McGill University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 1997

The ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) and growth hormone (GH) genes are candidate genes for milk production traits in dairy cattle. In this study, the bovine ODC gene was cloned and characterized, followed by studies of genetic variations of the ODC and GH genes in Holsteins. A cDNA coding for bovine ODC was first isolated and analyzed. The clone (1758 bp) consists of 5’-and 3’-untranslated regions of 185 and 187 nucleotides, respectively, and an open reading frame of 1383 nucleotides encoding an ODC protein of 461 amino acids. Cloning and sequence analysis of the ODC genomic gene (9452 bp) revealed that the …  Lire la suite

The goal of Speech Understanding Systems (SUS) is to extract meanings from a sequence of hypothetical words generated by a speech recognizer. Recently SUSs tend to rely on robust matchers to perform this task. This thesis describes a new method using classification trees acting as a robust matcher for speech understanding. Classification trees are used as a learning method to learn rules automatically from training data. This thesis investigates uses of classification trees in speech system and some general algorithms applied on classification trees. The linguistic approach requires more human time because of the overhead associated with handling a large …  Lire la suite

New classes of monomers containing heterocyclic groups have been prepared in good yield from readily available compounds. The heterocyclic groups were phthalazinone, quirnazolinone, benzopyrenequinone and acridone. Bisphthalazinones, such as oxy-7-bis(1,2-dihydro-4-phenylphthalazinone) were reacted with a series of activated aryl halides to give high molecular weight novel poly(phthalazinone)s in a one-step reaction involving the formation of a N-C bond. A series of novel quinazolinone containing monomers synthesized for nucleophilic aromatic displacement polymerization reactions, bisphenols and activated difluorides, were unstable under the polymerization conditions. Only low molecular weight oligomers were formed. Two new quinazolinone diamines, oxy-bis(1,4-phenylene)-bis[3-(4-aminophenyl)-1-oxo-quinazolin-2-yl] and 2-(4-aminophenyl)-3-amino-4-quinazolinone were synthesized. They did not …  Lire la suite

For centuries human society has relied on coal as a principal source of fuel for heat and power. Extraction of this valuable fuel has always been influenced by control over hazards such as water inflows and potentially explosive dust and methane gas. A major focus of the research has been on methane including: methane properties of seams, insitu and laboratory testing; methane emissions; investigation of operational issues (e. g. Phalen 7 East); and refinement of prediction models. This thesis gives an overview of methane and ventilation research covering the following aspects: Defining coal seam characteristics: specific emissions---the relationship between methane …  Lire la suite

In recent years the advantages provided by modular hip implants have been overshadowed by reports suggesting that the junction between modular components is susceptible to fretting wear and fretting corrosion. Although the fracture resistance and locking strength of the junction do not appear to be at risk, the particulate debris generated and released into the joint space may elicit adverse biologic reactions that could eventually compromise fixation of the implant in the bone. It is hypothesized that improving the mechanical linkage between modular hip implant components connected via a Morse taper may mitigate the adverse effects of fretting. Three design …  Lire la suite

De récentes études de clonage moléculaire ont permis d’identifier plusieurs isoformes de l’échangeur Na+IH+ (NHE). Le but de ma recherche était de caractériser et comparer certaines propriétés ayant trait à la fonction de même qu’à la régulation de divers membres de cette famille de gènes. Pour faciliter la comparaison des différentes propriétés, une lignée cellulaire mutante d’ovaires de hamsters chinois (cellules AP-l), déficiente en activité endogène d’échange Na+m+, a été utilisée. [...]  Lire la suite

Colletotrichum coccodes is being developed as a bioherbicide to control velvetleaf. An effective and economic process for mass production of C. coccodes sports is required for its possible development as a bioherbicide. A modified Richard's solution containing V-8 juice has been used to produce C. coccodes spores in shake flasks. However, V-8 juice is not available as a bulk commodity and is too expensive for commercial production of a bioherbicide. Soy protein and casamino acids were equal to and can replace V-8 juice for sporulation of C. coccodes . Using the Plackett-Burman experimental design, the effect of the various components …  Lire la suite

In vitro studies will contribute significantly to an understanding of cell growth and differentiation in the adult pancreas. This thesis reports on the changes occurring when acinar cells, terminal ducts and islets are grown in culture. A number of methods for adult pancreatic duct epithelial isolation and culture from different species have been reported. However, there are no reliable methods for the large scale isolation and culture of the terminal segments of the pancreatic duct system. Acinar fragments of the hamster pancreas are isolated by partial digestion with collagenase. Culture is achieved by embedding in a matrix of rat-tail collagen …  Lire la suite

Throughout history the concept of a "mall" has manifested itself in various forms. Malls provided once and continue to provide an opportunity for ostentation and observation in a constructed environment. Ranelagh Gardens is an example of such an environment. It is an Eighteenth Century London pleasure garden devoted exclusively to the acts of exhibiting one's self and beholding others, a sort of celebratory act of mutual affirmation. These gardens were frequented by various elements of London society, from royalty to the middle class. All sorts of boundaries were further blurred through the ritual of the masquerade, which flourished at Ranelagh. …  Lire la suite

Waters from normal larvae of Aedes aegypti (L.) are highly attractive to ovipositing conspecific females, whereas waters from larvae infected with the entomopathogenic digenean parasite, Plagiorechis elegans Rudolphi, are rendered strongly repellent. The production of the repellent appears to be mediated by the degree of environmentally induced stress experienced by the larvae. Whereas waters from fully fed larvae were highly attractive as an oviposition site, these were rendered progressively less attractive, and eventually strongly repellent as the larvae were deprived of food over a period of 7 days. Crowding of the larvae elicited similar repellent effects as did close contact …  Lire la suite

A variable air-volume, parallel-plate, extrapolation chamber forming an integral part of a Solid-WaterTM phantom was built to determine the absorbed dose in Solid-WaterTM directly. The sensitive air-volume of the extrapolation chamber is controlled through the movement of the chamber piston by means of a micrometer mounted to the phantom body. The relative displacement of the piston is monitored by a mechanical distance travel indicator with a precision on the order of 0.002 mm. Irradiations were carried out with cobalt-60 gamma. rays, x-ray beams ranging from 4 to 18 MV, and electron beams between 6 and 22 MeV. The absorbed dose …  Lire la suite

The purpose of this study has been to specify and estimate a complete demand system for fresh fruits in Canada. The Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) is used as the functional form to accomplish the purpose of this study. Fresh fruit was assumed to be weakly separable from all other goods at the first stage of the budgeting process and a conditional demand analysis for fresh fruit was carried out at the second stage of the budgeting process, treating total expenditure as an exogenous variable. At the second stage, expenditure on fresh fruit is allocated to five groups: apples, bananas, …  Lire la suite

The purposes of this study were to determine if (1) RE is adversely affected by intense interval bouts of 10 x 400-m, and (2) if there is an interaction effect between RE and recovery duration during the workouts. Twelve highly trained male runners (VO$ rm sb{2max} = 72.5 pm 4.3 ml cdot kg sp{-1} cdot min sp{-1}$) performed 3 interval workouts of 10 x 400-m with a minimum of 4 days between runs. Recovery between repetitions was randomly assigned at 60, 120 or 180 s. The velocity for each 400-m run was determined from a treadmill VO$ rm sb{2max}$ test. …  Lire la suite

Cotler, Irwin (Supervisor)  Lire la suite

We use Nonrelativistic Quantum Electrodynamics (NRQED) as an effective field theory to calculate the single photon annihilation contribution to the positronium hyperfine splitting (HFS) in its ground state at order Oa6 . Our analytical result completes the hyperfine splitting calculation to order mea6 . Using NRQED, we derive the Lamb shift of a scalar-scalar bound state and Oa5 hyperfine splitting of positronium for a general excited state. Using the same technique, we also rederive the Lamb shift of Hydrogen atom and Oa5 HFS of positronium in its ground state.  Lire la suite

Mouse genome mapping is an essential integrating part of the human genome project because mouse has long been a valuable animal model for the investigate human genetic diseases. However, application of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in mouse has been hindered by technical difficulties related to the characteristics of mouse cytogenetics. To implement FISH as a tool for the mouse genome project, we developed high-resolution FISH and applied it to mouse and comparative genetics. Using an original technique, we obtained high-resolution replication R-banded mouse chromosomes (over 500 bands per haploid). We constructed a new high-resolution R-banding idiogram, for an easier …  Lire la suite

Maltose Binding Protein (MBP) of Escherichia Coli, a kind of periplasmic protein, can bind its ligands interacting predominantly either with their anomeric end (end-on binding) or with the middle of the maltodextrin chain (middle binding). Using NMR spectroscopy, we have studied the modes by which maltose, linear maltodextrin and some derivatives like $ beta$-cyclodextrin bind to MBP. 1D proton difference spectra and 2D HSQC proton-nitrogen correlation spectra were acquired of MBP in the presence of different ligands. Spectra with linear maltodextrins showed many common features and were distinctly different from those of MBP with $ beta$-cyclodextrin. 2D HSQC spectra suggest …  Lire la suite

In this thesis, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition for Lp boundedness of a class of oscillatory integrals with Calderon-Zygmund (C-Z) Kernel and establish weighted norm inequalities for them. We also prove some weighted norm inequalities for a class of oscillatory integrals with rough kernel. Finally, we discuss the question of the sharpness of certain weighted weak type inequalities for standard C-Z operators.  Lire la suite

Sludge combustion experiments were performed using a computer-controlled thermogravimeteric system. Microscopy and spectometry techniques were used to determine ash morphologies and structures, metals distribution inside ash particles and leachability of toxic metals from ash. Parameters examined included temperature, residence time, heating rate and cooling rate. The combustion process consisted of four stages: initial burning, transition, sintering and melting. It was found that temperature has the greatest effect on ash morphologies and metals distribution in the ash particle. It was observed that light metals predominated in the surface layers of the ash particle while heavy metals were mostly partitioned in the …  Lire la suite

Prolactin receptor (PRLR) is a membrane anchored protein mediating the biological actions of prolactin. The turkey PRLR (tPRLR) cDNA was isolated and characterized. The open reading frame (ORF) of tPRLR predicted 831 amino acid residues composed of a signal peptide, an extracellular domain (ECD), a single transmembrane domain and an intracellular domain. The deduced amino acid sequence of the turkey prolactin receptor is 53.8%, 51.7%, 49.8%, 49.8%, 80.3% and 89.91% identical to that of the rabbit bovine, human, long form of the rat, pigeon and chicken PRLRs, respectively. The extracellular domain contains two homologous repeat units with 63% amino acid …  Lire la suite

Wolfson, D. (Supervisor)  Lire la suite

This thesis presents a computerized nursing workload management system developed as part of the Patient Data Management System (PDMS) for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Montreal Children's Hospital. The objective of the Nursing Workload Management System (NWMS) is primarily to reduce the workload of nursing staff by automating the preparation of nursing care plans, generating schedules for the tasks in the plan of care, and providing an audit trail facility to annotate the care delivered to a patient. The thesis begins with a literature review of contemporary computerized medical information systems followed by an overview of the PDMS. …  Lire la suite

Injured adult mammalian cardiac muscle does not respond with significant regeneration. Skeletal muscle, on the other hand, has an efficient regeneration mechanism attributable to myogenic stem (satellite) cells. This study investigated a hypothesis which states that skeletal muscle satellite cells (SCs), if grafted into an injured heart, can form muscle tissue and repair the damaged myocardium. In the first study SCs obtained from 28 dogs were isolated, purified and cultured. Percoll density gradient and preplating methods for the purification of SC culture were investigated. Beta-galactosidase ($ beta$-Gal) labelled SCs underwent autografting into acutely cryoinjured myocardium. Three control dogs received only …  Lire la suite

This thesis is devoted to an unsuccessful mission to Sofia undertaken in the fall of 1914 by Noel Buxton, a Liberal British M.P., who aimed to win Bulgaria over to the side of the Triple Entente. Although referred to on occasion in works having to do with the conduct of British foreign policy during the First World War, the affair has never before been described in full. Through a close examination of hitherto unexploited material from Buxton's own archive, it has been possible to reconstruct the evolution of the mission, analyze its contemporary significance, and suggest its relevance to current …  Lire la suite

During the first half of the XVIIIth century in Russia, deep social and cultural changes led to a chaotic linguistic situation. The Russian scholar Michail Lomonosov played a key role in the grammatical and lexical organization of the Russian literary language around the middle of the century. His contributions are reviewed and their importance analyzed in the present thesis. Chapter One provides an analysis of the linguistic situation during the first half of the XVIIIth century. The role and the functions of different linguistic elements are examined, including West European lexical borrowings, the native Russian, the Church Slavonic, and their …  Lire la suite

The effect of multisensory integration in the blind field of hemispherectomy patients was investigated in order to examine the possible involvement of the superior colliculus in blindsight. The superior colliculus may be responsible for residual abilities in the blind field because of its predominant subsidiary visual connections with the retina. Ten normal subjects and four patients with a temporal lobe removal served as controls for four experimental subjects (two hemispherectomized and two partial hemispherectomized). The experiment tested three tasks that measured reaction time and localization accuracy: (1) visual target only; (2) auditory target only; (3) simultaneous auditory and visual (aud/vis) …  Lire la suite

DNA was immobilized within alginate gels using either the emulsification/internal gelation or external gelation/droplet formation technique. Microspheres were coated with chitosan or poly-L-lysine membrane materials. The membrane coated alginate-DNA microspheres were examined under the light microscope. The thickness of both chitosan and poly-L-lysine membranes was measured, with chitosan forming a thicker membrane. The thickness of the chitosan membranes ranged from 30 $ mu$m to 50 $ mu$m, while that of the poly-L-lysine membranes ranged from 3 $ mu$m to 13 $ mu$m. Factors affecting the thickness of poly-L-lysine membranes included: the concentration of alginate, poly-L-lysine and calcium chloride, treatment time …  Lire la suite

La théorie des fonctions locales de corrélation a été analysée dans le contexte de la théorie de la fonctionelle de la densité, et a été comparée avec la theéorie g-Hartree, avec quelle elle est en relation. Toutes les deux théories ont été montrées être en rapport avec les théories d’échange généralisée de la densité locale de spin, lesquelles ont été étendues, par l’introduction des nouveaux facteurs de corrélation qui dépendent des orbitales, donnant, par conséquant, comme une alternative, la théorie de corrélation locale de la densité de spin. Une nouvelle méthode pour le problème de la corrélation électronique a été …  Lire la suite

In this research, initial studies were done to determine the effect of various methods of presentation involving chemical preservatives, water activity ($ rm a sb{w}$), and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) on mold growth in an agar model system. Results showed that preservatives could completely inhibit mold growth for 2-40d depending on concentration and pH used. Gas packaging (60% or 80% CO$ sb2$), oxygen absorbents, alone or in combination with potassium sorbate, could also inhibit mold growth for $>$40d at ambient storage temperature using a Response Surface Methodology (RSM) approach. The effects of various methods of applying potassium sorbate into pizza …  Lire la suite