VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Determining appropriate relief for unexpected transactions concluded through the use of autonomous software agents
Keywords: Computer programs, Law and legislation
Consumer protection, Law and legislation
Electronic commerce, Law and legislation
Transaction systems (Computer systems)
Compensation (Law)

Technology has developed that enables sophisticated computer software programs to initiate and complete transactions autonomously without human intervention. This thesis critically examines the extent to which the law provides relief for unexpected transactions concluded through the use of autonomous software agents. It analyzes the treatment of agent-generated transactions under common law rules of contract formation, agency law, and legislation that deals with computer-generated contracts. The author argues that there may be circumstances in which neither the common law nor legislation provides relief for the unexpected operations of autonomous agents. The author accordingly examines alternative means of providing protection against unforeseen transactions arranged through the use of electronic agents. The thesis concludes by recommending a mechanism that not only limits the risk of unauthorized or unintended transactions by computer agents, but also encourages the use and continued evolution of agent technology in electronic commerce.
A change in Canadian corporate governance philosophy: The importation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act into Canadian corporate governance
Keywords: Corporate governance, Canada

This paper reviews the corporate governance developments in Canada since the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. Prior to 2002, Canadian regulators had resisted calls for adopting mandatory corporate governance rules. Instead, Canada's corporate governance system featured a set of best practice principles that issuers were either to comply with or provide explanation as to why they did not. Since 2002, however, Canada has adopted both principles-based corporate governance instruments, as well as mandatory corporate governance rules. This paper argues that the adoption of mandatory corporate governance rules represents an unwelcome shift in Canadian corporate governance. It is argued that the proposed benefits of a rules-based corporate governance structure, such as this structure's ability to control for firm agency costs and information asymmetries, can be adequately addressed through a principles-based structure. This paper then goes on list benefits to a principles-based corporate governance structure over-and-above those of a rules-based structure.
Muted voices: women's rights, NGOs, and the gendered politics of the elite in post-war Lebanon
Keywords: Women's rights, Lebanon
Feminism, Lebanon
Non-governmental organizations, Lebanon
Women, Social conditions
Women, Lebanon
Elite (Social sciences), Lebanon

The central question that frames this thesis is: why in Lebanon, where women enjoy a greater degree of freedom relative to other countries in the region, and where there is seemingly space to organise politically, have women achieved less for their rights than countries with more repressive regimes? In this thesis I argue there are three core ways in which Lebanese women's issues are downplayed, ignored, or frustrated: through patriarchal anxiety, by the gendered politics of elite co-operation, and through elite silencing of feminist voices. An examination of the dynamics of Lebanese women's organisations indicates that women's advocacy in Lebanon represent civil space that has been colonised by elites. In various ways, elites mute the feminist voices that attempt to raise core issues of Lebanese women's discrimination; issues which also challenge the essence of Lebanese power relations. The ambiguous role of foreign aid in this context is also addressed.
Poetry comprehension: a description of the cognitive and emotional processing of literary experts and novices
Keywords: Poetry, Study and teaching

To describe the cognitive and emotional processes involved in poetry comprehension in novice and expert readers, responses to emotional and intellectual poems were collected from 24 English literature students (12 undergraduate, 12 graduate) and were qualitatively analyzed. Participants read two poems, circling and underlining those areas which stimulated thoughts and feelings, respectively. They then discussed their poetic understanding by explaining those marks. Two questionnaires were administered to determine (a) what readers know about poetry comprehension, and (b) what readers know of their cognitive and emotional responses to each poem. Factors for each data set were derived and were used to indicate underlying meaning-making representations. The factors illustrate that experts have a concept of interpretation (Olson, 1994) so are able to consider the process as well as the products of reading. Novices, in comparison, tend to consider only the products. Practicing an aesthetic stance (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1995) within the context of a reader-centered classroom (Langer, 1993) may promote novices' acquisition of this concept.
Global song, global citizens?: multicultural choral music education and the community youth choir : constituting the multicultural human subject
Keywords: Choirs (Music), Ontario
Choral societies, Ontario
Music, Instruction and study
Music, Ontario
Cultural fusion and the arts, Ontario

This study provides a critical ethnographic examination of the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir that emerged from my concerns related to mainstream community choral music education practices. The predominantly white memberships and Eurocentric repertoire of many community children's choirs suggests that traditional structures and practices are exclusionary, even when this may not be the intent of the choir's organizers. Interviews conducted with members of the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir, and analysis of my reflective teaching journal, suggest that multicultural choral music education when taught within in an anti-racism discursive framework, may contribute to a newly emerging sense of identity (and its related subjectivity) which I describe as multicultural human subjectivity. The concept of multicultural human subject is located within a cosmopolitan sociology which acknowledges that globalization impacts the local level of life within national societies, transforming everyday consciousness and leading to new forms of self-identity that accept cultural hybridity as a new norm. In this regard, cosmopolitan sociology contradicts the official Canadian discourse of multiculturalism, which assumes cultures to be monolithic. Cosmopolitanism also conflicts with many of the assumptions guiding multicultural North American music education practices, yet paradoxically multicultural music education practices appear to hold a form of cosmopolitanism as a tacitly implied outcome. The purposes of this study are to: (1) examine the ways that engaging in world music (global song) within the MFYC context may be performative to an emerging identity-subjectivity of multicultural human subject, (2) investigate the relationship between my pedagogy as an anti-racism music educator and performativity related to multicultural human subjectivity, and (3) identify the ways discourses of race, ethnicity, nationalism, and multiculturalism may both contribute to and confound the emergence of multicultural human subjectivity. In this last objective, my reflexive journal points to areas of personal bias that stand in the way of achieving my goals for the choir. Interviews conducted with members of the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir allow the study's participants an important voice in our academic understanding of performativity and the role of conflicting discourses in an individual's self-understanding. The interviews and critiques of my own teaching praxis illuminate both successes and stumbling blocks on the journey toward a self and other understanding indicative of multicultural human subjectivity.
Is home care in crisis? A reader's theatre about issues in home care
Keywords: People with disabilities, Home care services
People with disabilities, Canada
People with disabilities, Attitudes
People with disabilities, Canada
People with disabilities, Social conditions
People with disabilities, Canada

This reader's theatre script called Is home care in crisis? and accompanying academic narrative is my master's thesis at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The reader's theatre script represents a secondary analysis of data from a research project called "A National Snapshot of Home Support from the Consumer Perspective." This research draws from two academic disciplines: critical disability studies and arts-informed research. I had three goals with this secondary analysis: make it interesting, accessible, and educate the public. My organizing principle was usefulness. I sought a form of research analysis and representation that would support the lobbying work the Council of Canadians with Disabilities is already engaged in around disability supports at the provincial, territorial, and national levels. I present the reader's theatre first in this thesis document. In the academic narrative I make sense of my work according to defining elements of arts-informed and disability research.
Preparing for the first Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test: experiences of teacher candidates and teacher educators at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
Keywords: Teachers, Certification
Teachers, Ontario
Student teachers, Attitudes
Student teachers, Ontario

This study examined how six teacher candidates and three teacher educators at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto prepared for the first teacher licensure test in Canada in recent times, the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test. A case study approach was used to document participants' experiences, with subsequent cross-case analyses revealing twelve key themes. Findings indicate that previous experiences with and personal beliefs about high-stakes testing, as well as self-knowledge, influenced how individuals approached test preparation. Additionally, lack of clarity regarding (a) the content and format of the test itself, (b) the purpose of the test, and (c) the way in which it was to be administered, negatively affected participants' experiences in the teacher education program. Nevertheless, most teacher candidates reported being adequately prepared for the test. The study's findings include suggestions for ways to improve future teacher licensure test preparation.
Translations and refractions: an exploration of making art by hand and computer
Keywords: Art and technology
Art, Data processing
Art
Computer art

Significant findings of this study include the emergence of a different kind of haptical space created by the physical experience of image multiplicity and the glow of the computer screen. Additionally, a kinship between the artists and their computers identified as a new kind of "coupling" defines the alliances created when working within the cyborg realm. These alliances lead to double vision, a combination of artistic and machinic perspectives of image production. As technological contexts shift, hybrid-cyborg art makers require a new vernacular to describe their terms of integration and translation when working concurrently by hand and computer. Among the implications of this study then is the development of an innovative vocabulary to describe hybrid couplings; and the identification of important opportunities for artists and art educators to experience a fresh range of potentialities and pedagogies in the cyborg realm. The computerization of everyday living and working practices enables all of us to move through physical and virtual worlds more easily. However, for some individuals such as visual artists, computerization is also provoking some anxiety and discomfort. As artists increasingly integrate digital procedures into their art making processes, they are confronted with the need to transform older practices, often working through challenging phases of translation. This study examines the ways in which six particular artists whose practices are based primarily on hand making methods are exchanging and in some instances replacing, hands-on engagement using traditional materials with digital manipulation programs using a computer mouse. Three key themes focusing on researching the electronic library, computerized image production and the physicality of art making are extracted from the artists' interviews. These themes in conjunction with theoretical discourses addressing issues of space and place, cyborgology and art education, illuminate the terms of resistance, incorporation and innovation that characterize the interchanges between hand and computer procedures for producing images.
Children with physical disabilities: friendship, self-concept and the role of social attributions
Keywords: Children with disabilities
Learning disabled children
Friendship in children
Self-perception in children
Attribution (Social psychology) in children
Social interaction in children
Interpersonal relations in children

This study compared children with physical disabilities (PD), learning disabilities (LD) and no disabilities (ND) in terms of their reported numbers of friends, quality of friendships, self-concept and social attributions. It further explored the relationship between these facets of social functioning in all three groups. Seventy-one 10 to 14-year-old participants were recruited from four settings: a full-time special education program for children with physical disabilities (PD-FT) (n = 15), an integrated program for children with physical disabilities (PD-RC) (n = 12), a program for students with learning disabilities (LD) (n = 16), and a regular classroom program (ND) (n = 27). All participants were administered the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985), a friendship nomination measure (Wiener, 1995), the Friendship Quality Questionnaire (Parker & Asher, 1993), the Peer Social Attributions Questionnaire (Hoza, 1993), a friendship attributions interview, and, where applicable, a modified version of the Mossford Assessment Chart for the Physically Handicapped (Whitehouse, 1983). Questionnaires were given to all participants' teachers, and telephone interviews conducted with their parents. Results indicated that there were no group differences in self-concept. However, children with PD differed from both their LD and ND peers in reporting friendships of poorer quality. Students in the PD-FT group further reported lower quality of friendship than their PD-RC peers. Moreover, children with PD displayed different attributional patterns for both actual and hypothetical friendship situations than children with ND. Children with PD attributed positive social outcome less often to others than their ND peers, and less often acknowledged the importance of their own lack of effort in negative friendship interactions. These findings are significant in the context of results from the entire sample, which revealed a positive relationship between self-attributions and self-concept as well as quality of friendship. The present findings help explain the controversial accounts of intact self-concept coupled with poor peer relations often reported in the literature on children with PD. Implications for educational and clinical practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
The significance of french after immersion: a qualitative case study
Keywords: French language, Study and teaching
French language, Canada
French language, Study and teaching
Education, Bilingual, Canada
Immersion method (Language teaching)

The main purpose of this study is to understand the significance of French language for French immersion high school graduates, professionally and socially. Based on an ethnographic study focused on the present language practices of four participants, this thesis examines similarities and differences of French immersion experiences and its significance in their lives. Through discourse analysis, results show that French has been significant throughout their lives and reveals the importance of this program as academic stage. All claim to have had a satisfying French immersion experience, but at the same time state to have a lack of opportunity to use their French and a lack of confidence in their French skills. Furthermore, these graduates argue that French is important because it is a way to distinguish themselves from the general English population. They seemed to have formed a separate identity group, one of Canadian immersion graduates.
Topsy-turvy teacher-student relationships: an examination of digital multimedia teaching and learning
Keywords: Educational technology, Social aspects
Teacher-student relationships
Classroom management, Social aspects
Classroom environment, Psychological aspects

This qualitative study is about changing social power relationships between teachers and students in multimedia technology classrooms at the high school level. My research is about relationships between learners and teachers in arts based classrooms and how changing power dynamics affect the teaching-learning process. The thesis is an instrumental, comparative case study of teachers and students at two high schools: one of these is a public and the other a private school. Data collection is through informal interviews of twelve teachers and sixteen students. Furthermore, data is collected through participant observation, field notes, and an examination of documents. The analysis is comprised of four parts: portrait summaries; composite fictional stories based on real life experiences of teachers and students; a personalized account of my own teaching experiences; and a traditional cross-case analysis. Prior to the data collection, I presumed a version of technological determinism, where technologies would change teachers' style of teaching to a much more learner-centred one. I found that, in fact, technology does not change the way a teacher teaches. Educators' styles of teaching are dependent on several factors. These are (1) school philosophies, (2) mandates of special programmes within schools, (3) financial supports, and (4) individual educators' natural way of teaching. Several areas are examined: disadvantages and advantages of technology; teacher training; issues of knowledge; and untraditional roles of co-learning, collaboration, and new topsy-turvy relationships. Topsy-turvy relationships are described as ones in which teachers become learners and students teach their teachers, I discuss notions of gender, access and privilege, bartering and favours. I conclude that traditional positions of power people hold are being affected: by those who possess power and those controlled by it. Hierarchical boundaries and institutional barriers are being reformed as possession of knowledge reshape positions of status between people within the educational institutions but also those from outside. The acquisition of, and shifts in, power should be viewed in a positive light for improving our understanding of changes in schools and within our society at large.
College students' perceptions of responsibility for learning
Keywords: Students, Attitudes
Learning, Psychology of
Learning
Responsibility, Study and teaching
College students, Conduct of life
Moral education

The purpose of this study is to relate Project Adventure Inc's Adventure in the Classroom (AITC) instructional model (Henton, 1996) to post-graduate college students' perceptions of responsibility for learning. The same four student volunteers were interviewed once per month for seven consecutive months from October 2001 to April 2002. Interviews collected students' perceptions about responsibility for learning as it related to two of their mandatory classes that were taught using the AITC model. Participants in the study also completed a pre and post questionnaire which used questions based on West's (1994) measurable indicators of responsible learning. Literature on the institutional context and student characteristics that influence college students' responsibility for learning and the qualities of adventure based learning was reviewed. Based on this research, recommendations were made for the implementation of student and faculty forums to bridge perceptions related to responsibility for learning and instructional process.
The role of autophagy in innate immunity to intracellular bacterial pathogens
Keywords: Cytology
Microbiology

Autophagy is a cytosolic degradation pathway responsible for delivering proteins and organelles to the lysosome for degradation. Recently, this pathway has been shown to be an important component of innate immunity. In this thesis, I study two intracellular pathogens with very different lifestyles and compare how they interact with autophagy. Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium is a vacuole-adapted pathogen that replicates in the Salmonella -containing vacuole (SCV) in host cells. During in vitro infection of epithelial cells, a population of bacteria damages the SCV and replicates in the cytosol. I show here that bacteria in damaged SCVs are targeted by autophagy. This serves to protect the cytosol from bacterial colonization and restricts bacterial replication in this cell-type. Furthermore, damage to the SCV membrane appears to act as a signal to recruit autophagy. Listeria monocytogenes is a cytosol-adapted pathogen that lyses the phagosome and replicates in the cytosol. Listeriolysin O (LLO) and bacterial phospholipases C (PLCs) form pores in the phagosomal membrane to mediate this escape. Once in the cytosol, L. monocytogenes expresses ActA to mediate actin-based motility and intercellular spread. In macrophages, a significant population of bacteria is targeted by autophagy during phagosomal escape in an LLO-dependent manner. However, once in the cytosol, L. monocytogenes is able to evade autophagy. ActA is sufficient but not necessary for autophagy evasion. Accordingly, bacterial PLCs also play a role in autophagy evasion. During infection of macrophages, we observed that a small population of L. monocytogenes replicates in Spacious Listeria -containing Phagosomes (SLAPs). LLO is essential for SLAP formation and inhibits the maturation of these compartments by forming pores in the SLAP membrane. Furthermore, we found that impaired LLO expression allows slow bacterial replication in vacuoles in an autophagy-dependent manner. Therefore, SLAPs appear to represent a 'stalemate' between bacterial virulence (LLO activity) and host innate immunity (autophagy). SLAP-like structures were observed during persistent L. monocytogenes infection of immuno-deficient mice. This work provides insights into signals that target autophagy to intracellular pathogens and mechanisms by which pathogens have evolved to evade this innate immune mechanism. Furthermore, this research suggests a possible mechanism for the establishment of persistent infection.