McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 1997

Many uses of process models have been suggested in the literature, such as process models can help in understanding a process or they can be used as a baseline for process improvement. However, there are few quantitative studies that have validated these uses. In this thesis, we describe one use of process models by demonstrating empirically how process models help in achieving common understanding of a process among the people associated with the process. Literature in management sciences prescribes achieving common understanding of the process as an essential element of an effective organization. To carry out our research, case study …  Read more

This thesis presents a novel approach to the instruction scheduling problem for dynamic issue processors. Our approach aims at generating an instruction sequence with a low register pressure and a high level of Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP) exploitable by the dynamic issue mechanism of the processor. Our objective is to improve the performance of the program by taking advantage of the out-of-order execution and register renaming mechanisms of the processor to reduce the amount of spill code introduced by the register allocator. Our approach uses a traditional ILP scheduler to generate an initial schedule for the program, and then reorders its …  Read more

A prevalence of 76% and a mean intensity of 42.7 Anisakis simplex was found in harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) (N = 78) by-caught in cod gill nets set by fishers from the Gaspe area in summer 1993. No young-of-the-year porpoises (N = 12) were infected. Prevalence and mean intensity among immature and adult porpoises as well as between sexes and length-classes were not significantly different. Anisakis simplex was present in the three stomach compartments of harbour porpoises. Adult stages were proportionately less abundant in the main and pyloric stomachs than the forestomach. Percent intensity of A. simplex was influenced by …  Read more

Sampling methods used for the assessment of exposure to volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in the workplace or for environmental studies are now limited to an upper integrative sampling time of 24 hours or less. Generally, these methods lack versatility and are difficult to use. A passive sampler that can extend sampling periods was developed as part of this research. This novel sampler relies on capillary tubes to restrict and control ambient air entry into an evacuated sample container. A mathematical model was derived by modifications to the Hagen-Poiseuille and ideal gas laws. This model defines the relationship between container volume …  Read more

Over 60% of the population in K'asho Got'ine, NWT, obtained less than 2/3 of the Recommended Nutrient Intakes (RNI) for vitamin A and calcium, as reported in a previous nutritional assessment. Focus group discussions and a food preference assessment were conducted with adults in order to identify the cultural, ecological, and socioeconomic factors (food attributes) as well as the individual preferences which influence the consumption of vitamin A and calcium-rich traditional and market foods in K'asho Got'ine. The major attributes limiting intakes of traditional food rich in vitamin A and calcium included: lack of equipment for hunting/fishing; seasonality; distance traveled …  Read more

American Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of religious freedom is, for the most part, predicated upon a form of liberal democratic theory commonly known as "procedural liberalism." A close analysis of this jurisprudence reveals that because of this theoretical basis, the Supreme Court has been unable to craft a consistent jurisprudence that adequately addresses the reality of religion as a pluralistic social institution. Based upon the detailed critiques of procedural liberalism by such thinkers as Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young, and drawing upon a concept known as "deep diversity" suggested by Taylor, a new general political theory, identified …  Read more

Biological control of pest Bruchidae may provide an important management strategy against infestation of stored grain legumes, a key source of dietary protein in developing countries. Previous related research has focused on the potential of parasitoids to control bruchids; the role of generalist predators in this application has not yet been extensively explored. The anthocorid true bug Xylocoris flavipes (Reuter) exhibited a Type II density dependent functional response to five species of adult bruchids. The rate of kill of these large prey was quite low but fairly consistent and female predators were generally more effective. Of the species examined, only …  Read more

Swelling equilibrium and kinetics of two commercial superabsorbent gel particles---sodium polyacrylate spheres and polyacrylamide-co-potassium acrylate grains---were studied in water and in sand at room temperature. Equilibrium experiments involved swelling gel particles at different depths in saturated sand columns packed with different sand sizes. Kinetic experiments were performed in a two-dimensional cell; both gel particle size and sand particle size were varied. Water flow in gel-conditioned sand was also investigated in columns and the two-dimensional cells for different gel dosages. The equilibrium swelling degree of gels in saturated sand was less than in water; decreasing sharply with depth in the first …  Read more

The research was undertaken to simulate the surface transport of water and chemicals from a flat agricultural watershed at the Green Belt farm in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The GIS database created for the Black Rapid Creek watershed focused on attributes and data necessary to run a non-point source model for surface transport of water and chemicals called AGNPS. The GIS used in the current study was SPANS for the OS/2 warp (version 3) environment. The years of simulation for the study area were 1992 and 1993. The study was carried out on a watershed scale and flow routing from different …  Read more

From the content analysis of 23 "classic" gay porn videos, produced by Falcon Studios, the emergence of the Falcon formula---a pornographic model of sex---is described in this thesis. This formula is analyzed with regard to the feminist critique of pornography and the assertions of gay advocates. Although the Falcon formula supports the feminist perspective with respect to the representations of sex practices, the linkage between femininity and getting fucked, as indicated by Dworkin, was not found in the selected Falcon videos. In fact, Falcon videos subvert this linkage by depicting masculine men fucking other masculine men. And, in accord with …  Read more

The objective of this thesis is to determine why Canada, a state that pioneered nuclear technology, and that faced, throughout the Cold War, the Soviet threat to its national security, consistently rejected any opportunity to convert its latent nuclear capability into an indigenous nuclear weapons program. The answer to this research question must address a number of explicit contradictions in Canadian foreign policy. While Canada has, on the one hand, rejected the bomb, it has, on the other hand, pursued defence and industrial policies based upon intimate involvement with nuclear weapons. Moreover, Canada espouses, on the one hand, a clearly …  Read more

Several new approaches to Direct Sample Insertion (DSI) into the Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) have been investigated with the enhancement of the analytical use of the technique in mind. This has been accomplished by: viewing the plasma axially; utilizing gaseous halogenating agents in the DSI cup; concentrating trace metals directly from solution onto activated charcoal DSI probes and developing an adsorption based preconcentration system specifically suited to DSI. The plasma was also imaged through interference filters with a high speed digital camera to provide information about the behavior of analyte vaporization from the DSI probe. In comparison to lateral viewing …  Read more

This dissertation presents both detailed experimental and extensive theoretical studies of optical wavemixing in nonlinear absorptive Kerr media. Non-degenerate two wave mixing (NDTWM) is a simple and powerful technique widely used to study the nonlinear refractive index and the grating decay time. It is unique due to its ability to separate the phase and the absorptive grating contributions. The work included in this thesis has evolved from trying to explain the unexplained results on the symmetric component of the NDTWM gain reported as "anomalous" behavior in ruby. We note that all previous theories for NDTWM have taken the approximation that …  Read more

Zuckerman, Martin (Advisor)  Read more

The goal of this thesis is to present a detailed study of the second language acquisition (SLA) of English aspect by native speakers of Slavic languages. A parameterized distinction between English and Slavic aspect is proposed, in order to account for the subtle differences between English and Slavic telic and alelic sentences. Thus the thesis opens a new area of parameter research in SLA and studies in depth the mental representation of aspect in interlanguage. It is proposed that, the four aspectual classes of verbs (Vendler 1967), viz. accomplishments, achievements, activities and states, can be represented in four different phrase …  Read more

A novel approach to correcting for intensity non-uniformity in MR data is described that achieves high performance without requiring supervision. By making relatively few assumptions about the data, the method can be applied at an early stage in an automated data analysis, before a tissue intensity or geometric model is available. Described as Non-parametric Non-uniform intensity Normalization (N3), the method is independent of pulse sequence and insensitive to pathological data that might otherwise violate model assumptions. To eliminate the dependence of the field estimate on anatomy, an iterative approach is employed to estimate both the multiplicative bias field and the …  Read more

Platelet aggregation is mediated primarily by the binding of fibrinogen to its membrane receptor, GPIIb-IIIa, but such an interaction may not be sufficient to support aggregation. This question could potentially be resolved by reconstituting GPIIb-IIIa into a model membrane system. A protocol was developed for the generation of liposomes containing purified GPIIb-IIIa. Flow cytometric techniques confirmed that the receptor was present in the lipid bilayer and were used to evaluate the characteristics of fibrinogen binding to the liposomes, which like fibrinogen-platelet interactions exhibited specificity, saturability, time-dependence, and calcium-dependence. No fibrinogen-specific aggregation of GPIIb-IIIa-liposomes with stir or shear was observed, as …  Read more

This thesis describes two studies that were performed to explore how the gustatory code is influenced by ingestive and motivational variables. To examine the possibility of a dissociation between gustatory sensation and perception that may be accounted for by integration of the gustatory code with limbic aspects of feeding, I first compared citric acid detection and recognition thresholds in two groups of patients, and a group of healthy control subjects. Patients had undergone resections from either a right or left anterior temporal lobe for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. A Positron Emission Tomography (PET) activation study was then performed on …  Read more

A major contribution of research in workplace literacy has been to explore the part that writing plays in the knowledge-making practices of various professional groups. While such enquiry has revealed that writing is essential to the creation and use of specialized knowledge in the professions, it also points to the need to see writing as part of a larger network of symbolic activity. Researchers have shown that practitioners in certain professions---for example, engineering and architecture---do not produce knowledge solely through the social negotiations of language; rather, acts of writing and reading merge with other symbol-based practices in larger processes of …  Read more

Conventional computer speech recognition systems use models of speech acoustics and the language of the recognition task in order to perform recognition. For all but trivial recognition tasks, sub-word units are modeled, typically phonemes. Recognizing words then requires a pronunciation dictionary ( PD) to specify how each word is pronounced in terms of the units modeled. Even if the acoustic modeling component is perfect, the recognizer will still be prone to misrecognition, most often because the speaker can use a pronunciation other than that in the PD. This different pronunciation may be due to the speaker being a non-native speaker …  Read more

Hermo, Louis (Supervisor)  Read more

Almost all peroxisomal proteins, which play significant roles in peroxisome biogenesis, are synthesized in the cytosol and imported into peroxisomes post-translationally. Failure to assemble normal peroxisomes causes detrimental disorders of peroxisome biogenesis known as peroxisomopathies. In the present study we examined (1) the peroxisomal import competency of unfolded proteins, and (2) the essential amino acid sequence of peroxisomal targeting signal type I (PTS-1) peptide. In the first part, human serum albumin (HSA) with seventeen disulfide bonds was fully reduced at 37°C and partially reduced at the room temperature. Microinjection of HSA that was unfolded, biotinylated and cross-linked with PTS-1 peptides …  Read more

A parameterization that describes in-cloud oxidation of S(IV) by hydrogen peroxide and ozone, has been developed for use in large scale models. This parameterization, which is based on the reaction rate equations and basic cloud characteristics, is an explicit function of the concentration of ambient chemical species and some gross cloud parameters. Comparisons of the parameterization scheme with a well-established three-dimensional cloud chemistry model, and also with the cloud chemistry module of a regional model have been used to formulate and test this parameterization scheme. Results show that the parameterization agrees with the 3-D chemistry model very well and that …  Read more

"An infusion technique was used with an aqueous radiocalcium ( 45CaCl2) solution during the seed-filling stage of well-watered and moisture-stressed soybean in a greenhouse. The kinetics of infusion volume showed a quadratic reduction in absorption which approached zero on the sixth day for non-irrigated plants. The concentration of 45Ca increased quadratically from the point of injection towards the apex independent of both water status and plant parts. The difference in concentration of 45Ca between irrigated and non-irrigated plants was significant (P < 0.05) and concentrations attained the maximum values at the sixth node from the plant base. Seeds contained considerably …  Read more

A particulate medium thermal Processor was designed and fabricated to dry, roast, disinfest and de-germinate cereal grains. The components are: a particulate heater, medium and grain mixer, separation unit and aeration unit. Comparative tests showed that particulate medium heating was 5 times faster and 87% more efficient than convective heating. Although the drying efficiency was 95% higher in the convection system, the overall use of input energy was 28% higher in the Processor. Drying of corn was investigated at 500kg/h. High moisture removal was achieved at initial moisture contents of 19% and 24% using salt at initial medium temperature of …  Read more

This thesis is dedicated to understanding the mechanism of the in situ synthesis of magnetic nanocomposites based on cellulosic substrates and characterizing the products of this synthesis. The preparation of uniform membranes containing large quantities of magnetite particles (Fe$ sb2$O$ sb3$) of defined site was our specific objective. For that purpose, cellulosic substrates of two different kinds: one of bacterial origin bacterial cellulose--BC), the other (Lyocell) derived from dissolving-grade wood-pulp through a dissolution/coagulation process (film-casting) were used as never-dried gel membranes. BC has also been used in the form of a suspension of open fibrillar pellets which were dried to …  Read more

The Internet's growing acceptance as a key medium to educate people is the main focus of this thesis. Although distance education has been a popular learning method since the end of the 19th Century, never before has technology made it so easy to disseminate knowledge by linking different media formats---e.g. text, sound, video. In fact, this huge library accessed by a universal interface, is one of the key contributions that the Internet and the World-Wide Web have brought to the learning process. The main goal of this thesis is to encourage instructors to create and deliver courses using the Internet …  Read more

Over the past twenty-five years, there has been considerable research devoted to the development of Reynolds stress turbulence models. One particular research area is the development of representations for the pressure-strain correlation which reliably account for the effects of solid walls with complex geometries. This thesis is a theoretical and numerical study of a fairly recent method: elliptic relaxation. There are two challenges in using this method: (1) the determination of appropriate boundary conditions for the elliptic relaxation equations, and (2) the numerical implementation of those boundary conditions in non-Cartesian geometries. In this thesis, a set of 2D boundary conditions …  Read more

Animals exposed to nociceptive stimulation for the first time display a novelty induced hypoalgesia (NIH) that habituates with repeated exposure to the same stimuli. The non-selective opiate receptor antagonist naloxone, has been shown to attenuate this habituation. Antagonists selective for the $ mu, partial$ and $ kappa$ receptors were used in order to elucidate the opiate receptor subtype that is involved in this effect. Animals were exposed to a hot-plate apparatus set at 48.5$ sp circ$C once per day, for 8 days. The latency to lick the hind paw was used as an index of pain sensitivity. CTOP ($ mu$), …  Read more

Shell geometry is one of the many variables that can influence the way energy is absorbed by the helmet during impact. The purpose of this study was to gain knowledge in how shell geometry affects the performance of the shell relative to liner structural characteristics and impact conditions. Samples, representing a section of a hockey helmet, consisted of a shell with one of nine geometric formations (width and angle), and a liner (Dertex or EPP). Each sample was impacted three times at three different levels of energy using a monorail drop test. Significant differences were observed for all main effects …  Read more

Thalamotomy and pallidotomy constitute the two principal neurosurgical treatments for Parkinson's disease. Both the thalamus nuclei and the internal globus pallidus structures are found very close to the internal capsule, a critical structure that must be avoided in performing the lesion. This forces the lesion of parts of the thalamus and the globus pallidus mediale to be achieved with a spatial precision on the order of 2mm. The leukotome is a neurosurgical tool consisting of a 20cm rigid shaft with a thin metallic wire attached to its tip that can be taken in and out of the body of the …  Read more

Speech coding is important in the effort to make more efficient use of digital telecommunication networks, particularly wireless systems, and to reduce the memory requirements in speech storage systems. The desire for a low-rate digital representation of speech is often contrary to the demand for a high quality speech reconstruction. In this thesis we present a new speech compression technique designed for near toll quality speech coding at bit rates as low as 4 kb/s. In low-rate speech coding based on linear prediction (LP), poor modelling of the LP excitation for voiced, quasi-periodic segments contributes to the degradation of the …  Read more

For many years, the fact that the primary transcript of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is inefficiently spliced was largely taken for granted and the underlying mechanism remained unexplored. We set out to define the cis-acting elements involved in splicing regulation of the HIV-1 tat/rev intron. This task was facilitated by the use of a plasmid designed for transient expression in COS-7 cells of a synthetic gene that contained the first intron of human beta-globin. By exchanging either the 5' splice site (5' ss) or the 3' splice site (3' ss) of beta-globin with various portions of the HIV-1 …  Read more

The last works of Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, written while each was knowingly dying, both continue and transform a discourse of illness and cure traceable through their canon. Illness figures both literally and metaphorically in their narratives; in Austen as failures in wholeness and in Pym as failures in love. After undergoing the metaphorically medical treatments of purging and vivifying in Austen and inoculating in Pym, their female protagonists achieve conditions of health and wholeness by closure of the narrative. In the dying works, individual metaphorical illnesses become a general societal condition of fragmentation, and cure becomes more elusive. …  Read more

This work presents three short fictional texts recounting certain significant passages in the career of our central character, Isidore Tousignant, plagiarism expert and expert plagiarist. A trainee journalist, later a doctoral student and finally a university lecturer, our wily protagonist explores the repetitions of journalism and the redundancies of amourous discourse; textual duplicity in literary research; and perversions of professorial authority and authorial integrity in an academic context. In the acompanying critical essay, we present varied notions of literary plagiarism, supported by selected works of Charles Nodier, Jorge Luis Borges, and Danilo Kis, and we propose certain possible avenues of …  Read more

The specificity of protein import into mitochondria is dependent on several interacting factors. These include the phospholipids and the receptors of both membranes as well as the targeting signals found within the precursor proteins themselves. The targeting signals within precursor proteins were investigated in order to elucidate the role of positively charged amino acids and the length and amphiphilicity of the hydrophilic region of a signal-anchor in conferring the orientation of that signal-anchor in the outer membrane of the mitochondrion. It was determined that the retention of the hydrophilic region of the signal-anchor on the cytosolic side of the outer …  Read more

The thesis analyzes Fedor Dostoevskii's novella Vechnyi muzh from the perspective of impeded discourse between the reader and the narrative text. It argues that impediment intrinsic to the narrative text affects the enunciative process of the work on various levels. The workings of impediment in Vechnyi muzh are examined on the levels of theme, genre---both in universal and historical terms---and narration. Frustrated reader expectation, uncertainty, and disorientation are shown to be symptomatic of impediment due to three factors: (1) thematic ambiguity on the basis of Dostoevskii's subversion in Vechnyi muzh of the theme of adultery, and of the cuckold motif; …  Read more

Il s’agit d’une étude zooarchéologique qui consiste à analyser et à comparer les régimes alimentaires entre deux groupes d’Iroquois vers 1500 (après Jésus-Christ). Le premier groupe comprend les proto-Hurons/Pétuns dans le comté de York, et le deuxième groupe se compose de proto-Iroquois du Saint-Laurent dans le comté de Grenville, en Ontario. Les ossements archéologiques provenant de deux villages constituent la plus grande partie des données de base de cette étude comparative. L’échantillon zooarchéologique du groupe proto-Hurons/Pétuns provient du site Keffer (AKGv-14), comté York, Ontario; quant aux proto-Iroquois du Saint Laurent, les restes fauniques proviennent du site McKeown (BeFv-1 ), comté …  Read more

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the anti-Semitic propaganda of Social Credit movement in the 1930s and 1940s and its impact on organized Canadian Jewry. During World War Two, the Alberta Social Credit government and its provincial land national parties engaged in the dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda, which greatly concerned the Canadian Jewish Congress, the national representative organization for Canadian Jewry. The Canadian Jewish Congress responded by attempting to confront and end this propaganda; however, it lacked a public relations philosophy effective and assertive enough to do so. Eventually the Social Credit movement realized the political liabilities of …  Read more

Significant species differences in foliar litter quality have been well-documented but differences within species, as a function of variation in genotype or environment, have not been directly addressed and, thus, remain poorly understood. We studied the significance of genetics, the environment, and their interaction in regulating forest nutrient dynamics and productivity using trees from four full-sib black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) families of a complete 7 x 7 diallel cross experiment at the Petawawa National Forestry Institute (Chalk River, Ontario). Foliar litter composites from each family-plot on two sites of contrasting water availability were collected in October, 1993, and …  Read more

This thesis consists of De'ath Sound, a short poetic novel (of approximately 27,000 words), and Check Your Sex at the Door, a critical postface. In the novel, traditional notions of plot and character fracture, and the underlying story, a kind of impulsion towards plot, plays itself out in ambiguous, even disturbing ways. The work itself, much shorter than a traditional novel, shares some of the sensibilities and structures of a long poem. The use of repetition, recurrent imagery, and the rhythm of sound, informs the narrative. The postface, intimately connected with the fictional text, employs language, syntax, and rhythms of …  Read more

Urtnowski, Liesel (Supervisor)  Read more

Darling, G. D. (Supervisor)  Read more

Wade, Kevin M. (Supervisor)  Read more

Should we limit prenatal diagnosis for adult-onset disorders? Since genetic medicine has dissociated its eugenic past, the principle of respect for autonomy has become a model for conduct. However, this model promotes individualism and neglects the impact on disabled people. Since the implications of aborting a fetus with possibly four decades of health are potentially greater for society, moral theories that incorporate meaning about communal bonds may be more appropriate. An ethics of care is proposed as an alternative model for justifying prenatal diagnosis for congenital diseases. However, the theory is limited to the private sphere and potentially less applicable …  Read more

While spectroscopic studies of the phosphorescence of Trp residues in globular proteins in solution have been shown to provide a sensitve probe of local conformational flexibility and of subtle changes induced in these molecules at ambient temperatures, the use of this form of spectroscopy has been restricted in a number of ways. To establish this approach as a more general tool in the study of protein structure and function the present thesis has addressed some of the present limitations. Subjecting globular proteins to conformational fluctuations induced with hydrodynamic shear is shown to result in significant reductions in phosphorescence lifetimes consistent …  Read more

Downey, Bruce (Supervisor)  Read more

This research investigated children's awareness of the shared constituent feature of relative clause sentences prior to mastery of the grammatical structure. Performance predictions based on linguistic and cognitive-pragmatic language acquisition theories were evaluated. Three experiments were conducted to explore comprehension strategies used by normally developing, preschool-aged children (ND), and by children who vary in the cognitive or pragmatic abilities: children with intellectual impairment (II), and children with severe speech and physical impairment (SSPI). Comprehension of one type of relative clause structure, the subject relative, was targeted using a picture-choice task. The task was designed so that response patterns consistent with …  Read more

Austin, P. (Supervisor)  Read more

This thesis is an attempt to analyze Sayyid Qutb's approach to Qur'an exegesis in his Fi Zilal al-Qur'an. It compares the earlier with the later revised editions of the exegesis as it studies change in his thought and Weltanschauung. Qutb believed that the sacred text was a book of guidance and inspiration with immediate relevance to contemporary issues and challenges, giving direction to practical affairs as though it had been revealed specifically for today's problems. It is suggested that social, political, economic, and psychological factors contributed to his interpretation and revision. The thesis explores the degree of the revision made …  Read more