McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par O

Toussaint, G. T.  Read more

Enough has been written about Proudhon both in French and in English to make a detailed description of bis life and personality quite unnecessary. This is especially true since the publication of the latest biography by Edouard Dolleans (l). His long study of the works, letters and as yet unpublished diary of Proudhon has resulted in a comprehensive and reliable picture of the Franche-Comtois socialist which fills in many gaps left by such early biographers as Sainte-Beuve, von Diehl and Desjardins. In the present instance, then, there can be no justification for any treatment of the life of Proudhon except …  Read more

To both English and French Canadians, Bourassa is best known as the leader of French Canadian opposition to the Boer War and to the conscription policies of the First World War. Only slightly less famous is the orator who defended the language rights of French Canadians in 1910 against the attack of a dignitary of the Church itself. His career was the stuff of which myths are made, and even in his lifetime, he was more of a symbol than flesh and blood reality. [...]  Read more

Phenothiazine has been known to the dye industry since 1883, when Bernthsen (5, 6) first synthesized it and subsequently investigated its chemistry. The realization that the drug may have biological applications came with the publication by Campbell et al (8) in 1934 of its lethal action on culicine larvae. Knipling (59), in 1938, reported that by feeding it to cattle, the development of horn fly larvae in the faeces was completely inhibited for three days. [...]  Read more

Heterakis gallinae, the caecal worm of poultry, was described by Taylor (35) as "as perfect a parasite as can be found in that it does no harm to its host". In its normal host, Gallus gallus, the adult stages of the parasite are found in the lumen of the caeca. The larval stages may be found in the lumina and epithelium of the caecal glands as late as the seventh day following infection but usually no tissue invasion is present beyond the tenth day. The degree of typhlitis produced by the larval invasion is variable, depending on the degree of …  Read more

The phenomenon of female teenage violence within the last decade has been receiving rapid social interest and concern. The present study is concerned with exploring causes for teenage girl violence. Specifically, this qualitative study seeks to explore and describe teenage girl violence from the experiences and perspectives of girls aged 16 to 19 years of age whom have been in the past arrested and/or incarcerated for violent crimes. Data was collected using a semi-structured interviewing format. Five teenaged girls having current or past involvement with the Child Welfare system were interviewed. Despite the study's limitations, findings indicated several variations on …  Read more

This paper presents different aspects of architect Aldo Rossi's thought related to analogy. The idea of type which is central to The Architecture of the City, is reinterpreted here in relation with Rossi's ideas about analogy which are proposed in A Scientific Autobiography. The influence of Etienne-Louis Boullee and Ernesto Rogers are discussed. Rossi's architectural type is related to Carl Jung's archetype whose numinous and compulsive aspects relate type to Rossi's ideas about architecture as instrument or apparatus. The theme of the cabine and the sea, and that of deposition are analyzed in order to illustrate the ideas above. The …  Read more

Les procédés inflammatoires sont une part intégrale du système immunitaire. Néanmoins, ces procédés peuvent devenir néfastes, débilitants ou même létaux lorsque ceux-ci sont dérégulés lors de certaines maladies. De cette catégorie, les maladies neuroinflammatoires (NI) présente un défi certain pour le système de santé mondial: en plus d’être souvent accompagnées de diagnostics défavorables à court et moyen terme, très peu de traitements sont disponibles. Afin de mieux comprendre l’étiologie et la progression des maladies NI, nous avons décidé d’étudier deux protéines au cœur de la NI découvertes dans nos laboratoires: CCDC88B et USP15. Pour ce faire, nous nous sommes concentrés …  Read more

The electrical resistivity, magnetoresistivity, the thermoelectric power, the magnetization and the Mossbauer effect have been studied in a series of Fe(,80-x)Cr(,x)B(,20) (0 (LESSTHEQ) x (LESSTHEQ) 32) metallic glasses. The electrical resistivity was measured in the temperature interval 0.1 to 300 K and in magnetic fields up to 4.3 T. The results show the presence of two effects: one of non-magnetic origin, caused by electron-electron interaction in a highly disordered system and the other of magnetic origin, probably the Kondo effect. The high field isotropic magnetoresistivity was also examined in detail and was found to be inconsistent with all currently available …  Read more

The immunobiology and the control of experimental visceral leishmaniasis were studied in susceptible (C57BL/6J) and resistant (C57L/J) strains of mice. It was found that the resistant/susceptibility phenotype for infection with L. donovani is expressed only by liver macrophage in vitro; the resistant/susceptible phenotypes were transfered reciprocally by bone marrow radiation chimeras. It was also found that the phagocytic activity of macrophages is reduced by the infection and that liver and peritoneal macrophages reflect their specific resistance/susceptibility phenotype following protective or curative treatment with lymphokines: macrophages from resistant C57L/J mice responded better to lymphokine activation. The production of IL-1 by spleen …  Read more

Contexte: La myéline, produite par les cellules gliales du système nerveux, fournit un support isolant aux axones, permettant un fonctionnement plus efficace et spécialisé du cerveau. La myélinisation commence pendant la gestation, mais s'intinsifie après la naissance pendant les premières années de vie, et se pursuit jusqu'à la période d'adolescence. Une lésion cérébrale pendant cette période, par exemple secondaire à l'asphyxie périnatale, peut altérer le processus de myélinisations, et entraîner des conséquences neurodéveloppementales motrices, sensorielles, et cognitives à long terme. Actuellement, l'impact d'une telle lésion sur la myélinisation cérébrale est inconnu.Objectif: Notre objectif était d'évaluer la myélinisation au cours du …  Read more

It is widely believed that small and medium-sized enterprises ("SMEs"), acting as a source of innovation and job creation, play a key role in the economy of Canada. The legal framework which regulates SMEs' activities is vast. This thesis focuses on the legal framework and most important aspects of three critical areas: financing, taxation and international trade. After describing and interpreting the legal framework of these areas and the information obtained from public and private institutions which are considered key in these issues, this thesis presents conclusions in relation to the question of how and in what way, if any, …  Read more

Pour les cancers trouvés chez l’adulte, 3,4 à 6,7% des interventions médicale qui sont testées en essais cliniques progressent à l’approbation réglementaire. Peu est connu des taux de réussites correspondants au développement de médicaments pour le traitement du cancer chez les enfants. L’objectif de cette thèse était de déterminer la proportion des interventions médicales dans les essais anti-cancers pédiatriques qui avancent ou « passent » aux phases ultérieures du développement et/ou qui sont utilisés en clinique, et la proportion des participants inscrits dans de tels essais qui participent à un « essai passant ». Nous avons utilisé ClinicalTrials.gov pour chercher …  Read more

AbstractHigher education institutions around the world play a critical role in shaping our very way of life, building the intellectual capacity, knowledge utilization, scientific and technological skills that nations need to strive in today's highly competitive and interconnected global economy. Most of these institutions rely on strategic planning at their primary management tool to drive targeted change across their campuses in areas such as policy development, teaching and learning, student success, instructional resources, faculty professional development, and even facility improvements. And yet, many of them continue to report how it remains a major challenge to employ this important planning approach …  Read more

Dragomir, Elena (Internal/Supervisor)  Read more

Les programmes de désarmement, de démobilisation et de réintégration (DDR) ont lentement développé des politiques pour adresser les besoins des femmes associées aux groupes rebelles. Ces politiques n'ont pas réussi à assurer leur participation. Cette thèse traite l'influence des articles portant sur les DDR dans les accords de paix, les définitions de combatants et les critères d'admission aux programmes, les acteurs responsables, la mise en vigeur des programmes ainsi que la capacité d'agir des participants aux programmes sur la participation des femmes. Les programmes au Mozambique, au Sierra Leone, au Libéria, et au Soudan démontrent que l'inclusion des politiques de …  Read more

Glass, Leon (Supervisor1)  Read more

Corrected steady-state fluorescence emission spectra of various mechanical pulps and celluloses were measured using an excitation wavelength of 320 nm. Regardless of its source, cellulose displayed a relatively high characteristic emission. The emission spectra of mechanical pulps were red-shifted with respect to that of cellulose, and peak shapes were influenced by the pulping process, by hydrogen peroxide bleaching and by monochromatic UV irradiation of the sheets. Changes in emission spectra due to bleaching or UV-irradiation occurred principally in the 370-440 and 500-550 nm regions, and were similar to changes in reflectance spectra reported in the literature. Fluorescence emission spectra of …  Read more

The present study used the conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm to examine the neural mechanisms underlying morphine's rewarding effect in the rat. Of thirteen sites tested with intra-cerebral morphine injections, only the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and periaqueductal gray (PAG) produced a CPP, suggesting that morphine's rewarding effect is initiated by an action at these sites. The CPPs induced by intra-VTA and intra-PAG morphine may be produced by different mechanisms because animals conditioned with these two injections exhibited different patterns of behaviour during testing. Injections of a quaternary opioid antagonist into either the VTA or PAG blocked a CPP to …  Read more

It has been proposed that analgesia in the formalin test is mediated through forebrain systems associated with reinforcement, whereas motor responses necessary for the expression of pain are organized at the level of the brainstem. Because it is located in the brainstem and connected with both limbic reward systems and motor structures, the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) is a site where reward signals might influence the expression of pain. Experiment 1 confirmed that NMDA-induced lesions of the PPTg block the development of a conditioned place preference to morphine. Subsequently, morphine-induced analgesia was found to be reduced, but not eliminated. The …  Read more

Loss of crispiness and the high fat content of deep-fried foods are two major challenges facing the fried food services industry. Crispiness is one of the key quality attributes that determines consumer’s acceptance and preference for fried products. Likewise, Public awareness of the harmful effect of consumption of high amounts of fat has driven the industry to explore alternative and strategic approaches for the reduction of fat content in fried foods. Therefore, maintaining both crispiness and low-fat quality of fried products without forfeiting one for the other is of huge interest. This study was then undertaken to investigate the potential …  Read more

Cette thèse explore le rôle de la philosophie et de la science dans les Carnets de prison de Gramsci. Alors que l'importance de la philosophie dans les écrits de prison de Gramsci continue de gagner en reconnaissance, l'importance de la science et de son rapport avec la philosophie est souvent négligée. Ces deux champs de recherche sont toutefois aussi important l'un que l'autre dans le projet réalisé par Gramsci lors de ses années passées en prison. La plus grande partie de cette thèse consiste en une analyse philologique détaillée de la version italienne complète des Carnets de prison établie par …  Read more

This thesis explores the relations between the Druze emir Fakhr al-Din II Ma'n and three successive Medici Grand Dukes between 1605 and 1633. Eschewing traditional historiographical concerns with the origins of Lebanese nationalism and the cultural encounter between East and West, I have sought first and above all to locate relations between this powerful emir and the Court of Tuscany within the broader context of Mediterranean history. I suggest that the actions of Fakhr al-Din and of the Medici Grand Dukes have to be understood in relation to broad, long-term trends in the economic and social history of the Mediterranean. …  Read more

This thesis pieces together the years of Jacques Ferron's intellectual development, from 1921 to 1949, through both biographical (contextualisation of the author's life) and institutional (emergence strategies and literary creations) approaches, and through an analysis of the autobiographical and of descriptions of childhood memories in his works. The first section focuses on the writer's childhood. Product of both the liberal bourgeoisie and of a rural society, Jacques Ferron inherits a certain mistrust regarding nationalism; however, born in an era where the elite had a great deal of influence over local culture, he is influenced by this trend. In the second …  Read more

Host immune programming is underpinned by an intricate interplay between the intestinal barrier and its resident organisms, including a vast conglomerate of microbes which form the microbiota. Commensal fungi constitute a frequently overlooked faction of the microbiota termed the mycobiota. Gut-dwelling fungi can drastically alter the intestinal immune landscape, augmenting the compositional and functional nature of its inhabitants. Enteric helminth infection introduces an additional organismal niche in the host-microbiota context, provoking a unique program of type 2 resistance balanced by immune tolerance, potentiated by both microbial and host factors which allow for persistent parasitism in the absence of overt pathogenicity …  Read more

The study of various aspects of the wilt diseases of plants which are caused by fungi inhabiting the vascular systems of the host plants has engaged the attention of a number of research workers for over half a century. Various theories have been proposed to explain the wilt symptoms in several species of plants, yet none can be considered to fully explain how the fungus in the vascular elements causes the plant to become diseased and die. The wilt disease caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. lycopersici (Sacc.) Snyder & Hansen is specific to the tomato, Lycopersicon app.  Read more

Hardware alone is insufficient to allow high-performance computer systems to become successful; sophisticated compilers are also required. Compilers for systems of this type will achieve their effectiveness, not from any single optimizing transformation, but from advanced program analysis and selective application of many proven code-improving transformations. One such analysis technique which holds promise, especially for FORTRAN-90 applications, is a collective analysis technique developed by Sarkar and Gao which uses graph coloring to determine whether a cluster of loops can be processed in a pipelined manner (SG91). The loop clusters we consider in this case are those consisting of loops which …  Read more

Lewis, Brian D A (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

La thèse principale de cette étude est qu'il existe d'autres façons d'orienter l'architecture en dehors des préoccupations technologiques. Par l'étude de la nature et les modifications aux machines architecturales dans l'histoire, leur réduction à des préoccupations instrumentales et esthétiques se révèle être problématique. Puisque la modernité, ces aspects ont dominé le domaine de l'architecture. Cependant, cette histoire montre aussi les limites et les possibilités de ces préoccupations technologiques. Mais le modernisme n'est pas homogène. Durant cette période, les œuvres littéraires et théâtrales d'Alfred Jarry et sa science de la pataphysique offre une approche profonde à s'engager et à résister à …  Read more

Raz, Amir (Supervisor1)  Read more

For millennia, magicians have amazed audiences and developed intuitions about the mind. More recently, scientists have started testing these intuitions to learn more about psychology. This thesis comprises two such studies on the psychology of magic. The first explores forcing, which occurs when a magician influences the audience's decisions without their awareness. To investigate the mechanisms behind this effect, we examined several stimulus and personality predictors. In Study 1, a magician flipped through a deck of playing cards while participants were asked to choose one. Although the magician could influence the choice almost every time (98%), relatively few (9%) noticed …  Read more

The thesis is a test of Eric Nordlinger's Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies. Nordlinger's theory of how communal conflicts are regulated puts emphasis on the ability of elites to overcome hostility at the nonelite level in order to voluntarily regulate communal conflict, among themselves. If there is structured elite predominance and political security of elites with respect to second-rank leaders, elites are able to act on conflict regulating motives in order to regulate conflict through six conflict regulating practices. An alternative model, which nuts emphasis on the issues and on nonelite characteristics, is presented. The theory is tested using case …  Read more

A quasi-geostrophic barotropic model, incorporating a planetary wave stabilization term, was integrated at the 500-mb level to obtain 12, 24, 36 and 48-hour height forecast charts. To achieve planetary wave stabilization, an approximation based on Phillips’ (1951) two-layer atmospheric model, was made to the horizontal divergence term. The integration was performed on the IBM 1410 computer located at McGill University. The calculations were done on a (49 x 38) rectangular, hemispheric grid network using initial 500-mb height data for February 15, 1959. The resulting forecast, for the particular day, showed a definite improvement over forecasts obtained with other barotropic models …  Read more

Barney, Darin (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

Neuroanatomy is one of the biological sciences. Its achievements are more or less valuable for any of the other branches of biology. But the first goal of neuroanatomy is to form a morphological basis for the neurobiological sciences. Neurobiology comprises the total of all problems related to the functioning of the nervous system. An incentive to study these problems springs from two sources. First, as has been expected, the understanding of the functioning of the nervous system may help to prevent and cure its diseases. Second, the nervous system has attracted the attention of all those who have been interested …  Read more

On calcule l’évolution des perturbations cosmologiques provenant d’une proposition récente de la théorie symétrique-Weyl de deux champs scalaires conformément couplé avec signe opposé à la théorie de gravité d’Einstein. La motivation provient de l’extension minimale conforme du Modèle Standard, tel que un des champs scalaire est le Higgs tandis que l’autre est une nouvelle particule, le dilaton, introduit afin de donner la masse de Higgs une symétrie conforme. Au niveau fondamental, la théorie admet des nouvelles solutions cosmologiques cycliques géodésiquement-complets caractérisé par une période bref de gravité répulsive, ou “anti gravité”, durant chaque transition successive d’un “Big Crunch” à un …  Read more

Elections---often to a considerable degree---influence the fiscal policies pursued by governments installed on the basis of their results. Nonetheless, government behaviour is typically modelled exogenously, usually by means of a benevolent, permanently installed "social planner." However, since fiscal policies, devised by democratically elected governments, complement the decentralised pricing system, which---as shown by Samuelson (1954)---is incapable of optimally allocating both private and public goods, the social-planner approach is viewed as being an unsatisfactory tool for the purpose of describing the political aspects of economic decisions. In the absence of a "first-best," Pareto-optimal tax system, fiscal policies are implemented as a result …  Read more

The existence of fungi capable of capturing and consuming microscopic animals has been known for approximately eighty years; however, it is only during the past three decades that this interesting group of fungi has received the critical attention of an increasing number of workers who are studying them from several aspects. During this period, which was inaugurated by Drechsler in the U.S.A., the range of morphological diversity of these fungi has received considerable attention; some work has been done on their distribution and degree of occurrence in various habitats; aspects of their biology have been studied and attempts have been …  Read more

La thèse examine les stratégies narratives employées par le roman américain contemporain en vue de critiquer et de contrecarrer la dynamique de la domination. L'étude se concentre principalement sur Middle Passage de Charles Johnson (1990), The Time of Our Singing (2003) de Richard Powers et Almanac of the Dead (1991) de Leslie Marmon Silko. Ces trois romans abordent les problèmes socio-politiques de répression et de discrimination raciale découlant des conditions préalables et de l'héritage de la domination coloniale et l'asservissement des Amérindiens et des Afro-Américains. Tandis que Johnson, Powers et Silko se rapportent à des moments historiques concrets, la critique …  Read more

When two physically unrelated stimuli become associated through learning, a response conditioned to one of them may also occur in the presence of the other. This phenomenon, known as mediated generalization, has became a useful method for studying meaning, certain types of learning, and other central processes. Most investigators of mediated generalization (see Osgood, 1953, for review} infer that same "generalizing" or "mediating" process links the two stimuli, and hence a response conditioned to one of them tends to become "linked" to the other by this process. A special case of mediated generalization occurs when the stimuli are words or …  Read more

According to Metheny (1965), people's impressions of the acceptability of sport for women varies across several factors, including culture and gender. In this study, 206 prospective physical education teachers from Canada and Kenya were questioned about their perceptions of gender appropriateness of various sports. They completed Likert-type questionnaires related to sport/physical activities found in their respective university curricula. For those sports that appeared in both countries, responses were compared (2 x 2 ANOVA) for effects of culture and gender. Gender differences were also addressed within each culture. Results revealed that Canadian respondents perceived fewer sports to be on the extremes …  Read more

Les systèmes multi-entrées multi-sorties (M‑MIMO) sont essentiels pour atteindre les débits élevés et la fiabilité exigés par les réseaux sans fil de prochaine génération. Toutefois, l’exploitation complète du potentiel du M‑MIMO est freinée par d’importants défis liés à la détection de symboles, notamment une complexité de calcul élevée et une dégradation des performances dans des conditions de fonctionnement réalistes et non idéales. Les détecteurs classiques souffrent souvent d’une complexité prohibitive ou s’appuient sur des hypothèses simplificatrices — canaux stationnaires, bruit blanc gaussien et connaissance parfaite de l’état du canal (CSI) — qui ne sont pas satisfaites en pratique. Cette thèse …  Read more

Vetta, Adrian Roshan (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Read more

The price of anarchy, a concept introduced by Koutsoupias and Papadimitriou [9], is the main topic of this thesis. It is a measure of the loss of efficiency that occurs when there is no central control over a system consisting of many "selfish" agents. We will be particularly interested in this in the context of network games, which can be used to model congestion in traffic and communication networks. After an introduction of the relevant concepts and review of related work, we proceed with the new results of this thesis. We provide a new upper bound for the price of …  Read more