McGill University Thèses et mémoires par auteur commençant par B

Mental retardation is one of the largest and most challenging educational and social problems of our day. Although mental illness, cardiac disease, arthritis, and cancer are more prevalent, mental retardation appears earlier in life and “afflicts twice as many individuals as blindness, polio, cerebral palsy, and rheumatic heart disease combined…” In spite of great medical advances in the identification of causes and the development of preventive action, the fact remains that these discoveries apply only to the fringe of the total problem of mental retardation.  Lire la suite

Increased iron stores, as measured by its biomarkers ferritin, iron, total iron binding capacity, or transferrin saturation (TSAT), have been associated with elevated risks of different infectious diseases, suggesting that iron supplementation may increase the risk of infections. However, these associations are likely biased by confounders or reverse causation (where infections cause changes in iron). Here, we used Mendelian randomization (MR) to reduce these biases and estimate the causal effect of iron on infections.As instrumental variables, we used genetic variants associated with iron biomarkers in two genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of European ancestry participants (range: 131,471 to 270,794 participants). For …  Lire la suite

Many aircraft accidents still happen every year because of air travel safety issues related to the ice build-up on the airplanes. Many efforts have been made, both experimentally and computationally, to find better answers to these icing problems. As computers increase in power and speed and the computational time is less expensive, without mentioning the inherent issues of the wind tunnels, there is a clear shift towards the numerical simulation of the ice accretion to at least focus on such tests. Moreover, the computational outcome has an acceptable accuracy, when the accreted ice is rime ice. However, glaze ice is …  Lire la suite

This thesis attempts to determine whether the Russian chemist, Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev, was open to Western ideas and capital in the Russian petroleum industry. It does so by examining five of his trips to study this business, as either an advisor to the Russian government or a private consultant. These voyages took place between 1863 and 1886 and saw Mendeleev in France, the United States and the Caucasus. Each trip produced a combination of personal letters, diaries, and published articles. This work employs a mixture of published and unpublished archival documents. In the process, much is revealed about the history …  Lire la suite

The position of Edmund Wilson is unique among critics on the American literary scene. For over three decades he has been considered one of America's leading critics of literature and is doubtless, as Stanley Edgar Hyman observes, "the most widely known of our critics." [...]  Lire la suite

The way in which texture development is affected by hot rolling, intercritical rolling, and warm rolling was studied in a plain carbon, a niobium microalloyed and an interstitial free steel. Three processing parameters were varied: the austenitizing temperature (1250$ sp circ$C or 1150$ sp circ$C), amount of reduction (90% or 75%) and finish rolling temperature (1020$ sp circ$C, 870$ sp circ$C, 770$ sp circ$C, 730$ sp circ$C and 630$ sp circ$C for the first two materials, and 1020$ sp circ$C, 920$ sp circ$C, 870$ sp circ$C, 820$ sp circ$C, 720$ sp circ$C and 620$ sp circ$C for the IF steel). …  Lire la suite

Anti-G. muris monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were obtained from the spleen but not mesenteric lymph node (MLN) cells of mice that were immunized with whole or with solubilized trophozoites and from MLN but not spleen cells of infected mice. Of the 40 mAbs tested, 11 were directed against epitopes containing carbohydrates. Two MLN cell derived and 3 spleen cell derived mAbs were found to be cytotoxic to G. muris trophozoites in vitro. One of these mAbs (mAb45C) reduced the average trophozoite burden in injected BALB/ c mice. […]  Lire la suite

This study examines the effects of performance feedback on negotiator emotions, interpersonal influence, negotiator behavior, and negotiation outcomes. A model based on the role of emotions in dyadic negotiation is proposed that comprises relationships amongst variables before, during, and after negotiation. This model is based on four major elements: namely, cognitive appraisal, emotional specificity, emotional flux, and interpersonal influence, and their influence on negotiator behavior and negotiation outcomes. A 2 x 4 x 4 (Negotiation Role x Feedback Conditions for the Negotiator x Feedback Conditions for the Counterpart) experimental study was designed to examine the effects of performance feedback during …  Lire la suite

Among the Baliem valley Dani of the central highlands of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, infants play a prominent role in social relations. Infant mortality rates among the Dani are above two hundred and fifty deaths per thousand live births and birth rates are low. To these patterns of infant survival and growth the Dani consistently ascribe complex meaning. Drawing from anthropological research conducted in 1994--1995 in the Baliem valley, this dissertation demonstrates that indigenous meanings about the infant body and assessments of infant health link the infant to political relations within polygynous families, to antagonistic gender relations, and to affiliations with …  Lire la suite

Le tube flexible à l'étude est entouré par un anneau rigide de plus grand diamètre le recouvrant partiellement, créant ainsi un anneau partiel. Cet anneau est concentrique avec le tube flexible. On appelle tube flexible confiné le système composé du tube flexible et de l'anneau partiel. Le pourcentage de confinement indique la portion de la longueur du tube flexible recouverte par l'anneau, en pourcentage. Cette terminologie est utilisée tout au long de la présente thèse. L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier expérimentalement la dynamique de tubes flexibles confinés suspendus aspirant du fluide, alors que l'anneau décharge du fluide. Le fluide …  Lire la suite

Nahon, Meyer (Supervisor2)  Lire la suite

CCN (Content Centric Networks) est une architecture réseau récemment proposée. Elle peut potentiellement réduire l'utilisation de bande passante et améliorer l'extensibilité et la sécurité du réseau par rapport à l'architecture IP existante. Dans cette thése, nous conduisons une analyse énergétique comparative des CCN et des réseaux IP dans le cas du streaming vidéo. Nous considérons deux types de consommation d'énergie: celle requise pour construire les éléments du réseau et celle requise pour le fonctionnement du réseau. Nous réalisons des simulations de CCN sur trois topologies réseaux différentes (réseau en arbre, réseau de distribution et maillage partiel) afin de vérifier la …  Lire la suite

Laberge, Jean-Martin (Supervisor)  Lire la suite

[...] Dans cette thèse nous voulons indiquer,démontrer, suggérer ces aspects de la vie "bourgeoise de la France que Hoger Martin du Gard présente si clairement dans le roman fleuve, ffLes Thibault11, les aspects familiaux, religieux, sociaux, psychologiques et historiques.  Lire la suite

This dissertation examines the changing nature of the child's perception of the relationship between text and its intended audience, the world it describes, and the type of information it contains. Texts generated in the form of stories by children 4, 5 and 6 years of age are studied over a period of eighteen months. A movement away from a dependence on both context and interaction with a listener is observed in the children's texts as they become attuned to the plurilocal and non-dyadic nature of the type of text they are producing. Awareness of the text's non-obtrusive character is linked …  Lire la suite

The cytoskeletal component of the muscle membrane, dystrophin and its associated proteins (DAPs), are essential for the maintenance of muscle integrity, since the absence of these molecules results in a variety of muscular dystrophies. The purpose of this work was to create and characterize monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) designed to recognize components of the DAP complex (DAPC), in order to provide tools for the study of its structure and function. The first mAb generated, 1137, was raised against a 33 amino acid sequence of the core protein at the c-terminus of alpha-dystroglycan (alpha DG), a cell surface member of the DAPC …  Lire la suite

Every aspect of modern development utilizes large bodies of water for the disposal of wastes. Increasing numbers of rivers, lakes, and streams that were once relatively pure are now being subjected to pollution, as it has become the established (or at least accepted) practice to discharge every kind of waste into water. The underlying principle of such a procedure is based on both dilution, and auto-purification occurring in flowing water. [...]  Lire la suite

When I first encountered James Joyce's Ulysses, at the age of sixteen, I was predictably unprepared for the book. Its shifts in narrative voice, extensive use of stream of consciousness, and ostensible disorder make the book a daunting task for the first time reader. Fortunately, my age allowed me to consign my lack of understanding to naivete, rather than, as did many early critics, to authorial deficiencies. In addition to my ignorance regarding Ulysses itself, I was completely unaware of the extensive critical debates surrounding its myriad aspects, from the supposed "communion" between Stephen and Bloom in "Ithaca" to the …  Lire la suite

This thesis discusses the shadow play in mediaeval Arabo-Islamic societies, and the most outstanding playwright in that genre, Ibn Daniyal (d.710/1310). Despite the lack of other extant plays, it is shown that the shadow play had a long and dynamic tradition in mediaeval Islam, as attested to by various written sources that refer to it through two 'frames' of perception: as allegory and as theatre. These two frames indicate that there is a close link between the intrinsic development of this theatrical genre and the coinage of allegorical expressions geared to the understanding of the cosmological order. The principal features …  Lire la suite

State-of-the-art machine learning algorithms (e.g., convolution neural networks, long short term memory recurrent networks) have allowed human-driven analysis to become completely automated. However, there is an increasing need for human supervision and intuition when automating these analyses. The objective of this thesis is to analyze crowdsourcing and human computation in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, which engage human participants to efficiently solve problems that are hard for computers but intuitive for humans. This thesis addresses questions related to problems of data decomposition, visualization, and interpretation from the perspective of HCI. Solution assembly strategies, as well as user motivation, will also be …  Lire la suite

The purpose of this thesis is essentially a delineation of the climatic history of the Near East, particularly recent geological and historical times. The area here considered under the term 'Near East' comprises Asia Minor, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt. On the other hand, the time span designated by 'recent geological time' and 'historical time' are taken to mean the period 10,000 - 500 B.C., and 500 B.C. to the present respectively. For the former period, the evidence used is almost exclusively derived from geology, whereas historical sources supplement the geological and allied evidence for the latter.  Lire la suite

The quality and quantity of fat in the diet have been shown to influence the composition of neuronal membranes, in particular the amount of phospholipid fatty-­‐acid content in the brain. In addition, dietary fat can modify neurotransmitter-­‐ mediated and neuroendocrine functions including the stress response in rodents. Indeed, fatty-­‐acid derivatives such as endocannabinoids (eCBs) have been identified as important signaling molecules that mediate, in part, the nongenomic glucocorticoid (GC) fast-­‐feedback inhibition on corticotropin-­‐releasing hormone (CRH) neurons in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) via binding to presynaptic cannabinoid receptors (CB1R). We previously found that altering the composition of dietary …  Lire la suite

Maass, O. (Supervisors)  Lire la suite

A strain of Penicillium cyaneo-fulvum, isolated in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, McGill University by Dr. G. D. Denton in 1947, * was found to produce a toxin neutralizing substance, Noxiversin (Diena, 1954, 1956; Tanner, 1956, 1957; Murray et al., 1958), as well as a separate and distinct antiviral substance (Cooke, 1958, 1960; Cooke and Stevenson, 1965 a, b). The antiviral agent, in both its crude and partially purified forms, was found to reduce the infectivity of influenza virus in embryonated eggs, modified Maitland cultures, monkey kidney cell cultures, and mice (Diena, 1956; Cooke, 1958, 1960; Syeklocha, 1962, 1964; …  Lire la suite

Shum-Tim, Dominique (Internal/Cosupervisor2)  Lire la suite

Improving our ability to identify the top quark pair (tt̄) primary vertex (PV) on an event-by-event basis is essential for many analyses in the lepton-plus-jets channel performed by the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) Collaboration. We compare the algorithm currently used by CDF (A1) with another algorithm (A2) using Monte Carlo simulation at high instantaneous luminosities. We confirm that A1 is more efficient than A2 at selecting the tt̄ PV at all PV multiplicities, both with efficiencies larger than 99%. Event selection rejects events with a distance larger than 5 cm along the proton beam between the tt¯ PV and …  Lire la suite

Le boson de Higgs est la seule particule elementaire predite par le Modele Standard qui n'a jamais ete observee experimentalement. S'il existe, il explique la brisure spontanee de la symetrie electrofaible, ainsi que la masse des bosons W et Z et de tous les fermions. On verifie la validite du Modele standard en effectuant une recherche sur la production associee d'un boson de Higgs et d'un boson W dans le cas ou le boson de Higgs se desintegre en une paire de quarks bottom-antibottom et le boson W se desintegre en un lepton charge et un neutrino (le mode WH). …  Lire la suite

In the wake of September 11th and following an overemphasis on passenger air travel security, the air cargo system potentially has become the primary target for terrorists. States have undertaken various regulatory approaches that involve technology and operational measures aimed at addressing the perceived security threats in the air cargo industry. This thesis presents both an overview of the potential risks and best security practices identified within several international, regional and national initiatives, including the "authorized economic operator" and "secure supply chain" mechanisms. The main challenge in designing an adequate security system appears to be ensuring that security improvements are …  Lire la suite

Simple moment strain relations are derived which predict with acceptable accuracy the forces required to bend thick plates to cylindrical surfaces, using methods employed in the pressure vessel industry.  Lire la suite

Based on a joint process of analysis and translation, this research explores the challenges of translating into French a novel by Samuel Selvon titled The Lonely Londoners (1956), one of the first and few English Caribbeans novels entirely composed in a vernacular style and sold to an international English-speaking audience. Using a Bourdieusian methodology of praxis, the thesis analyses the interaction between the various levels of decision-making and the linguistic, political and aesthetic factors that interfere with the translation process, from the interpretation of the text to its rephrasing. It consists of six chapters that, from the second to the …  Lire la suite

The unique properties of zeolites, such as their microporous structure and ion exchange capacity, make them a promising material for water treatment applications. This work explores the synthesis of zeolites from coal fly ash (CFA) using the microwave fusion and hydrothermal synthesis method and investigates their effectiveness in removing heavy metal ions, specifically Cu2+, Zn2+, Ni2+, and Pb2+, from an aqueous solution. The environmental and economic implications of using CFA-derived zeolites (CFAZ) are profound. By repurposing CFA, a dangerous industrial waste product, this thesis aims to not only reduce environmental pollution but also provide an effective alternative to conventional adsorbent …  Lire la suite

The alkali metals, because of their extraordinary properties and comparative ease of theoretical treatment have figured largely in the theories of the solid state and the optical properties of metals. [...] One very significant result of this work is that transmission curves calculated from the values of the refractive index and extinction coefficient show a gradual onset of transparency and "do not allow one to talk of the point where transparency commences". [...] One would thus expect a falling off in the photoelectric emission to be connected with the region of transparency. This is observed in the alkalis. But the …  Lire la suite

Human skin fibroblasts derived from patients with all 7 known inborn errors of vitamin B$ sb{12}$ metabolism have been studied for functional integrity of methylmalonyl CoA mutase and methionine synthase. Cocultivation of cblC and cblF fibroblasts in the absence of polyethylene glycol resulted in a twofold increase over the expected in both ($ sp{14}$C) propionate and ($ sp{14}$C) methyltetrahydrofolate incorporation into acid-precipitable material, suggesting that metabolic cooperation between cells occurs. CblD fibroblasts, which are biochemically similar to cblC cells (Goodman et al, 1970; Willard et al, 1977), do not cooperate metabolically when mixed with cblF cells. Partial correction in phenotype …  Lire la suite

The writer spent the Fall of 1934 logging the diamond drill core and mapping the underground workings and surface geology in the vicinity of the mine, under the supervision of Dr. B. S. W. Buffam. The many interesting features connected with the mineralization and the geology of the mine, and the possibility of this type of deposit becoming of economic importance due to the increased value of gold, led the writer to undertake an extensive study of the area. During the winter, 1934-1935, laboratory work was carried out at McGill University. To collect additional data a month was spent in …  Lire la suite

The superficial deposits of Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene age in the vicinity of Montreal, possess many interesting features, the origin of which is obscure in many cases and difficult to explain. The object of this present thesis is to describe the forms of these deposits and the materials composing them, and to explain their origin. Only the broader problems are dealt with and there yet remains a vast amount of work to be done before a true and complete picture can be made of the events that have taken place in this area since Pleistocene time. [...]  Lire la suite

Compulsory military service took on the most organized, long-term form it has ever had in Canada during the Second World War. But few historians have looked beyond the politics of conscription to study the creation, administration, or impact of a system that affected more than 150,000 men. This thesis examines the Army's role in creating and administering the compulsory military training system, and particularly the influence of Major-General H. D. G. Crerar and other senior officers. Faced with the federal government's policy of conscripting manpower only for home defence in 1940, and influenced by their own personal and professional desires …  Lire la suite

There is a growing interest to restore Bay of Fundy salt marshes diked for agriculture. Marshes recovering for several decades from storm-breached dikes can serve as analogues for restored marshes. In this study I examine factors driving sub-surface hydrology and vegetation at recovering and reference Bay of Fundy salt marshes. In Fundy marshes, groundwater at channel edges is insensitive to tidal flooding (<10 cm change in depth) and deep draw-downs (40-100 cm) occur. Sub-surface hydrology here differs from organogenic, microtidal marshes due to low saturated hydraulic conductivity, infrequent flooding of marsh interiors, and larger hydraulic gradients imposed at channel edges. …  Lire la suite

The basic aim of this thesis is to extend the definition of an n-dimensional vector measure so as to allow it to assume infinite values. In the 1-dimensional case, when one extends the notion of a non-negative measure to that of a signed measure which may assume negative values, it is necessary to assume that the signed measure takes on at most one of the values (+ oo) or(- oe). In a similar fashion it is shown that in arder to successfully extend the definition of a finite-valued n-dimensional measure, it is necessary to suppose that the extended measure assumes …  Lire la suite

Lessard, Larry (Supervisor1)  Lire la suite

During the last few years many bacteriologists havebecome increasingly interested in the changes that take placein bacteria and bacterial colonies during growth. In purecultures the appearance of colonies which differ markedly incertain clearly defined characters from the normal type havebeen repeatedly observed. This phenomenon, which is termed'dissociation' for reasons stated below, has been studied ina certain group of acid-fast bacteria - the Mycobacteria.  Lire la suite

Lehmann and Neumann (54) first proposed the generic name Mycobacteriumn for the group of acid-fast bacteria, with Mycobacterium tuberculosis - the tubercle bacillus of Koch - as the type species. They mention, however, in a second edition of their work, that Metschnikoff (63) had previously proposed for the tubercle bacilli the generic name of Sclerothrix, with Sclerothrix Kochii for the species of tubercle bacillus. They did not know of this, when they first proposed the name Mycobacterium for the genus, and as Metschnikoff had not accurately defined his new genus, according to the rules of botanical nomenclature, they claim their …  Lire la suite

Although 24R,25(OH)2D3 has been implicated in bone development, its biological role and mechanism of action remain controversial. In search for evidence of a receptor, nuclear and cytosol extracts were isolated from mandibles and calvaria of E17.5 mice. Competition and saturation analysis identified a saturable, specific and high affinity (Kd=1.1nM) 24R,25(OH) 2D3 binding-protein. The results of these and sucrose sedimentation studies indicate that this protein is not vitamin D receptor (VDR) or vitamin D binding protein (DBP). Tissue specificity experiments suggest that this putative receptor is also present in liver but not brain. pBDGal4-hRXRalpha bait was used to screen neonate and …  Lire la suite