socio-political representation of Quebec through Godbout's essays and novels. Since the early sixties, with an anticlerical crusade, Godbout asserted himself by promoting many reforms in the education system especially, and endorsing the philosophy of Parti pris: secularism, socialism, and independence. Since then, his articles and essays mostly revolved around secularism, americanization, consumerism, and effects of television. These issues are also part of his novels, which are always linked to Quebec reality, and often serve …  Read more

This thesis considers the problem of trajectory generation for robot manipulators along fixed Cartesian paths which contain, or pass near, kinematic singularities. Following a path near singularities can cause very large velocities and accelerations in the robot's joints. Results are presented in this thesis to help understand and cope with this problem. Attention is focused on Cartesian paths which are piecewise analytic. First, it is shown that the joint solutions for such paths can always be expressed, in the neighborhood of a singularity, by means of a fractional power series. This implies a way to smoothly reparameterize the joint solution …  Read more

In the post-cold war era, debate has been renewed regarding the United States' foreign policy towards Cuba. One aspect of this debate concerns the link between U.S. policy and prospects for future democratisation in Cuba. The thesis examines three theories ("squeeze", "communication" and "normalization"), which suggest that either increasing or decreasing economic and diplomatic ties with Cuba will encourage prospects for democratisation. The paper assesses the validity of these theories by using a theoretical framework to explain regime legitimacy, and considers which policy offers the greatest potential for regime change. Next, the paper looks at the current Cuban political and …  Read more

Late blight, caused by Septoria apiicola Speg., is the most important disease affecting celery in Quebec. Biological control was investigated as an alternative to conventional chemical control of late blight. Two hundred and four bacterial isolates were collected from celery leaves, and muck and mineral soils of celery fields in south-western Quebec. Two experiments were conducted to screen the bacteria for antagonism toward Septoria apiicola: one on agar to test for inhibition of pycnidial formation, and the other on leaf disks to test for inhibition of germination of conidia. From these two experiments, 18 isolates were selected that prevented pycnidial …  Read more

Modern superscalar processors use advanced features like dynamic scheduling and speculative execution to exploit fine-grain parallelism. In order to support these features, they use complex hardware mechanisms like reorder buffers, instructions windows and renaming buffers. In this thesis, we have made an observation about the use of these mechanisms: a significant number of program variables are short-lived in the sense that their whole live ranges occur entirely within the reorder buffer. Therefore, the values produced by these short-lived variables do not need to be written back (committed) to the register file. Based on this observation, we have proposed a compiler …  Read more

Meyer, Ernst (Supervisor)  Read more

An integrated computer simulation employing the Embedded-atom method (EAM), Molecular dynamics (MD), and Markov Chain Fracture models has been constructed and applied to study the intergranular fracture of brittle polycrystalline materials at both the atomistic and microscopic levels. At the atomistic level, the computer model is capable of treating bicrystals under the influence of external load and temperature with dynamic periodic boundary conditions along the grain boundary plane and a dynamic boundary condition perpendicular to the grain boundary plane. At the microscopic level, the computer model is capable of treating the sample with microstructure defined by the grain boundary character …  Read more

Reliability characteristics of new devices are usually demonstrated by life testing. When lifetime data are sparse, as is often the case with highly reliable devices, expensive devices, and devices for which accelerated life testing is not feasible, reliability models that are based on a combination of degradation and lifetime data represent an important practical approach. This thesis presents reliability models based on the combination of degradation and lifetime data or degradation data alone, with and without the presence of covariates. Statistical inference methods associated with the models are also developed. The degradation process is assumed to follow a Wiener process. …  Read more

Transplantation of the small intestine is technically feasible, and the only potentially curative method for patients with short gut syndrome. However this procedure is still infrequent, partially because there is still no reliable method to preserve the small bowel (SB) for a reasonable period of time between removal from the donor and transplantation. In search of a suitable medium for SB preservation, we evaluated different solutions which have been successfully used for preservation of other human organs (Eurocollins (EC), University of Wisconsin (UW) and lactated Ringer's (LR)) and tried to improve their effectiveness by adding superoxide dismutase and catalase or …  Read more

This thesis studies a method of legal reasoning used in determining legal rulings guided by the principle of maslahah (public interest), promulgated by a liberal thinker of the medieval period, Najm al-Din al-Tufi (d. 710/716 A.H.). His theory of maslahah is not confined only to cases which have no textual basis but is also applied to those problems that come within the purview of the revealed texts. His theory of maslahah is, no doubt, unique and original. He prefers to place maslahah above all legal sources, including the Qur'an and the Hadith which, according to him, cannot lead people to …  Read more

How and why the scale of streets and squares has evolved from intimate and human settings to the contemporary neglect of human needs in open space is the focus of investigation in this research. An understanding of the concept of "human scale" establishes the variables that characterize humanly-scaled open space, which in turn identify transformations in the urban environment. In addition, the origins and development of zoning regulations help to trace the factors that degrade urban space and influence the loss of human scale. This loss has been identified in the adaptation of pre-industrial urban space to the novelties of …  Read more

This thesis attempts to clarify a particular epistemological problem which surfaces in Chomsky's attempt to attain an objective psychological distance from the language used in his scientific theorizing, in taking language as an epistemological object. This is accomplished by examining the presumed objectivity underlying the theoretical basis of Chomskyan linguistics in its hermeneutical relation to the theories of language advocated by Quine, Wittgenstein, and other philosophers. The thesis begins by situating the "metalanguage" in which the argumentation between Chomsky and Quine takes place in the Western philosophical tradition. It continues by outlining an historic-hermeneutic link between classical philosophy, early modernism …  Read more

Les neurofibromatoses sont les maladies génétiques du système nerveux les plus fréquentes. La neurofibromatose de type 1 (NF1) ou maladie de von Recklinhausen ou neurofibromatose périphérique a une incidence de 1:3500 dans la population générale et est caractérise par le développement de neurofibromes, de gliomes optiques, de taches café-au-lait, de nodules de Lisch, malformations des os et muscles squelettiques ainsi que des problèmes d'apprentissage. Le gène responsable de la neurofibromatose de type I a été localise sur le chromosome 17 et isolé grâce aux techniques de clonage positionnel conventionnelles. VARN messager correspondant, d'une taille de 11-13 kb, est exprimé de …  Read more

This study investigated the self-perceptions of low and high achieving adolescent students in a rural community of Jamaica, W.I. The effects of achievement level and sex were considered. The participants were 95 low achieving students and 100 high achieving students who were rigidly tracked into two separate schools. The survey instrument, "How I See Myself and Feel About Myself" was specially designed for this study. Student responses were compared to the subscales from Harter's Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (1988). The results revealed twelve self-perception categories, four of which were unique to the Jamaican adolescents. High achievers referred more frequently to …  Read more

In this thesis we construct the tensor A-completion over an arbitrary torsion-free ring A for groups whose maximal abelian subgroups are either conjugate separated or A-modules. As a corollary, this result gives us an explicit description of the structure of tensor completion for groups of the form $F/N sp prime,$ in particular, for free solvable groups. Moreover, it is proved that the class of A-faithful groups is closed under free products. We also discuss some general aspects of the theory of exponential groups and tensor completions.  Read more

This thesis addresses calibration of joint torque sensors and identification of a gravity compensation (GComp) model. The two problems are related: calibrated torque information is prerequisite for the GComp model identification; the identified GComp model makes on-line automatic torque sensor calibration possible. In the first part, we propose an autonomous joint torque sensor calibration method, which utilizes combinations of single-joint rotations and an arm's own gravity load. The method determines not only joint torque sensor gains and offsets, but also those of the joint angle sensors. When one joint of a manipulator is rotated, the gravity torque exerted on the …  Read more

The aim of this thesis study was to investigate the substance P (SP)-immunoreactive (IR) sensory fiber innervation of CNS target tissues in two experimental models. In the first model, we examined the SP-IR boutons apposed to three functional types of dorsal horn neurons and their morphological interaction with calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) and enkephalin (ENK) in the cat spinal cord, using a combination of intracellular electrophysiological recording and horseradish peroxidase injection with ultrastructural immunocytochemistry. In addition to SP-IR only boutons, we detected boutons co-localizing SP plus CGRP and SP plus ENK immunoreactivities presynaptic to nociceptive neurons. Quantitatively, significantly higher numbers …  Read more

This thesis constitutes a comparative study on the political thought, more specifically the idea of statehood, of two contemporary scholars of Islam from Pakistan and Indonesia. The two scholars under discussion are Abul A'la Mawdudi and Mohammad Natsir who propose fundamentalist and modernist approaches respectively. In spite of their differences, they hold similar viewpoint on the inseparability of politics and religion. In other words, they reject that religious and state matters are sharply separated. They believe that the state is an important means to guarantee that Islamic law is operative in society. Both Mawdudi and Natsir share views on divine …  Read more

This study argues that women's gendered experiences record distinctive features of their subordinate yet resilient positions at home and in society. It portrays the work and lives of selected women in a changing peasant fishing community in the Philippines and suggests directions by which power relations implied in their personal, local, and global lives might be more fully grasped. Despite an underlying perception of 'separate spheres' reflected in such local notions of work as pangabuhi and pangita, the women pragmatically pursue 'public' and market-related roles and activities for the immediate 'private' requirements for their households' sustenance and reproduction. Nevertheless, they …  Read more

Despite considerable research in the study of explosively deepening oceanic storms, much less attention has been paid to coastal secondary cyclogenesis that is characterized by weak baroclinicity but heavy precipitation. In this thesis, the development of one such storm, the February 1993 cyclone, is investigated using a high-resolution version of the Canadian Regional Finite-element (RFE) model in which more realistic physical representations are incorporated. It is shown that the improved RFE model reproduces extremely well the timing and location of coastal secondary cyclogenesis along the Carolina coast, the evolution of the associated surface pressure perturbations and tropospheric baroclinic waves. The …  Read more

Ornithine-$ delta$-biaminotransferase (OAT) is a mitochondrial matrix a enzyme which catalyzes the reversible conversion of ornithine to glutamic semialdehyde. In the retinoblastoma cell line Y79, the 5$ sp prime$ UTR of the OAT mRNA is alternatively-spliced. Previous work has shown that the two alternatively-spliced 5$ sp prime$ UTR are translated with different efficiencies. The alternatively-spliced 5$ sp prime$ UTRs were isolated and subcloned. Expression vectors were constructed containing each of the OAT 5$ sp prime$ UTRs and the human growth hormone as a reporter gene. Transient transfection expression analysis in COS-1 cells confirmed that the 5$ sp prime$ UTRs conferred …  Read more

We investigate the complexity of computations with constant-depth threshold circuits. Such circuits are composed of gates that determine if the sum of their inputs is greater than a certain threshold. When restricted to polynomial size, these circuits compute exactly the functions in the class TC$ sp0$. These circuits are usually studied by measuring their efficiency in terms of their total depth. Using this point of view, the best division and iterated multiplication circuits have depth three and four, respectively. In this thesis, we propose a different approach. Since threshold gates are much more powerful than AND-OR gates, we allow the …  Read more

The purpose of this study was to strengthen our understanding of counsellor development by examining changes in trainees' knowledge and thinking during master's training in counselling psychology. Forty-two volunteers (21 practicum and 21 internship students) critiqued a 20-minute segment of a counselling videotape before and after one academic year. Qualitative analysis of pretest-posttest responses revealed substantial improvement in students' understanding of the counselling process and adjustment to the counsellor role. Greater self-confidence was also conveyed by a significant increase in trainees' use of clinical terminology. However, students' ability to observe and conceptualize the client, to establish therapeutic goals, and their …  Read more

Travis, Lisa de Mena (Supervisor)  Read more

DNA methylation is a postreplicative covalent modification of the DNA which is catalysed by the DNA methyltransferase enzyme. DNA methylation plays an important role in controlling the gene expression profile of mammalian cells. The hypothesis presented in this thesis is that the expression of the DNA methyltransferase gene is upregulated by cellular oncogenic pathways, and that this induction of MeTase activity results in DNA hypermethylation and plays a causal role in cellular transformation. Novel DNA methyltransferase inhibitors may inhibit the excessive activity of DNA methyltransferase in cancer cells and induce the original cellular genetic program. These inhibitors may also be …  Read more

Flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) technology is an emerging new technology which can be efficiently used in power system damping. Objectives of this study are the considerations of the energy flow involved in power system damping by functional switching of series capacitors and/or reactors. The principal questions are how the energy transiently flows through the network and what is its impact on damping of mechanical oscillations. The analytical studies (covered in Chapter 1) reveal that the magnetic and electrostatic energy are constantly stored in the reactive components of the transmission system. The energy stored in a series compensated line is …  Read more

Stearn, Colin W. (Supervisor)  Read more

By fusing many of the established hypotheses on the source of the grotesque in Irish literature, this study establishes that these writers' impatience with all boundaries and limitations, physical or mental, led them to exploit the indeterminacy of the grotesque to achieve their particular aesthetic and epistemological objectives. After an initial chapter on the relevant theoretical and national considerations, the prodigious cloacal visions of Beckett and Joyce are compared, with emphasis on their use of the grotesque to demythologize the creative process. A fourth chapter compares O'Brien's and Beckett's exploitation of the grotesque to undermine hegemonic philosophical and epistemological systems. …  Read more

In Radio Detection and Ranging, the inverse problem is that of acquiring knowledge of the physical features of a body by making observations of the reflected energy and synthesising the model from the measured data. This procedure is in contrast to the forward problem, which consists of calculating the observable effects from a given model. The forward problem has unique solution whereas the inverse process, being carried out on the basis of hypotheses, is always characterized by a lack of uniqueness. The approach taken towards developing the synthesis framework is to consider a logic argumentation of belief functions which is …  Read more

One of the remarkable features of Brahm's B-flat major Intermezzo for piano, Op. 76, no. 4 is the ambiguity of its tonal definition. The work disclosed a contrapuntal tension between its fundamental structural-harmonic organization, which is based on an incomplete harmonic progression (V7-I), and its more remote intermediary tonal areas, which Brahms implies throughout the Intermezzo but to which he never wholly commits. The aim of this investigation is to illustrate how tonal ambiguity is achieved though recurrent "incompletions" of the expected (or at least the more likely) harmonic progressions. The thesis undertakes a detailed study of Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. …  Read more

Meunier, J. L. (Supervisor)  Read more