McGill University Theses and dissertations by author name (F)

Cette thèse a pour but d'analyser tous les aspects relatifs à la Commission Africaine de l'Aviation Civile. Après un aperçu des principales caractéristiques do l'Afrique et de ses peuples ainsi que de la loi qui ordonne la création des organisations internationales, le principe du régionalisme et de la personnalité légale ont été minutieusement analyses avec certains détails.La partie principale de la thèse analysé le besoin impératif de créer une telle Commission en Afrique avec un aperçu historique sur sa création, sa formation et la structure de sa personnalité légale, ses membres et sa relation vis à vis des autres organisations. …  Read more

The enzyme DNA methyltransferase 3-like (DNMT3L) is essential for de novo DNA methylation in germ cells, proper germ cell development, and has been reported as the first paternal effect gene in mammals. In mice, although Dnmt3L heterozygous or haploinsufficient (+/-) males are fertile, there are associated chromosomal compaction abnormalities and the males have been shown to sire an increased number of aneuploid offspring even if the offspring do not possess the mutant allele (the paternal effect). Despite this, there have been no reported DNA methylation abnormalities in Dnmt3L haploinsufficient mature male germ cells. This is unexpected as DNMT3L's only known …  Read more

Le « Platform for Ambulating Wheels » (PAW) est un robot quadrupède qui possède des roues au bout de ses quatre jambes. Sa combinaison de roues et jambes lui permet de rouler, d’effectuer des virages en inclinant son corps, de sauter, de bondir et de galloper. Dans les travaux précédents, le robot utilisait des angles fixes, trouvés par essais et erreurs, pour pouvoir bondir à une certaine vitesse. Un contrôleur intelligent capable de trouver les angles de façon autonome afin de suivre une vitesse prédéterminée est développé dans ce mémoire. Premièrement, la performance du contrôleur est évaluée dans une simulation …  Read more

Damiano, Pasini, (Supervisor1)  Read more

The incidence of foodborne disease caused by Salmonella enterica is increasing yearly, despite the growing body of information regarding these most common pathogens. We examined the growth of, and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) expression of three Salmonella species (S. typhimurium, S. enteritidis , and S. blockley) grown at different pH values and temperatures and to different stages of the growth cycle. Growth conditions were found to affect the compositions of the LPS molecules produced by the organisms. The Tricine-SDS-PAGE and immunoblot profiles of LPS from the three Salmonella species were in accordance with the chemical data. Altered LPS profiles at different growth …  Read more

Le suicide est un problème de santé majeur au Canada et dans le monde. Des études ont montrés que les personnes aillant une histoire d'abus pendant leur enfance sont plus susceptibles de se suicider et les corrélats neurobiologiques ont été identifiés chez ces individus. Certains de ces changements biologiques ont inclus l’hyperactivité des voies de réponse au stress dans le cerveau comme la neuroendocrine, l'axe hypothalamo - hypophyso - surrénalien (HHS) et les réseaux connectés dans le cortex préfrontal comme le cortex cingulaire antérieur (CCA), qui influent le comportement. Des enquêtes antérieures ont également prouvés que les changements épigénétiques dans …  Read more

Mirza, M. S. (Supervisor)  Read more

Les corrélations entre le comportement du cortex visuel et les habiletés visuelles permettent de comprendre le lien fonctionnel entre l'activité des neurones et le comportement d'un sujet lors du visionnement d'un écran. Ces corrélations sont déduites à travers des courbes ROC représentant les covariances entre les comportements et les neurones (la probabilité de choix et de détection) et ce, en utilisant des filtres avec une fonction de transfert Sinc. Ces filtres capturent efficacement les covariances entre les activités neurologiques et les comportements durant des stimuli constants. Toutefois, il n'est pas optimal d'utiliser ces filtres pour capturer ces corrélations lors de …  Read more

Architectural scholars have studied the origins, growth, and development of New World settlements and their works document aspects such as land division, infrastructure, construction materials and building techniques. Often overlooked, however, are the physical effects that everyday food-related activities had in shaping these places.This thesis explores the relationships that linked subsistence to the architecture of the cold-climate settlement of Montreal in seventeenth and eighteenth century New France. It investigates food production cycles and transformation processes, and seeks to reconstruct the spatial-temporal chains through which food made its way from field to table to wastes in a pre-industrial urban context. It …  Read more

The work presented in this thesis provides new insights into Porcupine function and how it affects reproductive outcomes. Since Porcupine function is a precursor to Wnt secretion and subsequent signaling, we have also shed light on the mechanism by which Porcupine-dependent Wnt signaling is controlling various reproductive processes. The work within the three manuscripts has revealed a role for porcupine in adenogenesis, stromal maintenance, luminal closure and decidualization. Briefly, we first generated and assessed the phenotype of a Porcupine conditional mutant in the entire female reproductive tract using a LoxP system, where the Cre recombinase is driven under the progesterone …  Read more

Methylmalonic aciduria (MMA) is an autosomal recessive metabolic disorder with an incidence of 1 in 48,000, which may be due to a defect in the mitochondrial homodimeric enzyme methylmalonyl CoA mutase (mut MMA). mut MMA is subdivided into $mut sp circ$ and $mut sp-$ subclasses on the basis of complementation analysis; $mut sp circ$ cell lines have very low incorporation of ($ sp{14}$C) from propionate into acid precipitable material while incorporation in $mut sp-$ cells is increased when cells are incubated in cobalamin. Intragenic complementation was first observed with WG 1130, a $mut sp circ$ fibroblast line with a homozygous …  Read more

Des études cliniques et des modèles animaux expérimentaux indiquent de manière concluante que les cellules T CD4 jouent un rôle central dans l'initiation et l'exacerbation de l'asthme allergique. Malgré des fonctions bien définies pour leurs différents médiateurs, dictant des altérations immunologiques et structurelles, de nouveaux mécanismes de régulation sont découverts par lesquels les lymphocytes T CD4 pourraient potentiellement exercer leurs propriétés physiopathologiques. Bien que l'expression du facteur de croissance de type EGF l'héparine, HB-EGF, par les lymphocytes T CD4 ait été initialement montrée en 1994, aucune étude ne s'est penchée sur la signification physiologique de sa synthèse. Ici, nous avons …  Read more

Obesity and its comorbidities are an ever-expanding cost of affluent societies. Energy homeostasis is mediated by a network of hormonal signals that originates from many tissues, including white adipose tissue (WAT). Acylation stimulating protein (ASP) is a lipogenic hormone secreted by WAT that stimulates triglyceride (TG) storage (i.e. non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) trapping) by increasing glucose uptake and NEFA esterification. ASP deficient mice are characterized by reduced body weight and WAT mass and delayed postprandial TG and NEFA clearance. The key enzyme in the regulation of TG clearance is lipoprotein lipase (LPL). The overall objective of this thesis was to …  Read more

Acylation stimulating protein (ASP) is a plasma protein that significantly increases adipose tissue fat storage. In vivo and in vitro studies have suggested a role for plasma ASP in enhancing postprandial plasma triglyceride (TG) clearance. The primary objective of this study was to examine, for the first time, the postprandial response of plasma ASP and the fate of an exogenous fat source in 8 post-obese and 8 matched control women. This was done through following 13C-labeled high fat breakfast meal (1062 Cal, 67% fat) every 2 hours for 8 hours in 3 plasma pools and in expired breath CO2. The …  Read more

Due to advances in computing technologies, the field of Virtual Reality is undergoing an intense developmental stage, with numerous applications being developed in various fields. These applications are diverse, ranging from architectural walk-throughs and virtual manufacturing environments to the entertainment industry and legal police investigations. One very active research area within the field of virtual reality is that of human figure modeling, design, and articulation. With virtual environments becoming more elaborate and involved, there is an increasing need for synthetic human models to act as "inhabitants" of such worlds, and to further contribute to the level of realism and immersion …  Read more

Methyl groups play a crucial role in pharmaceutical compounds, as their incorporation into aryl, heteroaryl, and alkyl frameworks often enhances drug-target interactions. This phenomenon, known as the “magic methyl effect,” has become a key strategy for improving therapeutic potency during the lead optimization phase of drug development. To expand the methodological toolbox for methylation reactions, novel nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling strategies are being developed, focusing on two main areas of research: (1) hydrazones as organometallic equivalents (HOME) chemistry and (2) photoactive ligand-enabled photocatalysis.New methodologies for the methylation of various phenol-derived tosylates, (hetero)aryl halides, and alkyl halides via hydrazone-mediated nickel-catalyzed cross-coupling are reported. …  Read more

Récemment, avec l'avènement de méthodes basées sur l'apprentissage dans l'amélioration de la parole, le besoin de de caractéristiques d'apprentissage robustes et fiables qui peuvent représenter de manière compacte les signaux vocaux tout en préservant leurs informations vitales a été ravivé. Les caractéristiques du domaine temps-fréquence, telles que la transformée de Fourier à court terme (STFT) et les coefficients cepstraux Mel-Frequency (MFCC), sont préférées dans de nombreuses approches. Ils représentent le signal vocal dans un format plus compact et contiennent à la fois des informations temporelles et fréquentielles. Par rapport à STFT, les MFCC nécessitent moins de mémoire et réduisent considérablement …  Read more

The signal propagation delays in a high speed, wide area telecommunication network can be orders of magnitude larger than a message transmission time. This implies that the response times associated with dynamic congestion management strategies can be long relative to the characteristic times of the queue-length processes being controlled, and that such strategies may be of limited use in controlling message loss in high speed settings. We examine the interplay between signal propagation delays and efficiency of feedback-based congestion controls in the case of a very simple network model consisting of a single multiplexor serving a remote source population. We …  Read more

Le satellite nucléaire Cosmos 954 est lancé par l'Union soviétique en septembre 1977. Après avoir éprouvé certaines difficultés de fonctionnement, Cosmos 954 revient vers la terre et ses débris s'écrasent en territoire canadien le 24 janvier 1978. Averti de la présence de matière radioactive à bord du satellite, le gouvernement canadien entreprend immédiatement des opérations d'envergure visant à réduire les dommages et à rendre les territoires atteints à leur utilisation normale. One indemnisation sera réclamée à l'Union soviétique: on prépare à cette fin une réclamation basée notamment sur la Convention sur la responsabilité internationale pour les dommages causés par des …  Read more

This study evaluates the hypothesis that medical reasoning in real clinical situations involves multiple cognitive tasks whose complex interactions are coordinated in an opportunistic manner. A problem-solving architecture originating from research in artificial intelligence, the blackboard model, is proposed as an integrative framework for representing these characteristics of situated medical reasoning and for reconciling different theoretical perspectives about medical reasoning. A naturalistic clinical situation, involving the manipulation of the patient record by an internist while managing a case, provides the empirical data for this in depth qualitative case study. The video recording of the subject's record manipulation behavior allows the …  Read more

Traditional studies on the image motion of specularities have concentrated on the motion of isolated specular patches on known specular surfaces, where important parameters such as surface curvature are predetermined. Furthermore the considered surfaces are mostly convex and non-undulating. Here, I attempt to expand on some of the previous results, by examining the frequency characteristics of the global motion of specular markings on random, undulating surfaces subject to a lateral camera motion with constant velocity. I first expand the notion of a bowtie in the Fourier domain introduced by Langer and Mann[7] to accommodate the case of a smooth undulating …  Read more

Initial experiments were conducted to determine the microbial development in blocks of ground beef. In the top layers of the meat, Pseudomonas spp. predominated. Attempts were made, as well, to measure the microenvironmental changes occurring in ground beef using pH, oxygen, and redox potential micro-electrodes. Some of the extrinsic (relative humidity, O(,2)), as well as intrinsic factors (pH, redox potential, ions, nutrients) affecting microbial development in aerobically stored meats, were examined. The decrease in glucose levels observed during the aerobic storage of longissimus dorsi (l. dorsi) muscle at 4(DEGREES)C, was accompanied by an increase in the activity of glucose dehydrogenase, …  Read more

The research reported in this Thesis has contributed to the development of methodologies in the study of disorder-to-order transitions, as well as given insight into the thermodynamics and kinetics of specific, biologically relevant processes in a small DNA binding protein, PBX homeodomain through a combination of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) dynamics experiments and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The major conclusions and contributions to original knowledge from each chapter are outlined below. A model is presented where protein folding kinetic data for multiple mutations at individual hydrophobic core positions can be well accounted for by two parameters describing the dependence of …  Read more

The sensitivity of the vascular endothelium to wall shear stress plays a central role in the development and progression of atherosclerosis. While current studies investigate endothelial response using idealized in vitro flow chambers, such cell culture models are unable to accurately replicate the complex in vivo wall shear stress patterns arising from anatomical geometries. In this study we have created both a simplified/tubular and an anatomically realistic model of the human right coronary artery. Following endothelial cell culture, and the application of steady flow, cell morphology was analyzed. In both models a progressive elongation and alignment of the endothelium in …  Read more

Blackett, Adelle (Supervisor)  Read more

Les réseaux de lignes de visée ont été introduits par Frieze et al. pour modéliser les communications sans fil en milieu urbain. Leur modèle est basé sur une grille bidimensionnelle de points en forme de tore. Deux points de la grille sont dits mutuellement visibles si ils sont situés sur la même ligne ou la même colonne du tore et si la distance entre eux est dans un certain intervalle prédéterminé. La distance est mesurée en utilisant le norme L1. Un graphe aléatoire est obtenu en plaçant un noeud à chaque point de la grille indépendamment avec la même probabilité …  Read more

RÉSUMÉUn ascenseur spatial pourrait être une alternative aux fusées pour effectuer l'accès humain à l'espace. La construction d'un ascenseur spatial exige un matériau ayant une résistance à la traction élevée et une faible densité de masse. Un aspect important à considérer avant d'entamer la construction de l'ascenseur spatial est la dynamique de l'ascenseur spatial. Dans cette thèse, une partie importante de la dynamique – c'est-à-dire, les oscillations longitudinales du ruban de l'ascenseur spatial - est étudiée. Contrairement à des travaux antérieurs, une station spatiale située à l'altitude géosynchrone a été prise en considération. En utilisant la discrétisation par la méthode …  Read more

Additional studies were undertaken on the nature of a nephritogenic agent found in the culture filtrates of certain group A streptococci. A commercially available dehydrated medium proved satisfactory for the production of the active material. Gel filtration was used to divide crude extracts, prepared from the diffusible portion of culture filtrates, into two major fractions. One of these, representing the higher molecular weight components, contained most of the nephritogenic activity as evidenced by the development of hypertension and acute glomerulonephritis in rabbits injected with the fraction. Physical and chemicals studies indicated that the active fraction consisted of at least four …  Read more

Les taux élevés de problèmes de santé mentale chez les adolescents, combinés à un accès limité aux services de santé mentale, constituent des préoccupations majeures en matière de santé publique. Le dernier rapport de la Commission de la santé mentale du Canada a révélé que 1,2 million d'enfants et de jeunes au Canada sont touchés par des problèmes de santé mentale (MHCC, 2022). Les interventions en milieu scolaire qui promeuvent la santé mentale et le bien-être ont été proposées comme une voie prometteuse pour prévenir les problèmes de santé mentale courants chez les adolescents. Bien que nous sachions que les …  Read more

RésuméCette thèse examine les processus émotionnels, psychologiques et cognitifs complexes d'une intervention d'expression écrite (EC) dont des adolescents font l'expérience dans un cadre scolaire. Plus spécifiquement, son objectif premier est l'évaluation de journaux à la recherche d'éléments d'hypothèses récurrentes avancées dans la littérature pour expliquer le pourquoi et le comment du fonctionnement de l'EC en répondant à deux interrogations clés : Quels sont les processus émotionnels, psychologiques et cognitifs impliqués dans l'EC, et comment est-ce que ces processus se reflètent dans les journaux des étudiants durant l'intervention d'EC ? L'étude sur le terrain s'est étendue sur quatre semaines, et les …  Read more

This study examined diagnostic problem solving and post-problem reflection in medical students, residents, and experts. Participants worked on three internal medicine cases from the computer-based learning environment, BioWorld. The analyses focused on general performance measures, problem solving operators and knowledge states, and post-problem reflection activities. Verbal protocol data was collected and examined using a coding scheme developed and implemented with the N-Vivo software. Students and residents differed in overall diagnostic accuracy, and significant differences were found in solution time and the number of utterances made for cases of varying difficulty. Differences in the use of operators and knowledge states are …  Read more

Objectives: Voting choices are fundamental to modern democracy. Political science largely studies such decisions in the aggregate, at the population level. Psychology and neuroscience study how individual brains make individual choices but have mainly focused on decision-making in economic paradigms. This thesis takes a neuroscience-informed approach to multi-attribute value-based decision-making in simulated voting choices. The guiding idea is that the value of multiple attributes may be integrated either configurally (holistically) or elementally (summed attribute by attribute), and that the nature of the information provided influences how attribute-values are combined to support choice. Inspired by the neuroscience of complex object recognition, …  Read more

Theodore, David (Supervisor1)  Read more

Lee, J. H. S.  Read more

Backache is one of the scourges of mankind. Indeed, it appears to be the painful part of the price exacted from Homo Sapiens for the priviledge of being upright if not always being upstanding. Other upstanding vertebrates also pay for this priviledge, and so the kangaroo and chimpanzee fall heir to the inevitable, suffering the disablement of over-worked discs.  Read more

This thesis locates Ibsen within the intellectual context pertaining to gender that is provided by such influential nineteenth-century texts as Mill's The Subjection of Women and Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht, both of which seemingly feminist works in actuality foreground women only for their importance in the production of better-quality sons who will ensure the endurance of the patriarchy. The attraction of feminists to the dramas of a playwright who avowedly wrote from this patriarchal standpoint is elucidated by a consideration of the appropriation of the woman-centered texts of patriarchal "feminism" by recent feminists seeking material to reinforce their own movement. The …  Read more

The changes which occur in water absorbance in the near-infrared (NIR) region, specifically at 960 nm, are correlated to tissue temperature. One of the temperature-varying constituents of tissue is the change which occurs in the hydrogen-bound states of water. As the temperature is raised, there is an exchange of water species from the hydrogen-bound to non-hydrogen bonding. The aim of this thesis is to determine tissue temperature from NIR spectral profiles of tissue as temperature is increased. A NIR probe was used to obtain spectral profiles for a series of tissue measurements. Using the data sets obtained, in-vitro measurements conducted …  Read more

Zinc is one of the major non-ferrous metals required by industry. Its largest application is in the galvanizing of iron and steel products. A substantial tonnage is also used in the making of brass and in the form of alloys for pressure die-casting. Zinc can be fabricated by almost all of the processes used in metal forming: it can be rolled, extruded, drawn, spun and bent as well as cast. Wrought zinc and zinc alloys have the special anti-corrosion properties that are necessary for many types of service, e.g., in roofing and in sacrificial cathodic protection. [...]  Read more

Myelin formation is an evolutionarily late acquisition that contributes to fast conduction in vertebrate axons. Continuous bidirectional signaling is required for the acquisition and maintenance of the mature nerve fiber phenotype. Myelin Basic Protein (MBP) is a representative structural component of compact myelin that is co-ordinately regulated with other myelin protein genes, primarily at the transcriptional level. In an effort to define the regulatory network controlling MBP expression, I located and functionally characterized conserved regulatory sequences in 5' non-coding sequence. First, I identified four widely-spaced segments of preferential conservation in orthologous human-mouse genomic sequences (termed modules 1-4) that range from …  Read more

Les combustibles fossiles sont aujourd'hui les principales sources d'énergie car ils sont économiques, faciles à transporter et ont une forte densité énergétique. D'autre part, les combustibles fossiles ont des réserves limitées et leur combustion est la principale source d'émissions de dioxyde de carbone, contribuant au changement climatique. Ainsi, la transition vers une nouvelle source d'énergie durable et respectueuse de l'environnement, comme le solaire, l'éolien et l'hydroélectricité, est essentielle. De plus, un vecteur énergétique devrait être déployé pour stocker l'énergie de ces ressources renouvelables intermittentes et la transporter dans le monde entier. Ainsi, l'utilisation de poudres métalliques comme combustibles a été …  Read more

Beaudet, A. (Supervisor)  Read more

This thesis develops improved stochastic models for the description of a large variety of fatigue crack growth phenomena that occur in structural and mechanical components of fundamental importance to the functionality and reliability of complex and modern engineering structures. In essence, the models are based upon the recently available McGill-Markov and the newly developed Closure-Lognormal stochastic processes. These models have not only the capability of predicting the statistical dispersion of the crack growth rate, which is dependent on the inherent crack resistance characteristics of the material being examined, but also, by incorporating the concept of crack closure into the Paris-Erdogan …  Read more

Le trouble bipolaire (TB) est une affection psychiatrique sévère et complexe, caractérisée par des épisodes récurrents de manie ou d’hypomanie et de dépression, touchant environ 2,4 % de la population mondiale au cours de la vie. Parmi les facteurs de risque génétiques identifiés, le gène A-kinase anchoring protein 11 (AKAP11) a émergé comme le principal gène de risque à variants rares pour le TB, partagé avec la schizophrénie (SCZ), selon le plus vaste consortium de séquençage d’exomes du TB. Ce gène soumis à une forte contrainte évolutive présente un enrichissement significatif en variants rares tronquant la protéine dans la méta-analyse …  Read more

L'épigénétique, l'étude des changements héréditaires dans l'expression des gènes qui ne sont pas provoqués par des altérations de la séquence d'ADN, est un domaine en pleine croissance qui a été particulièrement étudié dans le contexte du cancer. La dérégulation de l'épigénome est connue pour être un mécanisme pivot dans le cancer, il est donc important de détecter les gènes modificateurs de l'épigénome, leur rôle dans l'oncogenèse et leur effet final sur l'épigénome et le transcriptome. L'identification de ces facteurs permettra de plus efficacement cibler différentes tumeurs avec les bonnes approches thérapeutiques. Les carcinomes épidermoïdes de la tête et du cou …  Read more

Social workers with a bachelor-level education regularly work with trauma-affected populations, yet little is known about the trauma-related training they receive in their generalist education to prepare them to provide adequate trauma support while maintaining their well-being. As such, this research project aims to understand the current state of trauma education in Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programs in North America, with a particular focus on the local landscape in Quebec. An Appreciative Inquiry-inspired survey was used to assess the presence of trauma education modalities and gather insights from educators on their priorities for enhancing trauma education in their programs.Findings …  Read more