McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par J

Philosophy of matter is that department of philosophical knowledge which relates to the philosophy of physics. While the philosophy of physics is concerned with the objects and events of the physical world as a whole, the philosophy of matter deals only with that “physical substance” of which the physical world is supposed to be made. However, the borders between the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of matter are logical distinctions rather than real, and the philosophy of matter has a fundamental role to play in relation to the philosophy of physical in particular, and the philosophy of science in …  Read more

Greer, Charles W. (Supervisor)  Read more

A simple and sensitive technique was developed for the detection of bacterial cells in a water sample using the nested Polymerase Chain Reaction (nested PCR). The test organism, Escherichia coli, was detectable at an absolute value of 1-5 cells/50 mL of spiked water using ethidium bromide staining and ultraviolet light visualization of PCR product formation on DNA agarose gels. Different parameters of the PCR were examined to determine which ones are the most critical in the design of a detection method for very low numbers of cells in potable water samples. The presence of the filters used for sample concentration …  Read more

Depuis dix ans, à peu près, les professeurs de français en France, au Canada Français, et aux Etats-Unis, s'intéressent de plus en plus à savcir quels sont lee auteurs français lemieux connus aux Etats-Unis. Puisque la majorité des Americains ne connaissent les auteurs français que par ceux qu'ils ont lus à l'école, au collège ou à l'université, par une étude des textes dane l'enseigement du français que nous pouvons savoir où nous en sommes. [...]  Read more

The Armenian question as a whole has been lost sight of in the tangle of events and alliances that preceded the First World War. As the complicated diplomatic background of this period has been treated elsewhere, no attempt has been made to include it here. Where outside events had a direct influence on the question; however, mention has been made of them. [...]  Read more

Industrial growth, population increase and rising living standards have drastically increased the world's demand for fresh water over the last few decades. Present supplies are adequate to meet the needs in many areas, but there are numerous locations where shortages already exist. As growth and development continue this problem will almost certainly become more acute and an effort is being made to evaluate possible ways of easing the situation.  Read more

Patterns of methylation at the 5-position of cytosine are postulated to be involved in several mammalian processes such as the regulation of gene expression, genomic imprinting and X chromosome inactivation. Disruptions in methylation patterns affect embryonic development and are involved in carcinogenesis, indicating the importance of regulating these patterns. The establishment of methylation patterns is believed to be initiated during gametogenesis and continue during early embryonic development. DNA (cytosine-5)-methyltransferase (EC2.1.1.37) (DNA methyltransferase) is the only known mammalian enzyme that catalyzes the formation of 5-methyl cytosine. Here, DNA methyltransferase is proposed to play a key role in establishing and maintaining methylation …  Read more

This thesis investigates the knowledge of semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition (SLA) within the Principles and Parameters framework. A parameter of semantic structure is proposed to account for crosslinguistic syntactic differences between two previously unrelated, and superficially distinct, verb classes: change of state locatives and 'psychological' verbs. Chinese and English contrast in terms of the parameter setting. Experimental evidence indicates that adult Chinese learners of English L2 initially transfer parameter settings, but are able to reset the proposed parameter. However, they only acquire L2 lexical properties and concomitant syntactic privileges with ease when L2 input adds a representation to …  Read more

La connaissance des phénomènes microscopiques dans les alliages est un sujet important à la communauté de la science des matériaux, parce que la morphologie microscopique détermine la plupart des propriétés physiques des matériaux. Par conséquent, il existe un désir de comprendre les mécanismes de formation de ces structures afin de mieux controler les propriétés des matériaux.En particulier, la solidification de dendrites a été très étudié. Orientation préférentielle de la dendrite est lié à l'anisotropie de l'interface du matériau. Travaux expérimentaux récents ont constaté que l'anisotropie de l'interface est plus compliqué qu'on ne le pensait, et qu'il peut etre fonction de …  Read more

In this thesis we present an approach to appearance-based object recognition using single camera images. The approach is based on using an attention mechanism to obtain visual features that are generic, robust and informative. The features themselves are recognized using principal components in the frequency domain. We show that we can perform robust appearance based object recognition by using the visual characteristics of only a small number of such features. The technique is robust to planar translations and rotations of the object being recognized due to our polar sampling in the frequency domain. We are able to recognize objects on …  Read more

The chondroitin sulphate epitope 846 of aggrecan is abundant in foetal cartilage, barely detectable in normal adult cartilage, but reappears in the cartilage and body fluids of arthritic patients. This epitope has been proposed to be a marker of aggrecan synthesis during new cartilage formation and repair. The purpose of the present studies was to investigate, in vitro, whether the epitope was truly reflective of aggrecan synthesis, and to understand its role in the cartilage repair process. Foetal bovine chondrocyte cultures were established to study aggrecan synthesis in order to investigate whether the epitope 846 was present on these molecules. …  Read more

Unerturgay, A. (Supervisor)  Read more

Almost 85 years have elapsed since it was first claimed by Klebs (1877) that mycobacteria can exist in various forms. Still, in spite of excellent descriptions on the form variation of mycobacteria, and despite continuous observations on developmental processes in the warm stage, serial micrographs showing the origin and the further development of aberrant forms have never been presented. The main purpose of studying the cytogenetics of mycobacteria was to show on serial phase-contrast micrographs the different modes of multiplication and thus to eliminate any suspicion of contamination or involution serving as the source of origin of aberrant forms.  Read more

Dans cette thèse, nous produisons de nouveaux exemples de complexes complets carrés irreductibles. Ceci est accompli par l'entremise d'une nouvelle recette élégante pour produire des anti-torus dans le couvert universel X̃≅ Tᵥ * Tₕ d'un complexe complet carré X. De plus, nous considérons l'action d'un sous-groupe π₁H ⊂ π₁X$ sur la projection X̃ → Tᵥ et charactérisons lorsque les éléments ont un ordre fini. Nous présentons aussi des résultats qui supportent l'idée que les complexes complets carrés contiennent génériquement des anti-torus.  Read more

Verbrugge, Clark (Supervisor1)  Read more

This thesis deals with the performance of a diagnostic protocol designed to determine the underlying causes of early fetal and perinatal deaths. It is subdivided into three chapters. The first chapter is a review of the literature. It surveys the underlying causes of fetal and perinatal deaths and the informativeness of different tests applied to assess these causes. The second chapter is a manuscrrpt describing the real performance of one of these protocols applied since 1982 in a geographlcally determined area. This area, located in the south east of France, covers annually 23,000 births. This descriptive study carried out on …  Read more

Guastavino, Catherine (Internal/Supervisor)  Read more

The structural organization and phosphorylation of the 68,000 (P68), 145,000 (P145) and 200,000 (P200) dalton subunits of rat neurofilaments (NFs) were investigated. Partial proteolysis of NFs with chymotrypsin or Staphylococcus aureus V8 protease provided evidence that the disposition of each of the three subunits within the NF structure is different. The proteolytic fragments of P68 and P145 were recovered mainly in the particulate centrifugal fraction, indicating that the two subunits are closely associated with the filament backbone. In contrast, a 160,000 dalton fragment of P200 which may correspond to the side-arm projections on NFs, was released into solution by chymotryptic …  Read more

Helminthosporium sativum P.K. & B. causes a disease of barley affecting the seedlings as well as the roots, leaves and heads of mature plants. This disease results in an annual reduction in barley yield and is at least partially responsible for fluctuations in yield from year to year and for the restriction of the present barley growing area. The exact amount of loss, however, is difficult to estimate, and often is attributed to factors other than this disease. Machacek (1943) stated that the common root rot of cereals and grasses was widespread in Manitoba.  Read more

Scleroderma is an auto-immune disease characterized by thickened and hardened skin. Similarly to other rheumatic diseases such as Lupus, disease activity in Scleroderma greatly fluctuates over time. Developing a new disease activity index for Scleroderma is a necessary step before undertaking clinical trials to test different treatments and would provide a conceptual structure to approach this poorly-defined disease. In this thesis, we first apply statistical methods traditionally used to develop disease activity indices such as Factor Analysis, Principal Component Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression. We then compare these approaches to more modern statistical learning approaches such as Ridge and Lasso …  Read more

Gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity varies temporally, with a peak being observed when this antibiotic is administered during the resting period and a trough when given during the activity period of rats. These variations are modified by fasting and by restricted feeding schedules. In this study, food and water intakes of adult female Sprague-Dawley rats were measured during pre-treatment (days 1 to 5) and during treatment (days 6 to 10) with gentamicin (80 mg/kg/day, i.p.) injected at 1300 h or 0100 h. A significantly higher level of serum creatinine was observed when gentamicin was administered at 1300 h compared to 0100 h, and …  Read more

The desire to develop sustainable and efficient methods for chemical synthesis has driven recent developments in mechanochemistry, where chemical reactions are driven by mechanical energy, as an alternative to solution methodologies. Ball milling reactions are a broadly applicable, sustainable, and cost-effective method of chemical synthesis due to fast reaction times, high conversions, and reduction of solvent cost and waste. Despite the increasing popularity of mechanochemical methods, instrumental techniques capable of providing real-time data for milling reactions remain limited. Real-time monitoring of milling reactions has enormous potential for optimizing and providing mechanistic insights into mechanochemical processes. This Thesis focuses on development …  Read more

Bergthorson, Jeffrey (Supervisor1)  Read more

Mackay, H. (Supervisors)  Read more

A novel rotating jet spouted bed (RJSB) is developed and tested. It consists of a rotating air distributor with two radially located spouting air nozzles. The effects of bed height, distributor rotational speed, nozzle diameter and particle properties on the flow characteristics were examined. Various flow regimes were mapped as functions of distributor rotational speed and superficial air velocity for different materials and column dimensions. Empirical correlations were developed for the minimum spouting velocity, peak pressure drop and steady spouting pressure drop. Drying kinetics of corn as a test material was investigated using both continuous and intermittent (on/off) spouting/heating schemes. …  Read more

La virtualisation des réseaux sans fil est considérée comme un modèle prometteur pour régler la crise spectrale et l'ossification des réseaux. Notamment, celle-ci se fait en partageant, entre les fournisseurs de service, des ressources sans fil communes, généralement référé en tant que tranches. De plus, à cause de la nature aléatoire des canaux radio et des ressources limitées, un réseau sans fil virtualisé (VWN) demande une provision efficace des ressources pour fonctionner. L'objective de cette thèse est donc d'étudier et de proposer un algorithme de provision de ressources en tenant compte de la qualité de service (Qos-aware) applicable aux VWNs. …  Read more

During the past years, the increasing amount of textual data available, coupled with the development of new machine learning technologies, has led to significant progress in many fields of natural language processing, such as automatic summarization, which now leads to summaries always closer to human standards. However, in general, human-written texts contain frequent generalizations and semantic aggregation of content. For example, in a document, they may refer to a pair of named entities such as ‘London’ and ‘Paris’ with different expressions: “the major cities”, “the capital cities” or “two European cities”. Yet, automatic text generation, especially, abstractive automatic summarization systems …  Read more

La perte des milieux humides continue d'être parmi les moteurs des changements environnementaux globaux, et, malgré la panoplie de recherches conduites sur l'état de ces écosystèmes, leur condition écologique ne semble pas s'améliorer. La dégradation de zones humides est surtout causée par des activités humaines alignées avec la création et augmentation des profits, résultant dans un mépris généralisé envers les propriétés complexes des milieux humides. Par conséquent, ce mémoire de maîtrise vise à analyser le milieu humide Upo d'un point de vue de politiques de gestion qui inclut les conséquences socio-écologiques de la complexité des milieux humides. Le cadre théorique …  Read more

Part AWhile several catalytic methods of the Claisen rearrangement using Lewis acids and transition metals have been developed in the past years, only one example of an organocatalytic Claisen rearrangement using a hydrogen-bond donor catalyst has been reported. Recently, our research group published the first example of an iminium-catalyzed Cope rearrangement using a diazepane carboxylate catalyst, which was shown to be efficient in forming α-substituted iminium ions. Inspired by our success with the Cope rearrangement, we investigated the application of the diazepane carboxylate catalyst in the iminium-catalyzed Claisen rearrangement. Our research efforts focused on identifying the appropriate substrates that can …  Read more

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or “drones” now offer a viable alternative to traditional technologies for a wide variety of data collection tasks, but little work has been done investigating the response of wildlife to these devices. This M.Sc. thesis covers the use of a Draganflyer X-4 rotary-winged quad-copter mounted with a camera to safely and accurately census the nest contents of four raptor species: Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), Ferruginous Hawk (Buteo regalis) and Red-tailed Hawk (B. jamaicensis). The aircraft proved effective for documenting nest contents of each species when a proper flight technique, one that takes into …  Read more

Muller, Bill (Supervisor)  Read more

The celebrated 'veil-of-ideas' argument is a skeptical argument that moves from a certain epistemological doctrine about perception to a general negative conclusion concerning our thoughts about external material objects. Indeed, the argument concludes not only that we do not know, but that neither could we know nor even reasonably believe, any of the thoughts that we may possibly entertain concerning external material objects. The epistemological doctrine about perception referred to in the argument has been in fashion since Descartes and states that the nature of perceptual knowledge in general is inferential. In this thesis, we will attempt to defuse this …  Read more

La mammite bovine, l'une des maladies les plus fréquentes et coûteuses dans l'industrie laitière, génère une perte économique annuelle de 665 millions de dollars canadiens au Canada. L'Escherichia coli pathogène mammaire (ECPM) est l'un des principaux agents pathogènes de la maladie. Bien que l'hygiène des fermes se soit améliorée, prévenir la mammite à ECPM reste difficile. Les cas persistants de mammite clinique causés par ECPM sont traités par antibiotiques, mais des souches résistantes aux antimicrobiens ont été observées, posant des risques pour le bien-être animal et la durabilité de l'industrie laitière. Cette thèse explore l'interaction entre ECPM et le microbiome …  Read more

In this work, snow data, collected at the Centre for Atmospheric Research Experiments (CARE) site during the winter of 2005/06 as part of the Canadian CALIPSO/CloudSat Validation Project (C3VP) were analyzed with various goals in mind: 1) investigate the effects of surface temperature and system depth on the snow fall velocity and particle size distribution, 2) find the variables that control the relationships between snow fall velocity and size (control variables), 3) retrieve the coefficient and the exponent in the power-law mass-size relations used in snow reflectivity, 4) estimate vertical air motion and 5) describe the shape of snowflakes that …  Read more

Reduced levels of health-related quality of life (HRQL) post-stroke are an important issue to address in rehabilitation. Despite improvement in function over time, HRQL remains poor for many stroke survivors. This longitudinal study is aimed at estimating the extent to which physical performance, social, and psychological functioning influence HRQL. Forty-three community-living persons with stroke were recruited to participate in a six-week intervention preceded and followed by a performance- and interview-based evaluation assessing different levels of disability and functioning. HRQL was measured by the VAS of the EQ-5D. Regression models generated cross-sectionally demonstrated that physical performance, social, and psychological functioning explained …  Read more

Magicians produce impossible scenarios for their audiences. Cognitive manipulations employed by magicians remain reliable even under intense scrutiny. In particular, misdirection—the practice of diverting the spectator's focus away from the hidden elements of a magic trick—offers a powerful avenue for examining how and what people attend to when observing magic. The current thesis examines misdirection using repeated viewings of a trick and investigates potential reasons for its continued efficacy, i.e., the durability of misdirection. We pair precision eyetracking with the classic 3-card Monte trick to examine how participants visually react to their answers during feedback. Furthermore, we wanted to see …  Read more

Heungsun Hwang (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

This thesis investigates the design of an autonomous navigation algorithm in GPS-denied environments. The performance of the current navigation solutions is dictated by the change in the operating environment. As a result, in the past two decades, various Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) formulations have been proposed to adapt various operating conditions and improve robustness. Multi-sensor fusion has been one of the solutions. Every sensor has its own strengths and weaknesses to a given environment. By using multiple sensors, the weaknesses of one sensor can be counterbalanced by strengths of others. To this end, the proposed approach presents a novel …  Read more

The purpose of this study is to explore the lived experiences of Korean "goose" adolescents who attempt to adjust themselves to academic and social environments in Canada. In this study, Korean goose adolescents are defined as those who come to English-speaking countries for a few years to seek out better learning opportunities; their fathers usually stay in Korea to earn money and provide economic support for their families, whereas the mothers take their children abroad to study (Choi, 2005b). Using an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), the researcher conducted semi-structured and in-depth interviews with four Korean goose adolescents residing in Toronto. …  Read more

The safety of civil aviation has been endangered not only by terrorism, but also by many other unlawful acts committed by persons with varying motivation. The international community has worked to provide a secure and safe air transportation system for general people and thus has developed aviation security systems in the legal and technical fields to combat and prevent the man-made intentional harm against civil aviation. The legal instruments are mainly based on several multilateral conventions, resolutions and declarations. They are all focused on how to eliminate safe heavens for unlawful actors against civil aviation, secure the safety of passenger …  Read more

Spontaneous or self-heating of sulphides can occur under certain conditions of moisture, temperature and oxygen concentration. This can lead to emission of toxic gases such as SO2 and if uncontrolled, to ignition. Research has established that self-heating divides into three stages: A (below 100 oC), B (above 100 oC) and C (above 350 oC). The understanding is that conditions in stage A promote oxidation of sulphides to elemental sulphur which in stage B oxidizes to SO2. A standard test based on air injections is used to measure stage A and stage B self-heating. In this thesis, a mitigation method using …  Read more

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease affecting the elderly. One of the main pathological hallmarks of AD is abundant senile plaques found in brain parenchyma and in the meningovasculature. The core of these senile plaques is predominantly composed of the 40--43 amino acid beta-amyloid (Abeta) peptide which arises from proteolytic cleavage of the beta-amyloid precursor protein (betaAPP), a glycoprotein with a predicted structure of a transmembrane protein. Most studies of betaAPP expression and processing have focused on cultured cell systems. Previously, our laboratory reported that immediately ex vivo human peripheral blood lymphocytes did not express cell surface …  Read more