McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par B

Congeneric species occupying different habitats might be expected to have different seed dormancy strategies and germination requirements while those growing in the same habitats may be more similar. I tested this hypothesis with a broad survey of the germination of 51 Carex species from mesic deciduous forests, wet deciduous forests, and wetland or seasonally flooded areas in response to different controlled environmental conditions. A canonical discriminant analysis based on the responses of 29 species to various treatments showed clear differences among seeds from each habitat with respect to germination behaviour. Germination of seeds from mesic deciduous forest species was generally …  Lire la suite

An analysis of the characteristics of cross-cultural disputes leads to principles upon which the resolution of these disputes should be based. These principles are: having the primary goal of creation and maintenance of long-term working relationships, accounting for the parties affected, addressing the whole dispute, building trust, and undertaking empathic dialogue. We can look at existing dispute resolution mechanisms and determine the extent to which the principles of cross-cultural dispute resolution can be incorporated, given the particular structure of a form of legal decision-making. Using the Yukon land claim negotiations as an example, the principles for cross-cultural dispute resolution can …  Lire la suite

Douglas, W. J. M. (Supervisor)  Lire la suite

During lactation, control of the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is adjusted in that tonically elevated glucocorticoid secretion is observed concurrently with blunted ACTH secretion following exposure to various stressors. Although a decline in the level of CRF mRNA has been reported in neurons of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) known to control ACTH secretion, the mechanisms underlying stress hyporesponsiveness during lactation are still largely unknown, In these studies we tested the hypothesis that pituitary responsiveness to secretagogues was altered and that central noradrenergic (NA) inputs to hypothalamic CRF neurons were modified during lactation in the rat. First, at the …  Lire la suite

This thesis describes the development of a high-performance Pulsed High-Voltage Atmospheric Pressure Ion Source for coupling a mass spectrometry system with an HPLC system. This novelty of the design resides in a modified electrospray system, which in addition to its normal DC operation, provides high-voltage of up to 30kV on the capillary by introducing high-voltage pulsing, the Pulsed High-Voltage API is predicted to allow a higher liquid throughput and a reduction in background contamination while maintaining an efficient ionization of the molecules under investigation. The Pulsed High-Voltage API is expected to have possible gains in sensitivity, versatility, and reliability of …  Lire la suite

Tenenhouse, Susie (Supervisor)  Lire la suite

Doors That Lead to Doors est une œuvre musicale écrite pour grand orchestre à vent. La pièce se concerne avec la fonctionnalité hiérarchique qui résulte de l’interaction entre éléments musicaux dans un contexte donné. L’orchestre se divise en quatre groupes différents, dont chacun est assigné sa propre musique unique. La cohérence de l’instrumentation aide à établir des liens entre le timbre et le geste musicale pour faire en sorte que chaque geste n’apparaisse que dans le cadre d’un timbre spécifique. Par l’utilisation de telles contraintes structurelles, la pièce sert à enquêter les processus cognitifs de l’écoute et de l’apprentissage à …  Lire la suite

Robert Wisnovsky (Internal/Supervisor)  Lire la suite

The behaviours of eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus) in response to aerial predators were studied in the field using trained kestrels (Falco sparverius) flying over a food patch where animals of known gender, age and burrow location categories were foraging. Their typical response was to flee toward a nearby refuge while producing a trill. After a few seconds, chipmunks usually emerged and started to produce long (but sometimes interrupted) series of chucks while facing the predator. Acoustical analysis showed that the trill consisted of a rapid series of usually high pitched and variable notes while most chucks consisted of two partially …  Lire la suite

Les réactions tandem sont des réactions multiples qui se produisent de façon consécutive dans un seul milieu réactionnel. Le produit de chaque réaction est en fait un réactif pour la réaction suivante. Par le biais des réactions tandem, il est possible d'accéder à des molécules complexes en une seule étape synthétique. Comme elle représente un gain significatif en termes d'efficacité et d'économie synthétique, ce type de réaction représente une approche environnementalement durable pour la préparation de molécules complexes à partir de simples précurseurs.Le but de cette thèse consiste à augmenter la complexité de la réaction tandem entre les aldéhydes, les …  Lire la suite

The function of CABP1, a novel cAMP-binding protein in Dictyostelium discoideum, has been investigated. Previously, it has been shown that the molecular weight of CABP1 varies in different strains and that this variation is correlated with differences in response to cAMP. Sequence analysis showed that compared to its counterpart in strain AX2, the gene encoding CABP1 of strain V12M2 is missing 27 bp. AX2 transformants expressing the capA gene of V12M2 exhibited no change in phenotype, suggesting that CABP1 is not involved in the features examined or that the V12M2 variant is recessive. Disruption of capA by homologous recombination was …  Lire la suite

While the impact of forage quality on dairy-milk production is clear, much work to date on such relationships as digestibility, fermentation characteristics and nutritional constituents with milk yield and composition have not easily been transferred to producers, given the complexity of analytical tests as well as their interpretation. With the growing interest in the field of precision dairy farming, the objective of this research was to provide better interpretability of the relationship between silage quality and milk production by performing an in-depth machine learning data analysis of forage variables such as digestibility, fermentation characteristics, and nutritional constituents. Dairy production and …  Lire la suite

Bessie Head's fiction reflects the author's consciousness of power as the definitive force in the South African context. By considering Head as a social realist, the thesis relates sociological evidence to authorial interest and demonstrates Head's treatment of the power issue in her three novels, When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. Biographical data, particularly Head's unique, though socially marginal position as a political exile, a Coloured, and a woman are also applied. The thesis covers three areas--politics, race, and gender. The first explores the nature of power in South African politics within the time-frame of the …  Lire la suite

In the present thesis, the results of three studies aimed at further elucidating the mechanisms by which anesthetic agents suppress consciousness are reported. The first study contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which propofol, a commonly used intravenous anesthetic agent, can affect cerebral structures involved in the processing of vibrotactile information. Using positron emission tomography (PET), we demonstrated that propofol interferes with the processing of vibrotactile information first at the level of the cortex before attenuating its transfer through the thalamus. The second study validates the bispectral index (BIS) of the electroencephalogram and the auditory steady-state response …  Lire la suite

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is often associated with malabsorption due to pancreatic insufficiency. The maintenance of a normal body mass index (BMI) is associated with better pulmonary function (FEV1) and survival. However, as major advancements in respiratory therapies and nutritional optimization continue to optimize the health of patients with CF, there is an emerging sub-population with excessive and/or rapid weight gain in some patients. The long term complications of obesity in this population have not been well characterized to date. For this work, baseline data from 290 adult patients with CF from the Montréal CF Cohort were collected. Observational follow-up data …  Lire la suite

A new ethical medical dilemma concerns the use of hormone-blockers or medications that put puberty on hold in the care of transgender/transsexual (TG/TS) adolescents. These medications are taken until she is old enough to legally consent to cross-sex hormones. Such individuals are often "invisible" in clinical medicine because of a lack of knowledge and research concerning TG/TS. Using Emmanuel and Emmanuel's preferred decision-making patient-physician relationship, I critique clinical medicine's (1) inadequacy of clinical knowledge regarding TG/TS and hormone-blocker therapy, (2) misunderstanding of the health-related values of the TG/TS adolescent, and (3) lack of appreciation of her autonomy. Despite a problematic …  Lire la suite

Le dépistage néonatal (DNN) est une stratégie de santé publique qui permet d'identifier les nouveau-nés asymptomatiques susceptibles de développer certaines maladies. Les programmes de dépistage néonatal sont offerts dans la plupart des pays et ont amplement bénéficié aux nouveau-nés et à leurs familles, car la détection précoce des maladies permet de mettre en place des traitements et des plans d'action qui améliorent la qualité de vie et même sauvent la vie des enfants. La baisse des coûts et l’évolution technologique du séquençage du génome entier (WGS) ont suscité un regain d'intérêt pour sa mise en œuvre dans les programmes de …  Lire la suite

Dans la plupart des secteurs de politiques publiques, où la réglementation est censée assurer transparence et responsabilisation, il est reconnu que l'évaluation est nécessaire. Le secteur de la radiodiffusion n'est pas différent. Toutefois, de récents rapports plaident sans cesse en faveur d'une nouvelle approche pour évaluer le système de radiodiffusion et ses politiques non seulement parce que les politiques et programmes du Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes (CRTC) sont inadéquats, mais aussi, car les systèmes d'évaluations antérieurs sont périmés et de nouvelles méthodologies devraient être adoptées. La preuve est fournie par les multiples articles et témoignages dans …  Lire la suite

I studied two aspects of the ecology of amphibians in southwestern Quebec, an area characterized by a mosaic of small forests interspersed by cultivated land and by the presence of rare species at the northern limits of their distribution. One aim was to determine how forest age after clearcutting affected woodland amphibians. Path analysis was used to compare different causal effects of forest age on Plethodon cinereus density in 22 deciduous forests of 30, 60 and $>$90 years old. Repopulation of Plethodon followed forest litter recovery, 30 to 60 years after clearcutting. However, the effect of forest age was overridden …  Lire la suite

La musique apparaît dans l'esprit de l'auditeur sous une forme distincte. La littérature scientifique actuelle sur la perception de la musique considère généralement l'expérience subjective de la forme musicale comme une représentation psychologique d'un événement stimulant d'origine. Mais dans l'acte de création musicale, cette relation est inversée : les objets d'art musical (matériaux) sont considérés comme des représentations physiques des formes abstraites (images musicales) initialement conçues par le créateur (par exemple, compositeur, improvisateur, interprète). En combinant ces perspectives diamétrales d'art musical et de science musicale, les images psychologiques et les matériaux physiques sont considérés comme liés par une confluence dynamique …  Lire la suite

The Victorian Age was essentially one of demolition and reconstruction. The land of the old regime, controlled by an oligarchical aristocracy, slowly adjusted itself to the democratic and socialistic ideas growing out of the Industrial System. The land of an inactive and rather dull religion awoke from its torpid prayers to question the values of old and new doctrines in religion and in science. To this subversion of the old order and the formation of the new, the poets of the Age contributed their part. Some were content to destroy alone, some to destroy and rebuild in part only, but …  Lire la suite

This thesis examines the institutionalization and practice of literary historiography in Republican China through the writings of Zheng Zhenduo (1898-1956). On the basis of a careful reading of Zheng's three book-length histories of Chinese and world literature, written from the early 1920s to late 1930s, the thesis questions the characterization of Republican literary historical scholarship as simply iconoclastic (vis-a-vis Chinese tradition) or derivative (vis-a-vis the West). It shows that Zheng's literary historiography was actually comprised of multiple and sometimes contradictory approaches to the past. These approaches were shaped, on the one hand, by the demands of a professional discipline that …  Lire la suite

A number of T-cell membrane molecules influence the outcome of antigen recognition by TCR/CD3 complex. CD4, by virtue of its non-covalent association with the protein tyrosine kinase lck has the capacity to enhance TCR$ alpha beta$ signalling. The extracellular domain of CD4 interacts with monomorphic determinants of Major Histocompatibility complex class-II molecules such that antigen presented in association with MHC class-II to CD4$ sp+$ T-cells results in the coaggregation of CD4 and TCR/CD3, thus juxtaposing lck and the antigen-receptor complex. Anti-CD4 antibodies abrogate both antigen and anti-TCR-induced T-cell activation. Studies using antigen specific T-cell clones that express either no CD4, …  Lire la suite

Regulation of eucaryotic protein synthesis was studied by three different approaches. One of these studies focused on the regulation of mRNA translation in poliovirus infected cells. Evidence indicated that proteolysis of the p220 component of the CBP complex was not sufficient to obtain complete inhibition of host cell protein synthesis after poliovirus infection. This suggested the existence of an additional viral function in order to achieve the full inhibition of cellular mRNA translation observed after infection. The effect of viral infection on host protein synthesis and, in particular, on mRNA association with the cytoskeleton was also investigated. Results indicated that …  Lire la suite

This dissertation investigates the structure of Internally Headed Relative Clauses (henceforth, IHRCs) within the framework of Government and Binding Theory. I propose that the structure of IHRCs involves a modifying clause predicted of a head. We provide empirical as well as conceptual arguments showing that the head of an IHRC is a pro licensed by coindexation with the internal head. Following Safir's (1986) LCR, this licensing must be mediated by A$ sp prime$-Binding, which is effected by operator-movement to COMP within the modifying clause. Island Constraints provide evidence for operator-movement in IHRCs. IHRCs pattern with other Wh-constructions in this way. …  Lire la suite

Burack, Jacob A. (Internal/Supervisor)  Lire la suite

Il a été démontré, antérieurement, que l'eau saline pouvait être utilisée pour l'irrigation souterraine à long terme, à condition que les sels accumulés dans le sol puissant être lessives par la pluie, l'eau de la fonte des neiges ou de l'eau d'irrigation douce. Une méthode de réflectométrie temporelle (TDR) a été utilisée pour suivre les mouvements des sels et de I' eau dans des colonnes de sols, en laboratoire, qui étaient soumises à des cycles alternés d'irrigation souterraine avec de l'eau de qualité variable, et de lessivage avec de l'eau distillée après chaque périodes d'irrigation. Les résultats ont montré que …  Lire la suite

Recent trends in emerging and re-emerging human infectious disease indicate that zoonotic diseases are on the rise (e.g., SARS, Swine Flu, Bird flu, Ebola, and Lyme disease), creating large economic and social costs. The increasingly dominant role that humans are playing in changing the environment is thought to be a leading cause for this increasing emergence. In this dissertation, I investigated the effects of landscape level changes on a specific host parasite system: red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus) and gastrointestinal nematode parasites within Kibale National Park, Uganda landscape. I first quantified the variation in forest recovery in the region and their …  Lire la suite

Chapman, Colin Austin (Supervisor2)  Lire la suite

Chudasama, Yogita (Internal/Supervisor)  Lire la suite

Ivan Vasilyevich Kireevsky (1806-1856) was one of a whole generation of Russian litterateurs who made it their business to develop new genres on the foundations laid by Russia's literary pioneers. In 1827 Kireevsky declared his intention of giving his own direction to Russian letters through criticism, a genre he helped create in Russia. The working out of the principal attributes of the narodnost' conceptual variable, key to his time, is a constant in all his articles. Also pervasive are his several professional deficiencies. These did not hinder his contemporaries' true and often stated appreciation of his contribution but for the …  Lire la suite

Wetlands exchange significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4)---two major greenhouse gases (GHG), and thus have significant impacts on the Earth's climate. In this study, fluxes of CO2 and CH4 were measured in a cattail-dominated marsh in Eastern Ontario, Canada. Eddy covariance measurements of net ecosystem CO2 exchange (NEE) revealed that the marsh was an annual sink of 264 g C m-2, and that growing season net CO2 fluxes were strongly correlated with vegetation biomass and leaf area index. Fluxes of CH4 were measured from water, soil and plants using closed chambers and resulted in a net annual …  Lire la suite

The present thesis studies the representations of the idea of progress within nineteen of Jules Verne's novels, written between 1864 and 1904. It aims at demonstrating that Verne's writing and the topics favored therein constitute an account of the opinions prevailing during the second half of the XIX$ sp{ rm th}$ century. Following an examination of the changes brought by scientific discoveries and their technical applications in French society, as well as of the fears arising from the speedy material progress, it picks out the images that allow the author of the Voyages extraordinaires and the creator of the "scientific …  Lire la suite

Ma thèse examine les mécanismes qui entrent en jeu dans le processus d'intégration des populations des hauts plateaux du nord du Vietnam (Province de Lào Cai) à l'économie de marché. Je démontre que les initiatives et les innovations individuelles, l'État ainsi que les forces du marché concourent à la création des marchés de montagne ou à leur adaptation à des conjonctures nouvelles. Je rappelle et je critique l'agenda de l'État vietnamien dans les hauts plateaux de même que ses politiques concernant les relations ethniques, les pratiques culturelles, les conditions et moyens de subsistance des populations montagnardes, les marchés de montagne …  Lire la suite

This work attempts to examine the relevance of the conceptual opposition between modernity and postmodernity on the basis of a typological analysis of the modes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity which are implicated in the integration and the reproduction of a given form of society. We first show that traditional societies rest on concrete and particular modes of personal identity and of mutual recognition, which are integrated together within a common culture, whereas modern societies rest on an abstraction and universalization of forms societally legitimized of subjective identity and of intersubjective recognition. These we propose to designate by the concept of …  Lire la suite

An estimated 60 tonnes of mercury, released from a chlor-alkali plant between 1947 and 1976, are buried in the sediments of the Saguenay Fjord. Despite rapid sedimentation rates, concentrations of Hg in surficial sediments remain well above preindustrial levels. The partitioning of Hg among sedimentary solids was investigated to elucidate the fate of buried mercury and determine the source of contamination in surficial sediments. Box cores from two stations along the axis of the Saguenay Fjord (SAG-6B, SAG-30B) and one from the Laurentian Trough (CL-1B) were collected in June, 1992. A sequential extraction protocol modified from existing techniques was tailored …  Lire la suite

Li, Jianyu (Supervisor2)  Lire la suite

Globalization has had two major implications for national merger control regimes: national competition authorities are called more and more to examine transactions with cross-border dimensions and secondly, domestic business practices may be scrutinized by foreign nations. In light of this, divergent substantive standards have become a source of international friction, notably between the two most mature merger control regimes, the European Union and the United States. Facing this new reality, it has become clear that some sort of international arrangement will be needed in order to reduce the inefficiencies created by multijurisdictional review. Various proposals have been made, ranging from …  Lire la suite

The goal of this thesis is to determine the fatigue life of piezoelectric energy harvesters. The harvester is a cantilever beam made from the piezoelectric ceramic lead zirconate titanate (PZT). Similar structures are used in micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) as actuators and energy harvesters to convert electrical energy to mechanical energy and vice versa. A platform was built to excite PZT cantilever beams in bending vibration, and a method was developed to detect the mechanical and electrical response of the beam, and correlate changes in these responses to the onset of damage. Subsequently, test protocols were developed to experimentally determine …  Lire la suite

The present task is to construct a language, using the techniques of modern symbolic logic, from which all modern mathematics may be systematically developed. The reader is asked to look upon the work as the first of a series of works each developing a different subject of mathematical thought. In such a series the first step would be to present the tools and techniques used in the development. The tool is logic; a system of logic much expanded from that initiated by Aristotle and sufficiently powerful to handle most of his syllogisms. [...]  Lire la suite

Revealed preference techniques are used to test whether a data set is compatible with rational behaviour. They are also incorporated as constraints in mechanism design to encourage truthful behaviour. In auctions, revealed preference bidding constraints are very demanding. We explain first how additively approximate rationality can be used to create relaxed revealed preference constraints in an auction, and show how combinatorial methods can be used to implement these relaxed constraints. Worst/best-case welfare guarantees that result from the use of such mechanisms can be quantified via the minimum/maximum virtual valuation function. We then go on to consider a combinatorial measure of …  Lire la suite

Recent evidence indicates that the UML (Unified Modeling Language) is the most preferred and widely used modeling technique for object oriented analysis and design. With UML becoming so popular, there is a need to have good quality assurance techniques for projects using it. Our focus in this study is on the inspections of UML design documents. The basic premise of software inspections is that they detect and remove defects before they propagate to subsequent development phases, where their detection and correction costs escalate. However, the cost performance of inspections can vary considerably, making it important to optimize inspections. Two approaches …  Lire la suite