McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 1989

The flexible partition, one of the main components of the flexible housing schemes in West European countries exhibited a comparative technological lack. This research investigated the adaptability of selected commercial flexible partitions available in the North American market to residences since the most realistic way to influence the technological process was to start from the known products and developing them in an innovative direction. The consequences of the proposed sectoral transfer were seen as immediate and long term effects and categorized into three groups of constraints: legal, technological and marketing constraints. The context of evaluation was drawn, and the performance …  Lire la suite

The myth of Circe and Odysseus has been told, interpreted and retold from Homer's time to the present. This thesis begins with a detailed study of Homer's balancing of positive and negative elements of the myth and argues that Homer's Circe is connected with age-old traditions of goddess worship, particularly of Artemis of Ephesus. Chapters III and IV investigate the cultural context in which the purely negative Circe of the Homeric allegorists developed and how this allegorical Circe affected works by other ancient writers, particularly Virgil and Ovid. Later chapters demonstrate how this negative allegorical view of Circe prevailed through …  Lire la suite

Postmodernism lives. It thrives, it beckons, and it torments. But it most definitely exists. Few critics can deny it, and that is perhaps the only point where most of them can agree. As Douwe Fokkema puts it, “Much to the embarrassment of the literary historian, the term postmodernism has become a household word even before there was time to establish its meaning." (vii). While some critics claim that it exists as an extension of modernism and others submit that it is an entirely new direction, very little consensus can be reached over the question of how exactly one gains membership …  Lire la suite

This study was designed as an investigation of the role of changes in muscle force and changes in muscle length on the EMG for the Tibialis Anterior (TA). Using surface electrodes we examined the EMG for 4 contraction levels at 5 ankle positions over 60$ sp circ$ of ankle rotation. The change in median frequency with muscle length identified a significant shift in the power spectrum to lower frequencies with increasing muscle length. To further investigate our results we performed three other experiments: First, using X-rays to identify the relative change in distance between two intramuscular wire electrodes we found …  Lire la suite

Two studies of voluntary movement in Parkinson's disease were carried out. In the first study, both parkinsonians and age-matched controls performed unconstrained prehensile movements in which subjects produced reaching and grasping (hand opening/closing) movements under varying conditions of movement amplitude, speed and object size. The act of prehension requires the intersegmental coordination of limb transport and grasp trajectories. Although parkinsonians were slower overall than controls, patients and controls similarly adjusted the spatial and temporal characteristics of their limb movement and grasp in response to changes in task demands. All groups showed increases in the speed of limb transport, the speed …  Lire la suite

The thesis presents an electrophysiological study on cat spinal motoneurons using the technique of intracellular recording and iontophoresis. It was demonstrated that underlying the action potential there are two major potassium currents, which differ from each other in their pharmacological properties. The action potential repolarization is largely mediated by a fast, calcium-independent potassium conductance, which is tetraethylammonium- and 4-aminopyridine-sensitive. While a slow, calcium-dependent potassium conductance generates the post-spike afterhyperpolarization, which is apamin-sensitive. The afterhyperpolarization markedly regulates the repetitive discharge of this motoneuron. 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) produces a relatively short-lasting depolarization and several long-lasting changes in the motoneuronal membrane properties, including potentiations …  Lire la suite

We define a Euclidean tree T = $(V,E)$ to be a weighted tree such that each edge $e in E$ has been assigned a positive integer weight l(e) called the length of e. A placement of T = $(V,E)$ is an assignment $f: V to { bf R} sp2$ (or R$ sp3$) of vertices to points in space satisfying the following: for each edge $e = (u,v) in E$, the Euclidean distance between f(u) and f(v) is equal to l(e). We define the EUCLIDEAN TREE PLACEMENT problem as follows. Given a Euclidean tree T = (V,E) and a subset of …  Lire la suite

Observations consist of n sample path segments each coming from one of mpossible point processes. The object is to classify each segment as having arisenfrom one of the m processes. The problem is an extension of the classical clusteringproblem where the classification is into groups having the same distribution. Poissonprocesses receive special attention so that the clusters consist of those samplepath segments with the same intensity. In the parametric case both Bayesian andmaximum likelihood methods are used to determine criteria for clustering while inthe non-parametric setting only the classification likelihood approach is employed.The methods are applied to a data set …  Lire la suite

Observations consist of n sample path segments each coming from one of m possible point processes. The object is to classify each segment as having arisen from one of the m processes. The problem is an extension of the classical clustering problem where the classification is into groups having the same distribution. Poisson processes receive special attention so that the clusters consist of those sample path segments with the same intensity. In the parametric case both Bayesian and maximum likelihood methods are used to determine criteria for clustering while in the non-parametric setting only the classification likelihood approach is employed. …  Lire la suite