McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par B

L'aquaculture de crevette fut initiée dans les années quatre-vingts dans le Golfe de Fonseca situé entre le Salvador, l'Honduras et le Nicaragua, attirant des investissements économiques d'une part mais posant une menace pour les écosystèmes de palétuviers et les activités économiques qui en dépendent d'autre part. Une dichotomie entre l'industrie de crevette et les populations locales fut établie, ne reflétant pas cependant la diversité de développements d'aquaculture existant dans la région – entre petites coopératives et grands complexes industriels. De plus, les diverses interactions entre l'aquaculture et les autres activités côtières ne sont pas analysées. Cette recherche mène, à travers …  Read more

Given a measure-preserving transformation, one can build its natural extension, a bijective measure-preserving transformation that often shares some of the properties of the original map. Rohlin discovered that any measure-preserving transformation of a Lebesgue space has a natural extension, which can be obtained through an inverse limit process. This thesis presents Rohlin's account and develops further examples of natural extensions of non-singular transformations, one of which is an original example and one of which is an example of Silva's using the skew-product. Finally, Eigen and Silva's simple and beautiful geometric representation of a natural extension is given.  Read more

Entrée en vigueur dans le système juridique français en octobre 2014, la class action française constitue l'aboutissement de plusieurs décennies de discussions controversées, de jeux politiques et d'une patience à toute épreuve. Dénommée 'action de groupe', cette procédure a pour objectif d'être l'instrument d'un plus grand respect de la protection des consommateurs. Ainsi, un tel instrument pourrait être décrit comme étant le résultat d'une rencontre entre un véhicule procédural de common law, porteur d'une conception collective de l'action en justice, et de la conception historiquement individuelle de l'action en justice s'inscrivant dans le cadre du système juridique civiliste français. Cependant, …  Read more

Retention of verbal and non-verbal information was assessed in groups of hyperactive, normal and nonhyperactive reading disabled boys matched on age, verbal IQ and socio-economic status. The experimental tasks consisted of a series of verbal and a series of non-verbal measures that were analogous in design. Hyperactive children were comparable to normals in short-term and long-term retention of both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. However, their performance was significantly below that of normal children on tasks requiring effortful mental processing and organization. In contrast, reading disabled children were significantly worse than normals on the experimental tasks of verbal memory. This finding …  Read more

The dissertation is an exercise in the application of the philosophical hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and the biblical hermeneutics of John Dominic Crossan to the aesthetics of religious cinema. The thesis defines religious cinema as virtual religious experience; therefrom a theory of religious cinema is derived. This derivation depends on a discussion of the essential elements of the cinematic experience and permits the expansion of the category of religious cinema beyond its traditional frontier. Throughout the dissertation, a dialogue is maintained with general cinema theory on the one hand and religious cinema criticism on the other. The purpose of this …  Read more

Astrocytes exist in close apposition to synapses throughout the vertebrate brain where they both sense and respond to neuronal activity and make important contributions to the development, function, and plasticity of neural circuits. With powerful genetic tools to detect and control the activity of astrocytes in vivo now becoming widely available, important new mechanistic insights linking astrocytes to various behaviors continue to accumulate. Using the Xenopus laevis retinotectal circuit, a well-established model system for studying the role of neuronal activity in neural circuit development and plasticity in vivo, we have demonstrated that radial astrocytes, the predominant glial cell in the …  Read more

Pineau, Joelle (Supervisor1)  Read more

Pineau, Joelle (Internal/Supervisor)  Read more

This thesis studies the introduction of a priori structure into the design of learning systems based on artificial neural networks applied to sequence recognition, in particular to phoneme recognition in continuous speech. Because we are interested in sequence analysis, algorithms for training recurrent networks are studied and an original algorithm for constrained recurrent networks is proposed and test results are reported. We also discuss the integration of connectionist models with other analysis tools that have been shown to be useful for sequences, such as dynamic programming and hidden Markov models. We introduce an original algorithm to perform global optimization of …  Read more

The aqueous behaviour of rhodium (III) (Rh) in chloride solutions was investigated with the objective of evaluating its response to solvent extraction with 8-hydroxyquinoline derivatives. A theoretical analysis of the abundance of the various chloro-complexes in solution revealed that monoaquo-pentachlororhodate and hexachlororhodate are the most common forms of Rh(III) in chloride solutions ($>$0.5M Cl$ sp{-}$) and that the relative abundance of hexachlororhodate may be lower than was previously reported. The extraction degree of Rh(III) with 8-hydroxyquinoline derivatives from solutions ranging in acidity from 0.7 to 8.0M and in chloride concentration from 0.7 to 4M was found to follow the calculated …  Read more

The aim of this work was to devise and investigate a solvent extraction system for rhodium, from aqueous chloride solutions, having potential industrial applicability. The extractant investigated was Kelex 100, a commercially available derivative of 8-hydroxyquinoline. Ultimately, two different systems were developed. Both are based on an initial complexation reaction between the aqueous rhodium chloride complexes, (RhCl$ rm sb{6-n}(H sb2O) sb{n} rbrack sp{(3-n)-}$ and stannous chloride, referred to as the activation stage, but the two systems use a different Sn:Rh molar ratio. In both cases, the Rh-Sn complexes, either (Rh(SnCl$ sb3) sb5 rbrack sp{4-}$ or (RhCl$ rm sb3(SnCl sb3) sb3 …  Read more

Even though international cooperation traditionally is a concept encountered in public international law, it has an important role to play in the private satellite communications sector. Satellite communications being activities that intrinsically have a global outreach, mutatis mutandis they require legal rules that would not focus on purely regional or local interests. National and international space law have for the past decade encountered criticism with respect to obvious insufficiencies that in turn affected space activities. The first reaction of learned space lawyers was to call for some redrafting of international space law. A second thought about it had them take …  Read more

Background. Therapeutic angiogenesis in cardiovascular disease aims at improving myocardial function by increasing blood flow to ischemic myocardium that is not amenable to traditional forms of revascularization. This study hypothesizes that using the Omental graft to wrap the ischemic heart will lead to formation of multiple collateral anastomoses between surrounding systemic arteries and the coronary arteriolar system of right and left coronary arteries. Results. Left ventricular end diastolic pressure was reduced in the group treated with revascularized Omental graft compared to vehicle group. Ejection fraction was also improved in revascularized group then infarcted group. Measurements of the myocardial infarction area …  Read more

Purpose and objectives: Molecular mechanisms underlying prostate cancer progression from hormone -responsive to -refractory remain poorly understood. Studies in the host lab suggest that the up-regulated Fer kinase contributes to prostate cancer progression by its ability to phosphorylate and then bind pSTAT3Y705, pARY223 and pActinY53. As pSTAT3 and AR are known progression markers, our goal was to assess Fer, pSTAT3 and pActin expression in the human prostate along with the cell AR status. Methods: Prostate sections (425 cases) include benign hyperplasia, localized cancer of low, intermediate and high risks (untreated and neoadjuvant hormone treatment) and advanced cases under androgen deprivation …  Read more

A few months after having enacted a criminal statute creating the general offence of sexual harassment, the French Parliament enacted the Statute n° 92-1179 "relative a l'abus d'autorite en matiere sexuelle dans les relations de travail". In this statute, as in the criminal statute, the French legislator considers sexual harassment in a peculiar way, and departs from the North-American position on three points: First, while American law and Canadian law understand clearly sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination, the French approach is more ambiguous. It appears that the French legislator understands sexual harassment more as an infringement to …  Read more

In comparison with Controls that were never reinforced, rats reinforced with electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) on interval and ratio schedules were observed to initiate responding faster without priming before each daily session; they also continued to respond for intermittent ESBs with no apparent difficulty, and persisted at responding during extinction, showing spontaneous recovery from one session to the next.ESB-reinforced rats ran faster in a runway with short intertrial intervals (ITIs) than with long ITIs while water- and sucrosereinforced rats tended to run faster with longer ITIs but all rats ran slower on the first trial of each session …  Read more

Earlier studies on temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), by focusing on the anatomical and electrophysiological abnormalities of the hippocampus, have attributed a major role to this limbic structure in the process of epileptogenesis and seizure generation. Recently however, there has been increasing evidence from both animal and human studies that other limbic structures, including the subiculum, the entorhinal cortex (EC, perirhinal cortex (PC) as well as the amygdala, are possibly involved in the process of epileptogenesis. With the help of both acute and chronic models of limbic seizures, I have used an electrophysiological approach to gain more insight into the mechanisms …  Read more

L'insuffisance rénale aigüe (IRA) est un phénomène fréquent chez les enfants hospitaliser et qui est associé a une mauvaise santé. L'IRA amène à l'insuffisance rénale chronique (IRC) et l'hypertension artérielle chez les adultes, cependant cette association n'est pas claire chez les enfants. L'IRC est associe avec une augmentation de maladies cardiovasculaires. Actuellement les enfants en soins intensifs ne sont pas objet d'un suivi pour la surveillance de la fonction rénale. Hypothèse : L'IRA acquis pendant un séjour aux soins intensifs augmente le risque de développer l'IRC et l'hypertension artérielle. Protocole : Une étude rétrospective sur les enfants précédemment admis aux …  Read more

The enforceability and legitimacy of copyright law on the internet have been the subjects of several scholarly works. However, there were few studies that outlined the regulatory models available for the online world with respect to copyright policy. The main thesis of this study is that copyright law can be effectively used and enforced in an electronic environment through co-regulation. The author examines the theoretical underpinnings of copyright and droit d'auteur and argues that a global copyright is now being created. Stemming from this first conclusion, he attempts to show how, worldwide, the means of traditional regulation as well as …  Read more

L’invasion actuelle de la tanche en Amérique du Nord est source de préoccupation. Des études sur la tanche dans le monde ont mis en évidence des impacts sur les communautés de macro-invertébrés, la dégradation de l’habitat et la compétition potentielle avec les poissons du même niveau trophique. En outre, l’influence du réchauffement climatique sur cette espèce tolérante au stress thermique est mal comprise, bien que l’on soupçonne une augmentation des impacts négatifs. L’observation récente d’une tanche adulte dans le lac Ontario laisse présager sa propagation et son établissement dans les milieux humides des Grands Lacs, où les populations de meuniers …  Read more

This thesis examines the Jewish American anti-restrictionist movement against the 1924 Immigration Act, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act or National Origins Act. The study focuses on the key themes that drove Jewish American protest against the law, including economic considerations, patriotism and concerns of radicalism, as well as race, eugenics, and social engineering. This project highlights the many Jewish Americans––the anti-restrictionists––who fomented a protest campaign that included speeches, public demonstrations, reports, statistical evidence, and backroom negotiations. It draws from a variety of sources, including Congressional committee transcripts, newspapers articles, census data, and more. The study is further supported by …  Read more

This study of the McGill Medical Library covers the period from its beginning as a small collection in the Montreal Medical Institution to the coming of the Osler Library to McGill University just over a century later. It was through the Medical Faculty that McGill College became established, and, as an important and continuous part of that Faculty, the Library, though not unique, certainly deserves historical treatment.  Read more

Research has demonstrated that for a significant minority of men, exposure to sexually violent media results in a series of changes. These men are more likely to be sexually aroused by sexually violent stimuli, and also believe in certain rape myths and admit a greater likelihood to sexual aggression. The construct Attraction to Sexual Aggression, which comprises the affective, cognitive and behavioral responses to sexually aggressive media, has been proposed by Malamuth (1989a, 1989b). The Attraction to Sexual Aggression Scale has been developed as a dependent measure of the construct. A study by Malamuth and Check (1983) proposed that lack …  Read more

The independent formation cross-sections of 30 min Cs^130, 6.5d Cs^132, 2.9 hr Cs^134m, 2.1 yr Cs^134g, 13 d Cs^136, 32 min Cs^138, 18 d Rb^86, and cumulative formation cross-sections of 30 yr Cs^137 and 17 min Xe^138 produced in the fission of Th^232 by 20 by 85 Mev. protons have been measured radiochemically. Charge distribution curves were constructed at 20, 30, 39, 50, 51, 65, 15 and 85 Mev. With increasing proton energy these curves broaden and the most probable charge shifts towards the line of beta stability. These effects are interpreted in terms of fission-spallation competition. Detailed calculations on …  Read more

The independant formation cross-sections of 30 min cs130, 6.5dCs132, 2.9 hrCs134m, 2.1 yrCs134g, 13 dCs136, 32 minCs 138, 18 d Rb86, and cumulative formation cross-sections of 30 yr Cs137 and 17 min Xe138 produced in the fission Qf Th232 qy 2G by 85 Mev. protons have been measured radiochemically. Charge distribution curves were constructed at 20, 30, 39, 50, 57, 65, 75 and 85 Mev. With increasing proton energy these curves broaden and the most probable charge shifts towards the Une of beta stability. These effects are interpreted in terms of fission-spallation competition. Detailed calculations on the basis of two …  Read more

This study considers Paul Ricoeur's theory of discourses within the context of a phenomenology of religion. I focus on the eighth study of La Métaphore vive, wherein Ricoeur explores the possibility of interanimation between speculative and poetic discourses. While Ricoeur is willing to consider the interactions between religious and philosophical discourse in a number of essays, he does not develop the further possibility of the interanimation between religious and speculative thought. I take up this unexplored possibility by suggesting that metaphors are capable of slipping between discourses and animating speculative and religious discourses. Specifically, I use Jean-Louis Chrétien's metaphor of …  Read more

Background. For stage I and II breast cancer, the standard treatment is partial mastectomy followed by radiation treatment. The risk of local recurrence ranges from 6 to 9%. A controversy exists as to whether there is an increased risk of local recurrence as a result of excessive delay between surgery and radiation treatment. A natural experiment associated with a prolonged waiting time in our institution provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of waiting times for radiation treatment of breast cancer on the risk of local recurrence. Methods. Between January 1988 and December 1989, 486 patients with stage I or …  Read more

La fabrication de dispositifs semi-conducteurs à partir de monocouches mécaniquement exfoliées présente des défis significatifs, principalement en raison de la difficulté à identifier/caractériser la monocouche cible, des inhomogénéités substantielles de surface et des adhésifs, ainsi que des méthodes de fabrication invasives. Cette thèse vise à développer une méthodologie reproductible pour la fabrication non-invasive de contacts à l'échelle nanométrique sur des feuilles semi-conductrices bidimensionnelles mécaniquement exfoliées par lithographie par sonde thermique (t-SPL). Notre approche exploite un processus de levée de couche bilaminée (BLO) utilisant des résines PMGI SF-2 et PPA, intégré à une combinaison de techniques de t-SPL et de lithographie …  Read more

Bessissow, Amal (Supervisor1)  Read more

La formation chirurgicale s’est complexifiée avec l’essor des approches mini-invasives, telles que la laparoscopie et, plus récemment, la chirurgie assistée par robot. Ces techniques exigent l’acquisition rapide de compétences techniques avancées, dans un contexte de réduction du temps opératoire et des heures de travail. La simulation est devenue un outil essentiel pour garantir l’apprentissage sécurisé de ces compétences. Si des programmes validés existent pour la formation laparoscopique, il n’existe pas encore de cadre pédagogique standardisé pour la chirurgie robotique. Une question centrale en pédagogie chirurgicale est celle du transfert des compétences entre modalités de simulation. Cette étude vise à déterminer …  Read more

The effects of Ca++ , Na+ , K+ , ouabain, epinephrine and tetrodotoxin (TTX) on the metabolism of glucose-U-C14 in the perfused guinea pig heart were studied. A direct relationship was found between glucose oxidation and the extracellular ratio (Ca++)/(Na+)2. The metabolic stimulatory effects of ouabain were concentration-dependent and were prevented at half and twice Ca++, at zero K+, by MnC12 and by acetate. The addition of malonate, TTX or K+ caused a reduction of the metabolic activity obtained with ouabain, but dichloroisoproterenol and theophylline caused no effect. [...]  Read more

[...] The phrase "Coleridge's philosophy of art" should be understood to include both his theory of plastic art and his theory of poetry. At times we have used "aesthetic theory" and "philosophy of art" loosely as interchangeable terms. This is because at first Coleridge seems not to have made a distinction between a theory of beauty and one of poetry, although later, of course, he did. [...]  Read more

Le stage en enseignant est un élément important des programmes de formation des enseignants et il est essentiel de comprendre comment obtenir des résultats positifs dans ce stage afin de former des éducateurs de la plus haute qualité. Beaucoup de recherches ont été faites sur le sujet, mais elles sont majoritairement orientées vers le stagiaire. Cette thèse se concentre sur les besoins des enseignants associés et sur la manière dont les directeurs d'écoles peuvent encourager et soutenir les enseignants qui servent de mentors aux stagiaires. En interrogeant trois enseignants associés de différents milieux scolaires, j'ai découvert de multiples façons d'aider …  Read more

Kaartinen, Mari Tuulia (Supervisor)  Read more

This is a study of the personality of rheumatoid arthritis patients specifically concerned with the characteristic ways in which these patients may deal with interpersonal relationships, influences which appear to be involved in the development of such behaviour patterns, and the relationship of the illness to the personality manifesting these characteristics. This is one of four sections of a pilot study which aimed to discover the influences, stresses, tensions and adjustments in the social field of the patient and how these are related to the precipitation, course, outcome, and possible prevention of the illness.  Read more

The relationships among intra-individual vulnerability, stress, and adjustment were assessed within a sample of 621 young adolescents from a predominantly affluent suburban area. Also considered was the extent to which gender and family structure influenced the prevalence of these three conditions. Vulnerable teenagers were distinguished from their peers based on their inability to effectively manage the developmental task of individuation. The components of the individuation process considered included ego and cognitive autonomy, and parent and peer relatedness. Stress was measured based on self-reported exposure to conditions of threat, demand, or structural constraint. Indices of depression, problem behaviors, school performance, school …  Read more

This thesis deals with the challenge posed to post-imperial British identity by the rise of Scottish political nationalism and its voice the Scottish National Party (SNP) from the late 1960s to 1980. With the ultimate decline of the British Empire in the decades following the Second World War, Britishness, which had been forged through the imperial experience, was fundamentally challenged by older national identities within the United Kingdom. Scottish nationalism was one of these identities which had been subsumed by an imperial British identity for over two hundred years. A combination of the collapse of the industry of empire in …  Read more

The focus of this research was to examine whether the Medieval Kingdom social role topology, as devised by Adcock and Segal (1983), could be applied with kindergarten children, and to assess the association between the social roles children assumed and seven non-behavioral variables. One hundred and seventy-three children from ten kindergarten classes in two schools participated in the study. Hypotheses that the Medieval Kingdom could be distilled from a sample of kindergarten children and that specific non-behavioral variables including cognitive ability, physical attractiveness, self-esteem, and chronological age were related to the assumption of leadership roles within the topology were confirmed. …  Read more

High polymers, such as cellulose, are polymolecular, i.e., their component molecules exhibit a usually widely varying molecular weight. Being non-uniform, they are infinitely variable and the molecular weight distribution may vary from sample to sample of one and the same high polymer. Although of the same average molecular weight and chemical constitution, two polymeric specimens might accordingly show quite different properties depending on their particular molecular weight distribution, which will affect its behavior both in the solid and the dissolved state.  Read more

La discrimination de consonnes explosives fut étudiée avec une référence particulière pour la distinction du facteur vocal/non-vocal de la parole naturelle, par rapport au moment d'initiation vocale. Quatre expériences sont décrites: 1) la discrimination des explosives vocales et non-vocales par des enfants atteints de surdité et des enfants d'audition normale. 2) la discrimination d'explosives vocales et non-vocales par des adultes d'audition normale. 3) l'entraînement d'enfants atteints de surdité pour améliorer leur discrimination d'explosives vocales et non-vocales. 4) les effets de l'entraînement de la discrimination sur la production d'explosives par les enfants atteints de surdité. Les résultats indiquèrent que: 1) les …  Read more

To define the viral target sites of cellular permissive factors, simian virus 40-polyomavirus hybrid origins for DNA replication were formed by joining the auxiliary domain of one viral origin to the origin core of the other, and vice versa. The replicative capacity of these constructs were assessed in a number of mouse and monkey cell lines which express the large T antigen of polyomavirus or SV40. The results of this analysis showed that the auxiliary domains of the viral replication origins could substitute for one another in DNA replication, provided that the viral origin core and its cognate large T …  Read more