McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par R

Kirkpatrick, Patricia (Internal/Supervisor)  Read more

The ‘bogus’ asylum seeker is an evocative figure in the UK political psyche, that both embodies the threat of illegal migration, and substantiates the necessity of immigration control policies aimed at deterrence. Fundamental to the political and social resonance of this figure is the notion that they are lying, making them antagonistic not just to the integrity of national borders, but to the fairness of the institution of asylum. Running parallel to this concept is the increasing illegalization of asylum in immigration policy, meaning that the ‘bogus’ asylum seeker is both revealed and reified by their illegality. However, as is …  Read more

Les embâcles de glace peuvent causer de nombreux problèmes, y compris des inondations, des dommages aux structures, interférence avec la navigation et des restrictions sur les opérations hydroélectriques. Leur coût annuel pour l'économie canadienne est estimé à presque 100 millions de dollars. Cette thèse étude l'application de la méthode de simulation numérique, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) pour les problèmes de glace en rivière. SPH est une méthode utilisée pour résoudre les problèmes de dynamique des fluides, dans laquelle le liquide est modélisé par un ensemble de particules. Cette méthode est particulièrement bien adaptée pour modéliser les écoulements à surfaces libres. …  Read more

The present study was undertaken with the hope that something further could be added to the question of cerebral localization of speech. To know the anatomical location of a lesion in a patient with a specified type of aphasia is of interest to the neurologist but in the majority of cases it is only a matter of interest, and does little to help the patient. To the neurosurgeon, in planning and executing an excision of cortex, it becomes a matter of paramount importance. He wants to know what areas can be removed without affecting speech, and if known speech areas …  Read more

La sur-utilisation et l'abus de la voix peuvent mener à des problèmes qui nécessitent des soins cliniques. Les forces dues à l'impact des cordes vocales durant leurs oscillations sont assumées être très importantes dans la formation et la propagation de lésions. Aucun lien direct n'a encore été établi entre les contraintes mécaniques associées à l'impact entre les cordes vocales et les problèmes pathologiques. Le but de cette étude est l'estimation des contraintes mécaniques dues à l'impact entre les cordes vocales lors de la phonation à l'aide d'une caméra vidéo-endoscopique. La vitesse en bordure des cordes vocales a été estimée à …  Read more

Although the Dominion Bureau of Statistics has conducted two surveys of the income, assets, and debt of Canadian non-farm families which are similar to those conducted for the United States by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan, there has been little analysis of their results. [...]  Read more

In Lactuca sativa, the dominant gene Tu confers resistance to infection by turnip mosaic virus (TuMV). Tu and Dm5/8, a gene for resistance to Bremia lactucae, are linked in L. sativa. The area surrounding Dm5/8 on the genetic map of L. sativa contains restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. The orientation of Tu relative to Dm5/8 was not known. Locating Tu would indicate which markers are on the map of lettuce close to Tu. To locate Tu on the L. sativa genetic map, F$ sb3$ families from recombinant F$ sb2$ in the Dm5/8 area …  Read more

Whitesides, Sue (Supervisor)  Read more

There can often be significant interactions between high and tropical latitudes during the Northern Hemisphere's cold season. In periods of amplified atmospheric flow, these interactions can lead to the poleward transport of significant tropical moisture from near Hawaii into northwestern North America. These are pineapple express (PE) events. This study documents the synoptic-scale signatures associated with the PE. A trajectory analysis was used to partition the events into three different synoptic types according to the origin of their trajectories. Results indicate that this large scale moisture transport is often associated with the sub-tropical jet stream, which is curved due to …  Read more

Conceptualizing the locality today in the global context means to be able to consider a level of denationalisation of the actor (of a locality) participating in a networked situation with actors from other localities. This thesis introduces a new conceptualization of the locality participating in a transnational network. The network, CEARENAD, involved six localities (Brazil, Chili, Costa-Rica, Senegal, Mauritius and Canada) who co-constructed contents for five years. This research is about presenting not a "mode d'emploi" about whether this particular network was successful or not. What truly motivated me, during and about this research, was to reflect on my observations …  Read more

Taylor, T.  Read more

Knowledge of the relationships between nitrogen fertilization and nitrogen availability is needed to guide plans for providing optimum tree growth by silvicultural operations. PART 1. Detailed studies of the mineralization of urea were made by laboratory incubation of black spruce humus samples. These studies form a part of an experiment in which urea is used for the first time to fertilize a soil supporting a black spruce stand. Urea seems to be a very good fertilizer because it is readily transformed to an available form of nitrogen. It is however doubtful that a nitrogen fertilization only could quickly and greatly …  Read more

The successful application of crop processing on pull-type forage harvesters requires engineering analysis and experimentation in areas such as roll design, particle aerodynamic, vibration, power measurement and crop physical characterization. The first step of this research project was to design, build and evaluate two processing rolls integrated in an experimental pull-type forage harvester. With a 12.7 mm theoretical length of cut setting, the processing rolls were used to treat alfalfa at a 1 mm clearance between the rolls. Samples analyzed at an animal research centre showed that processing increased the effective ruminal degradability of corn by 3% but did not …  Read more

Wet snow accumulating and shedding from overhead transmission lines can lead to a number of serviceability, safety and mechanical reliability issues. An innovative and inexpensive method to reproduce wet snow accretions on a cable in a controlled environment is explained. Wet snow sleeves were experimentally reproduced by using this technique to study their shedding mechanism. A numerical modeling technique using nonlinear finite element analysis is proposed to evaluate the dynamic response of an overhead cable subjected to any snow-shedding scenario. A time function is associated to the mass and weight of each snow element, which enables its virtual removal from …  Read more

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a professional requirement for occupational (OT) and physical therapists (PT). EBP is an approach to clinical decision-making (CDM) that combines the best available research evidence, clinical expertise, and patients’ preferences, within the context of available resources. Despite the anticipated benefits of EBP, engagement of OTs and PTs with the EBP process remains a challenge.Robust measurement practices are essential to determine if clinicians are engaging in the EBP process and to identify factors related to EBP that should be improved or maintained. The measurement of EBP can serve to better support clinicians and improve quality of care. …  Read more

The following information, as revealed in these studies, is claimed to be a contribution to knowledge. A bacterium and a fungus identified as a Pseudomonas sp. and a Penicillium sp. were isolated by the soil perfusion enrichment technique, and are able to utilize phloroglucinol as the sole carbon source in a medium containing various inorganic salts. [...]  Read more

La maladie d'Alzheimer (MA) est une maladie cérébrale irréversible et progressive qui endommage les structures synaptiques essentielles au bon maintien de la mémoire et de la fonction cognitive. Un effort international vise à découvrir le mécanisme moléculaire qui sous-tend la MA pour fournir un traitement, ou mieux encore, une prévention de la maladie. La bêta-amyloïde (Aβ), un dérivé clivé de la protéine précurseur amyloïde (APP), a été largement étudiée. Une hypothèse contemporaine suggère que les événements antérieurs de la maladie qui ont un impact sur le trafic et le traitement de l'APP peuvent être des cibles essentielles pour la thérapie. …  Read more

The grid point method commonly used in numerical calculations presents serious problems in experiments that require a global coverage of the meteorological variables. The shape of the earth and the form taken by the meteorological equations in a system where longitude and latitude are the basic coordinates, suggest the use of spherical harmonics for the horizontal specification of the variables. [...]  Read more

Cette etude avait pour but de repondre a trois questions au sujet du re-cadrage: 1-Que dit la litterature au sujet du cadre, concept a la baso du re­cadraec? Quels sont lea fondements theoriqu3s da chanw'ment de cadre implique dans le re-cadrage? Comment peut-on definir le re-cadrage au niveau conceptual? 2-Que dit la litterature au sU,iet de la technique de re-eadrage? Quels en sont les elements caracter~stiqucs? Comment cos elements du rc­cadI'age peuvcnt-ils etre utiUses en conSUltation matrimoniale, dans la situation triadique de 1 'entrevue?  Read more

This thesis is about the content and concerns of each of four disciplines pertaining to the field of bioethics: medicine, philosophy, religion and law. Emphasis is put on the human values each reflects in patients' lives. A last chapter is dedicated to patients' narrative in order to bring a practical perspective to the discussions of the previous chapters. The four essential human values interconnecting among the four disciplines are: the patients' need for authority, the need for protection, the existential questioning about the meaning of life, and the fear of death.  Read more

Quebec’s ambition is to become the “battery” of Northeast America, positioning itself as the leading supplier of clean energy through increased hydroelectricity exports. This ambition, however, is challenged on many fronts. Quebec’s ability to meet both domestic and export demand is empeded by competing federal objectives, such as extending Hydro-Quebec’s grid towards other domestic provinces, and concerns about water resource sufficiency. In this context, I examine in this thesis whether Canadian authorities can restrict hydroelectricity exports to prioritize domestic supply in accordance with international trade law, specifically under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994. By analyzing Article …  Read more

The objective of this study was to collect data on how much time the department chairs in Quebec public colleges spend on different administrative roles, identify the time they would like to spend on these administrative roles, clarify their perception of their role of department chair, and establish the conflicts and ambiguities inherent in the position of department chair. Department chairs spend 22 hours each week performing their different administrative roles but would like to increase the time to 25,4 hours per week in order to do a better job. Women chairs spend 23 hours and would like to spend …  Read more

Twelve inches models of a vertical-axis windmill using sailwings are tested in a wind tunnel. The maximum power coefficient is 15.3 % and the highest tip speed ratio is 1.6. The torque characteristics can be modified by varying the sailwings tension. Preliminary optimization of the solidity, blade chord and leading edge diameter is achieved. A computer program that facilitates the design is included. The wind mill seems suitable for use in under developed countries. It allows the possibility of reefing the sailwings during storms.  Read more

Consider the following problem: find the "best" approximating hyperplane for a family of points. The optimality of a solution may be determined according to different criteria. We present how to use computational geometry techniques to find a hyperplane minimizing the maximum distance to the points, a hyperplane minimizing the sum of the distances to the points or a hyperplane containing the maximum number of the points. Another important aspect of the data approximation problems is considered. In many applications, the data are not points but are represented by simple objects. For families of convex polygons, we present how to compute …  Read more

This thesis re-examines soft dilepton emission from a weakly coupled Quark-Gluon Plasma. It shows that Braaten, Pisarski, and Yuan's result, that the dilepton rate rises as 1/q40 (and the spectral weight scales as 1/q0) at small energy q0 ≪ gT is correct, but that the coefficient they found for this behavior is not correct, because their analysis was incomplete. At still smaller scales, the behavior moderates to ∝ 1/q20 for q0 ≲ g4T, consistent with a finite electrical conductivity. An evaluation of the spectral weight in the q0 ~ g4 T region by kinetic theory techniques is carried out. The …  Read more

In the past decades, autonomous on-orbit servicing has become a priority for the space industry. One important application is refueling and servicing of satellites. This type of operation requires a system capable of autonomously capturing the client satellite, which is a free-floating object. In this work, a robotic manipulator is used for the interception task. The latter is divided in two phases : the approach and the capture. In the first phase, the pose of the client is estimated and its future trajectory predicted from visual data through a Kalman filter. This information is combined with the robot motion time …  Read more

The El Nino phenomenon has a major impact over wide regions of the Pacific and possibly all over the world. The purpose of this thesis was to study its effects, specifically along the coast of British Columbia. An analysis of sea-surface temperature, sea-surface salinity and sea-level height was made with respect to El Nino events. Based on the results of that analysis, a model was developed. The model uses Kelvin wave dynamics, and can be used to predict the approximate time and magnitude of the sea-surface temperature anomaly created by an El Nino event. This prediction can be useful for …  Read more

The backdrop of this thesis is the theory of criminal liability of the superior in international criminal law. According to this theory, a superior, either belonging to the military or a civilian, may be found criminally liable because of crimes committed by his subordinates, if he failed to warn them or punish them after the fact. Recognized as valid ground for personal criminal liability since World War II, the theory of criminal liability of the superior was codified in the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court. In this Statute, negligence is an acceptable standard to find a military superior …  Read more

Human seminal plasma contains a protein factor that can inhibit the motility of both demembranated-reactivated and intact spermatozoa. This factor, named seminal plasma motility inhibitor (SPMI), was orignally isolated from seminal plasma and shown to orginate exclusively from the seminal vesicles, where its specific activity is 5- to 10-fold higher than it is in seminal plasma. The present study aimed at investigating the mechanism responsible for this difference in activity. Analysis of semen after ejaculation allowed to demonstrate that this difference in SPMI specific activity is due to the presence of a predominant 52 kDa SPMI precursor form in seminal …  Read more

La Paralysie Cérébrale (PC) est un ensemble de troubles neurologiques le plus commun chez les enfants avec divers déficits sensorimoteurs. Ces déficits influencent les mouvements d'atteinte et la capacité fonctionnelle et la participation sociale. L'utilisation des principes d'apprentissage moteur (répétition, sensation, feedback extrinsèque) modifiant l'exécution du mouvement peut améliorer les capacités fonctionnelles. Le feedback extrinsèque, information additionnelle fournie à l'individu pendant ou après la tâche à diverses fréquences et modalités (ex. visuelle et auditive), est suggéré pour améliorer l'apprentissage moteur chez les enfants avec la PC. Cependant, il y a un manque d'évidence scientifique et une absence de standardisation dans …  Read more

When Jacques Cartier the first white man to visit the island now known as Montreal came in 1535, he found the prosperous Indian village of Hochelaga with a population ot 1500. strangely enough, this population was made up ot "two different races, with different tastes, characters, and modes of living," the Senecas and the Wyandottes. Seventy years later Champ1ain visited the island which was then called "Minitik 8ten Entag 8 gibon" ("Island where there was a town") and found no traces ot the settlement. It had disappearedcompletely. Thirty-seven years later Maisonneuve, accompanied by seventeen companions founded the frontier colony of …  Read more

Dynamic forces were measured during skating directly on-ice using a Bauer One95 and a second One95 with a modified tendon guard and eyelet configuration (DROM). The intent was to determine if mechanical differences exist in push-off force and ankle kinematics between the two skates. The right skate of each type was instrumented with a calibrated force transducer system to measure medial-lateral and vertical forces during ice skating. In addition, a goniometer was installed about the ankle to measure kinematics during skating. The ten subjects executed three skills: forward skating and forward crossovers in both directions. The DROM skate demonstrated significant …  Read more

La classification de nœuds attribués est une tâche importante qui s’inscrit dansmultiples applications pratiques. Néanmoins, à l’instar de la majorité des méthodesd’apprentissage, l’utilisation de ces algorithmes nécessite la collecte d’une quantitéimportante d’étiquettes de données. Ce processus est souvent de longue durée et fastidieux. Afin the résoudre cette problématique, l’apprentissage actif est un domainede recherche qui tente de limiter le nombre d’étiquettes à collecter tout en maintenantla performance de l’algorithme en sélectionnant les plus informatives. Adopter uneapproche d’apprentissage actif s’avère alors une avenue prometteuse pour la classification semi-supervisée des nœuds de réseaux attribués. Pour cette raison, cette approche sera le sujet …  Read more

Learning a categorical distribution from its samples underlies many machine learning tasks, including categorical generative modeling and classification. A critical property of a learned distribution is its calibration which measures how well the predicted probabilities reflect the true distribution. Proper calibration is essential both for generative tasks, where underconfidence or overconfidence can lead to undesirable effects, and for classification with efficient inference, where reliable confidence estimates are needed for cost-aware adaptive computation. However, evaluating and learning calibrated models in the categorical setting is challenging: the support space is typically prohibitively large, ground-truth probabilities are inaccessible, and access to samples from …  Read more

The decline thesis proposes that political participation among young people has declined steadily and alarmingly since the 1960s. New research proposes that young people have not been simply abstaining from political participation but that they have been engaging in new or alternative forms of participation like demonstrating, signing petitions and expressing themselves politically in the market. This paper asks two questions---who are these alternative participators and what explains why they have turned to these new forms? The results indicate that young people engage with alternative forms of political participation more than they engage with more traditional forms like joining political …  Read more

Typically, drought occurs once every three years across the Canadian Prairies. Most research addressing such droughts has concentrated on the large scale conditions associated with this form of extreme weather whereas little research has been conducted on its smaller scale characteristics. The present research begins to address the latter issue. Several datasets (surface observations, drought indices, and re-analysis products) were used to identify and analyze the 11 most severe droughts occurring over the Prairies since 1953. Warm season hourly surface observations (temperature, moisture, clouds, and precipitation) from 10 observational sites were then compared for extreme drought, drought, non-drought, and extreme …  Read more

Les enfants avec troubles d'apprentissage (TA) et trouble de déficit d'attention avec ou sans hyperactivité (TDAH) ont parfois des perceptions de leurs compétences comme étant exagérées dans différents domaines dans lesquels ils ont des difficultés spécifiques. Pour élaborer à ce sujet, ce projet a comme objectif principal d'évaluer les perceptions de compétences dans les domaines scolaires de mathématiques et d'épellation sur un groupe de 60 adolescents dont 30 avec TA et 30 sans TA. Les adolescents avec TA ont surestimé leurs compétences en mathématique relativement à leur propre performance, mais ce résultat n'est pas réapparu lors des exercices d'épellation. De …  Read more

Students with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are an emerging clientele in post-secondary institutions, and may have difficulties with various academic skills. The risk and resilience framework can be applied to this population in order to discern what factors contribute to academic successes and difficulties. Stigma theory (Blaine, 2000; Goffman, 1963; Jones et al., 1984; Link & Phelan, 2001) will be used to investigate self-perceptions of stigma as a potential risk factor for university students with LD and ADHD. Proponents of stigma theory hypothesize that self-perceptions of stigma arise from the perceived association between one’s disability …  Read more

History is no longer an affair of battles and politics. The last century saw the growth of the idea that, local organization, economic development, and social customs, and their interrelation with political and other movements are most important in history. The field of social custom was opened up with a study of the most obvious element of society, the upper classes. The last century also saw the study of the Middle Ages emerge from the hazy misconceptions of the Romantic school, which had followed upon the contemptuous neglect of preceding generations. Now the scientific study of the customs of the …  Read more

Penfield, W. (Supervisor)  Read more

The stimulation records of these five hundred and seventy-five patients have been made by Professer Wilder Penfield and his associates in a most meticulous way. The case records, however, leave much to be desired as regards the aphasic (or, if one desires, dysphasic) disturbances. The cases personally observed have been used to determine the type of disturbance; only whether any disturbance is present or not is noted in the others. In 1946, Dr. Preston Robb summarized in his thesis the effect on speech of excising various cortical areas in some of these cases. He also began assisting Dr. Penfield in …  Read more