McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 2020

Juncker, David (Supervisor1)  Read more

Our legal response to transboundary pollution depends not only on the adoption of preventive measures and regulatory oversight but also on the existence of civil liability mechanisms. Victims fundamentally seek to hold polluters liable for breaching their duties or deviating from basic standards of diligence, to obtain redress for the damage that ensued and to prevent it from continuing. The process becomes difficult, however, when pollution crosses borders and several domestic regimes are involved. This is where private international law comes into play.This thesis investigates the regulatory function of private international law with respect to transboundary pollution. It uses the …  Read more

Ce mémoire a pour objet l’étude de la transmission d’historiographies alternatives à propos de la guerre civile russe à celle du régime stalinien dans Le Don paisible. L’œuvre parvient à éviter la censure, en élaborant un cadre de conformité qui intègre certains éléments de la doctrine historiographique étatique. Ce cadre n’occupe pas tout l’espace littéraire ce qui permet à l’alternative proscrite d’émerger par deux voies. D’une part, le texte crée une diversité d’historiographies potentielles par l’hétéroglossie et le comportement polyphonique de son protagoniste. D’autre part, il neutralise toute justification de la violence, aspect fondamental des historiographies de cette guerre. Ainsi, …  Read more

In this thesis, we explore some implications of cosmic strings and string theory for early time cosmology. Our work comes in two parts. First, we study how cosmic strings produce charged particles which can, by emitting electromagnetic radiation, partially ionize neutral hydrogen during the dark ages. We find that corrections to the ionization fraction of neutral hydrogen induced by cosmic strings lead to new constraints on the string tension around $G\mu \sim 10^{-16} - 10^{-20}$ for values of the primordial magnetic field greater than $B_0 \sim 10^{-11}$ Gauss. Second, we study some aspects of moduli stabilization using string gases in …  Read more

Episodic memory functioning relies on the interaction between specific details of an episode and semantic prior knowledge. Schemas are one form of prior knowledge thought to influence the way that specific details are forgotten or remembered from an episodic memory. The present study tested how the schema congruency of details within a memory change their susceptibility to forgetting due to different forms of post-encoding interference. In a between-subjects design, participants encoded complex videos and then were exposed to either an unfilled delay, an interfering narrative related to the schema of the encoded video or a narrative unrelated to the video …  Read more

Mark, Sutton, (Supervisor2)  Read more

Background: Wearable devices capable of monitoring physiological data is a growing field of interest with several applications on how we can analyze and use the data to benefit our everyday lives. Despite the leaps in technological advancements, there still remains several challenges with regards to collecting data over multiple days for longitudinal studies, such as circadian rhythm analysis, as well as ambulatory environment artifacts corrupting signals and compromising the monitoring required for real-time information and decision making, such as estimating cardiac vital signs of an outpatient. Purpose: The main objective of this thesis is to reliably collect and interpret physiological …  Read more

Judith, Marcoux, (Supervisor2)  Read more

Les récepteurs couplés aux protéines G (GPCRs) représentent une grande famille de récepteurs membranaires impliqués dans des fonctions physiologiques importantes par la régulation de diverses voies de signalisation. Plusieurs de ces voies sont à travers les protéines G hétérotrimérique. En plus des rôles importants que jouent les sous-unités Gα, des études récentes décrivent des rôles pour les sous-unités Gβγ en aval de la signalisation des GPCRs au niveau du noyau, l’Appareil de Golgi et les mitochondries. Notre laboratoire a précédemment utilisé la purification par affinité en tandem (TAP) pour identifier des protéines cytosoliques et nucléaires qui interagissent avec Gβγ. Pourtant, …  Read more

Franco, Eduardo L F (Supervisor1)  Read more

Mantere, Outi (Supervisor1)  Read more

In this dissertation, we articulate the new Personal Volunteer Computing paradigm, that refines Volunteer Computing by focusing on solutions that are personal to the user on multiple dimensions: they target personal projects, they leverage the participation of volunteers from their personal social network, and they are built into personal tools that can be deployed on personal devices and can be easily maintained by a single developer.We then present Pando, a new and first tool for personal volunteer computing written in and for JavaScript, that distributes the application of a function on a stream of inputs into the browsers of participating …  Read more

AbstractWhile there is a burgeoning interest in mindfulness in social work practice and education generally and an emerging scholarship that speaks to the power and potential of mindfulness and social justice practice and pedagogy specifically, little is known about the lived experiences of social work educators who infuse mindfulness in their critical and anti-oppressive practice (AOP) teaching. This arts-related critical hermeneutic phenomenological study sought to (1) provide an understanding of the experiences of social work educators who infuse mindfulness and critical and anti-oppressive practice in their pedagogical philosophy and practices in a Canadian university context; (2) expand understandings of the …  Read more

The thesis explores the principal questions relevant to the study of art and cultural heritage law in Québec, namely the law applicable to authenticity, provenance, value, sacred objects, and the international trade of works of arts and other cultural objects  Read more

Vogel, Jacalyn (Supervisor1)  Read more

Gendered labour responsibilities refer to divides in labour expectations for what is traditionally considered “feminized work” and what is traditionally considered “masculinized work.” Across geographies, gendered labour is naturalized through socialization processes. These processes crystallize feminized and masculinized expectations for domestic responsibilities. Scholarship suggests that changing socio-political circumstances can shift gender norms and gendered labour expectations. Central Kenya is a region experiencing a juncture of various socio-political changes, making it a fitting region for exploring questions about the malleability of gendered labour expectations. This thesis explores two socio-political shifts in Samburu and Laikipia Counties in North-Central Kenya, namely the increased …  Read more

Jerome David Salinger’s best-seller The Catcher in the Rye provoked controversy in the United States as soon as it was published in 1951. The loudest objections concerned its raw, obscene and blasphemous use of language. In the first section of this Master’s thesis, I bring forward a detailed analysis of the two most criticized elements of the novel’s language, the use of swearing and slang, based on a sociocritical reading of Catcher. Thus I attempt to explain the controversy. I then emphasize translation solutions conveying the original text’s subversive dimension by comparing the sociolinguistical contexts of the United States and …  Read more

With today’s environmental challenges, the development of sustainable energy sources is crucial. From this perspective, woody biomass has been, and continues to be of significant research interest. To increase its potential, a short-rotation forestry system, which uses technologies initially developed for agricultural production, was proposed for some woody species such as willow from the genus Salix. This research supports willow production by proposing a new technology for mapping willow tree yield grown in short-rotation forestry. This system was designed and built in partnership with Agro Énergie, Inc, based in Saint-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Quebec. The system gathered physical characteristics of willow trees on-the-go, …  Read more

Kahn, Susan (Supervisor2)  Read more

Contexte: Les services de santé et les services sociaux peuvent aider les aidants naturels des personnes âgées atteintes de maladies chroniques à gérer leurs demandes de soins. Pourtant, le nombre croissant de soignants racialement et ethniquement divers est moins susceptible d'utiliser et de bénéficier de ces services que les soignants issus de groupes non minoritaires. Alors que les facteurs individuels et culturels, tels que les préférences pour un soutien informel, ont généralement été utilisés pour expliquer cette tendance chez les soignants raciaux et ethniques, les recherches antérieures ont négligé les facteurs environnementaux (par exemple, la discrimination et l'incompatibilité culturelle dans …  Read more

Operating room efficiency is invaluable for all medical systems across the globe but is especially important for public systems such as the one in Canada where resources are limited with many patients requiring care. A new online scheduling software ORNET.CA was created and installed in a level one trauma centre, the Montreal General Hospital (MGH), in Montreal, Canada. All nursing staff were then trained for its use. Physicians were also sent an email with instructions of its use (Appendix A,B). The pilot for the software was launched in October 2015. The results demonstrate that ORnet can improve OR efficiency by …  Read more

Block shear in bolted steel connections has been widely recognized and studied as a possible failure path for steel members under tension. However, despite their ubiquity in modern steel structures, the block shear failure mode has not been explicitly studied for W-sections with bolted flange plate connections. Further, the block shear failure mode has not been verified for flange-connected W-Sections under flexure, where the force developed in the tension flange could theoretically create the conditions necessary for a block shear failure mode. A recent study confirmed the existence of the block shear failure mode in bolted flange plate W-sections under …  Read more

Klein-Broomberg, Denise (Supervisor2)  Read more

Song, Jun (Supervisor2)  Read more

This thesis investigates the synthesis of optimal strictly negative imaginary (SNI) controllers. A recently emerged class of systems called negative imaginary (NI) systems are those characterized by a negative imaginary frequency response. A NI system connected in a positive feedback interconnection with a SNI controller is internally stable if and only if a DC gain condition is satisfied. This can be interpreted as a robust stability result in situations where plant uncertainty does not destroy the NI nature of the plant nor the DC gain condition. Motivated by a desire to realize improved closed-loop performance, this thesis considers the design …  Read more

Au cours de ces dernières années, alors que l'aviation internationale et l'industrie spatialeont connu une croissance rapide, les véhicules aérospatiaux ont été considérés comme laprochaine génération de moyens de transport. Toutefois, les diverses conceptions et fonctionsdes véhicules aérospatiaux civils ont compliqué la question de savoir quel régime juridiqueactuel - droit aérien ou spatial - devrait s'appliquer. Le débat sur les vols aérospatiaux est restéen grande partie stagnant, du fait que le régime international du droit aérien et spatial, dans lecadre de la Convention de Chicago de 1944 et du Traité sur l'espace extra-atmosphérique de1967, a été élaboré à une époque …  Read more

Peter Savadjiev (Supervisor1)  Read more

Dans cette thèse, on présente la preuve de la propriété des groupes de congruence pour Aut(F2) – le groupe des automorphismes du groupe libre à deux générateurs – du point de vue de la théorie des groupes. On suit les idées principales de Lubotzky et Ben-Ezra, basées sur un résultat précédent de Bux, Ershov et Rapinchuk. Ce résultat surprenant a d’abord été prouvé par Asada en utilisant des techniques géométriques anabeliennes  Read more

Agriculture intensification of crop production through heavy and uniform fertilization has harmful consequences. Precision agriculture (PA) offers a methodology to mitigate the negative effects of heavy fertilization by monitoring available soil nutrients to prevent excess fertilizing. Variable rate fertilizer application (VRA) provides information about the existing soil nutrients and their location in the field, thus, allowing farmers to apply fertilizer effectively. Georeferenced soil chemical information, such as soil pH and soluble nitrate, is important for successful VRA recommendation maps. This information can be measured using ion-selective electrode (ISE) sensors directly in-situ. Spot measurement using ISE can be done by making …  Read more

Food insecurity affects various regions of the world. With the increasing population and natural disasters linked to climate change, agricultural yields are at risk which may lead to an increase of food price, deepening the issue of worldwide food insecurity. Promoting local food production is one of the various ways to mitigate this worldwide issue. However, conventional agriculture is not suited to the conditions of the remote locations often faced with food insecurity, such as northern Canada, where the high cost of transportation is a critical factor that contributes to the inaccessibility of fresh produce.Growing food in a remote location …  Read more

Labbe, Aurelie (Supervisor2)  Read more

Hurtubise, Jacques Claude (Supervisor1)  Read more

Palladium-catalyzed C-H functionalization reactions offer an efficient platform to generate carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds directly from hydrocarbon substrates. However, the ability to merge these transformations with carbonylation reactions as a route to generate ketones has presented a more significant challenge. These reactions have, to date, required the use of either one non-C-H bond containing substrate (e.g. an aryl halide) or must be performed in an intramolecular fashion to generate cyclized products. Of note, the generation of aryl ketones directly from their most fundamental building blocks, two arenes and carbon monoxide, has not been previously reported. To address this limitation, Chapter …  Read more

Benedetti, Andrea (Supervisor2)  Read more

Medina, Yasser Iturria (Supervisor2)  Read more

Epigenetics play a critical role in regulating gene expression. Many proteins with a wide range of different functions and subcellular localizations play a role in epigenetics. Epigenetic modifications on DNA or histones can impact gene expression, and the epigenetic landscape changes constantly. Known modifications include phosphorylation, acetylation, methylation, ubiquitination, succinylation, crotonylation, propionolyation and sumoylation among others. Several groups in the early 1990s conducted the first studies which established a link between acetylated core histones and transcriptionally active genes. The acetyl group is attached to lysine residues on histones by histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and removed by histone deacetylases (HDACs). It was …  Read more

La voie de signalisation de la kinase Janus (JAK) / transducteur de signal et activateur de la transcription (STAT) est une voie critique impliquée dans le contrôle des réponses immunitaires. Divers cytokines et facteurs de croissance utilisent cette voie pour la transduction du signal, notamment les interférons (IFN) et les interleukines (IL). La dérégulation de cette voie a été associée à de nombreux syndromes d'immunodéficience et de malignités hématologiques. Le BX795, le composé qui nous intéresse, est un inhibiteur synthétique de la TBK1. Des études récentes ont montré que le BX795 inhibe un certain nombre de voies distinctes, notamment les …  Read more

Les gènes sont les éléments de base de notre développement car ils transmettent des informations dans un ordre séquentiel. Les variations génétiques et leurs interactions avec les facteurs environnementaux sous-tendent les différences individuelles qui déterminent en fin de compte notre sensibilité aux maladies (Ottman, 1996). Des études d'association à l'échelle du génome (GWAS) ont associé des centaines de variations génétiques à des modifications biologiques et comportementales liées à des troubles liés à la santé mentale (Wray et al., 2012). Cependant, les mécanismes biologiques sous-jacents fonctionnent de manière peu claire. Par conséquent, nous nous appuyons sur des modèles animaux pour caractériser …  Read more

Kermasha, Selim (Supervisor2)  Read more

It has long been recognized that the resolution of global environmental problems is closely connected to differences in levels of economic development. While international law and policy tends to assert the compatibility of economic growth and environmental protection, developing countries continue to grapple with the challenge of growing their economies and combating poverty without causing significant harm to the environment. Given the unsatisfactory solutions offered by influential concepts that are predicated on the notion that economic development can be reconciled with improvements in environmental performance, such as sustainable development, green growth or the Environmental Kuznets Curve, the task of carrying …  Read more

Les modèles statistiques et d'apprentissage automatique sont des outils utiles qui peuvent être utilisés pour extraire des informations précieuses à partir de données brutes et faire des prévisions précises et peuvent être appliqués dans l'optimisation des systèmes liés à l'exploitation minière par divers moyens. Cette thèse vise à contribuer davantage aux applications de ces techniques en génie minier en fournissant 4 cas différents où les modèles statistiques et d'apprentissage automatique pourraient faciliter la conception et la prise de décision. L'analyse en composantes principales (ACP) a été utilisée pour réduire les dimensions du problème et simplifier la conception des stocks dans …  Read more

Affect has an impact on learning by influencing various cognitive, psychomotor and motivational processes. This research aims to understand the role of affect in aviation training. We examined participants’ (N = 19) affect in simulated aviation training while they perform ten aviation tasks designed to their skill level. Performance was graded with a rubric provided by our collaborator, CAE Inc. Affective states were inferred from two biometric measurements (electrodermal activity, facial expression) and one ‘ground truth’ measurement (experiential self-report). Convergent results were found among all the data channels: Arousal from facial expression and electrodermal activity correlated positively with each other; …  Read more

Jalbert, Jonathan (Supervisor2)  Read more

Background and objectives: Proliferation and differentiation of cardiac fibroblasts contribute to extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling and increase the risk of cardiac fibrosis. Atria show greater fibrotic responses than ventricles. To understand the effects of mechanical stimulation, a well-known driver of cardiac fibrosis, and the effects of transforming growth factor beta-3 (TGFbeta3), an emerging fibrosis regulatory factor, it is important to investigate the biological effects of stretching and TGFbeta3 on atrial versus ventricular fibroblasts.Methods and results: Atrial versus ventricular fibroblasts were compared under a stretch system that applied uniaxial stretch with 10% strain at 1 Hz. Morphological, proliferative and gene expression …  Read more

Lasio, Laura (Supervisor2)  Read more

Boudrias, Marie-Helene (Supervisor2)  Read more

eIF4A is a component of the eIF4F complex and an important regulating factor for protein translation. Its function is necessary for the efficient translation of transcripts that are under secondary structure control. eIF4A functions as an RNA helicase, allowing “melting” of mRNA secondary structure present in the template. These roadblocks would normally impede the movement of the ribosome, thus blocking translation of the mRNA. Sequences under this type of control are often involved in tightly regulated processes, such as cell growth and replication. As such, mutations in proteins may lead to cancers when freed from their normal regulatory elements. Therefore, …  Read more

Dans les romans canoniques de Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, et The House of the Seven Gables, il existe une tension entre les forces du queerness et de la normativité, que l'on trouve dans les relations interpersonnelles entre les personnages, et entre ces personnages et leur histoire plus large mondes. Que se passe-t-il lorsque cette tension est examinée à travers la lentille de la théorie queer? La tension est mise en lumière et des expressions de queerness comprises comme une résistance à l'hétéronormativité, aux rôles de genre traditionnels, à l'héritage générationnel, et aux réseaux de parenté nucléaire …  Read more

It is predicted that one out of two Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Current treatments rely on surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, with varying degrees of success. One of the most prevalent reasons for poor prognosis of chemotherapy is the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) cancers. ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters are a family of proteins that are responsible for much of the drug-efflux mechanisms seen in MDR phenotypes in both the clinical and laboratory setting.The first chapter of this thesis is a comprehensive literature review unfolding the roles and mechanisms of ABC transporters in relation to drug …  Read more

Asim Biswas (Supervisor2)  Read more