VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Learning to heal, a personal account of intrafamilial trauma and recovery

The basic story of extreme intrafamilial violence is one of survival, the story of living while one is dying being annihilated by a physically stronger but morally inferior (parental) force. Dying is the act of becoming disembodied, the act of being swallowed into what I have come to know as the dark caverns of the great fish. The biblical whale provides the key metaphor in my inquiry into self, trauma, and survival. By acknowledging that extreme intrafamilial violence is integral to the childhood experience of many adults, some of whom are teachers, I hope to create a space for their stories to be told as well. How do teachers and students come to grips with the highly mis-educative experiences of terror and trauma that nevertheless hold powerful lessons? Teachers and students need new maps for understanding these lessons, in the hope that they can learn what constitutes an educative experience. In mis-educative experience lies the seed of educative experience. The student who has been swallowed on the way to death but cast out into life needs the help of a compassionate listening teacher to help him/her make a map of the insides of the great fish. Only then can the great fish be seen as a vehicle, an underwater boat, a slimy submarine. The journey inside the great fish becomes integrated into the story of the whole journey. It becomes a key component in the Jonah-student-teacher's education, rather than a mis-educative detour. The map of the insides of the great fish shows: (1) the way ' in', which is death-in-life; (2) the "belly" or ' the place and the lesson' which is life-in-death, and (3) the way ' out', which is new life. Thus, the belly of the great fish comes to be seen and appreciated as a critical place of growth where the Jonah-student-teacher's new self was being created, a paradoxical type of womb, a new matrix of meaning. Survivors of chronic intrafamilial violence have been swallowed ' many times', again and again. Their stories need to be told and heard. But 'how' can they be told? Arts-based storying curriculum creates space for the teller, the tale, and the telling. These stories, like this inquiry, cannot be forced to fit into a scientific, paradigmatic form or mould. They need space to breathe. Their form and content inform each other in a circular, self-supporting dance. This arts-based narrative inquiry into intrafamilial trauma is constructed like a natural rhizome, growing underground, in darkness. It sends up shoots of unpredictable plural selves and voices, in unpredictable places, at unpredictable times.
Ties without strings?, the Colombo Plan and the geopolitics of international aid, 1950-1980

The dissertation is a study in the politics of aid. It explores the connections between British, Commonwealth, and American aid policy--and how this affected western approaches to the Asia/Pacific region (and the third world in general) at a crucial point in the Cold War. Its frame of reference is "The Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic Development in South and Southeast Asia"--the first multi-national aid program which linked the West with the non-communist countries of Asia. The Plan was initiated in 1950 by the Commonwealth. By 1973 it had twenty-six members, five western and twenty-one Asia/Pacific states The thesis argues that the Plan was motivated by Cold War geopolitics; that this was why it was targeted only at countries within the strategic and security orbit of the Soviet Union and China; and that it was the Commonwealth's contribution to western efforts to contain communism in South and Southeast Asia. The establishment of the program was based on the logic that poverty and underdevelopment, and a huge population, made the non-communist states in the region vulnerable to communist subversion. Economic development, the program's Commonwealth sponsors argued, was the most effective measure against the communist threat. The Colombo Plan was the medium through which western aid--capital and technical assistance--was to be made available for this purpose. The dissertation analyzes the politics and diplomacy of expansion of the program's membership; the strategic, security and economic motivations of the participating countries, both in their capacity as individual actors, and as members of a collective concerned with problems of the Cold War. It also analyzes the structure and functions of Colombo Plan institutions, as well as the program's peculiar architecture--a multi-national institution operating on the basis of the bilateral principle. The dissertation is a work of synthesis drawing together the national and parochial perspectives of participating countries. The approach is holistic and global. The methodology is comparative and interactive. The context is Cold War geopolitics.
The end of Roman Spain

'The End of Roman Spain' narrates the history of the last years in which the Iberian peninsula formed part of the Roman empire and argues that the lapse of Roman control came around the year AD 460, much later than the traditional date of 409. The first chapter sets the scene and discusses Spain in the fourth-century. The second, 'The Defence of Roman Spain', presents an analysis of the confused sources for the late Roman army in Spain and is linked to an appendix on the ' Notitia Dignitatum' which argues that that document was in origin a single base text, composed at the eastern court around 394. The third chapter revises the traditional chronology of usurpation and barbarian invasion in Gaul between 405 and 413, in the course of which events Roman authority in Spain was first challenged by barbarian invaders. The fourth chapter traces the history of the peninsula between 425 and 455, examining the effects on Roman control of a barbarian presence in the Spanish provinces. Chapter five looks at the Goths, whose role in the end of Roman Spain is crucial, and argues that their initial settlement in Gaul in 418 was designed by the central imperial authorities to prevent their provincial Roman subjects from supporting further usurpations. Chapter six, finally, examines the careers of the last two emperors to take an interest in Spain, showing how they maintained their authority in the peninsula by using the Goths as their instruments. It argues that after Majorian left the peninsula in 460, having failed to mount a campaign against the Vandals in Africa, Roman Spain ended, because the structure of imperial office-holding in Spain disappeared.
Sequential anaerobic-aerobic biodegradation of tetrachloroethene (PCE)

The objective of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of a sequential anaerobic-aerobic microbial process for 'in-situ' bioremediation of aquifers contaminated with tetrachloroethene (PCE). Two laboratory-scale columns (2 m in length and 4.1 cm inside diameter) were used to examine the feasibility of this concept. The anaerobic soil column inoculated with biomass obtained from an anaerobic digester, was operated with low concentrations of PCE (2-5 mg/L) and methanol. After acclimation, the column was continuously operated with incrementally increased concentrations of PCE for about 2.5 years. The microbial community developed in the column exhibited a sustained dechlorination of up to 120 mg/L of PCE to vinyl chloride (VC) and ethene (ETH). This is the first demonstration of complete removal of PCE at concentrations as high as 120 mg/L in a continuously operating system at room temperature. The change in PCE:methanol ratios was found to have little effect on the breakdown of PCE and trichloroethene (TCE) but the conversion of VC to ETH was much more sensitive and VC accumulated when the PCE:methanol mass ratio dropped below one. Elimination of PCE from the system for a 5-month period did not result in the loss of degradation capacity of the culture. The aerobic column was inoculated with microorganisms obtained from a local pond. After developing a methanotrophic culture, effluent from the anaerobic column was pumped to this column A pulsing strategy was employed to handle the competitive inhibition between methane and VC. Concentrations of VC above 10 mg/L inhibited both methane utilization and VC degradation. After reducing the methanol concentrations in the inlet of the anaerobic column, methane fluxes to the aerobic column were decreased. With these inlet conditions, methane was consumed in the lower section of the aerobic column and VC was degraded in the upper zones where the methane concentrations were minimal. Biomass preservation/bioaugmentation studies in microcosm systems showed that storage under refrigerated conditions at 4°C could be used for short-term preservation of PCE dechlorinating biomass. Various electron donors were compared for their abilities to support the dechlorination of PCE. Butyric acid was found to be the most effective electron donor for degradation of PCE at a PCE:electron donor ratio of 1:2 on an electron equivalent basis. Microscopic studies revealed the presence of seven morphotypes in the PCE degrading community. Metabolic activities at different sections of the anaerobic column correlated with differences in community structure based on FAME analysis. DNA fingerprinting showed differences between consortia from different zones of the column.
Educators' responses to equity in-service

In this study I explore educators' responses to an educational equity in-service program which examines the areas of gender, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability and socioeconomic status. Two perspectives emerge: the participants' responses to the equity inservice itself and their responses to equity implementation initiatives in their schools. This study contains findings related to personal equity change, school-based equity change and system equity change. This inquiry has significance for equity in-service staff development in an area where little attention has been given. The research employs a mixed methodology, using interviews, questionnaires, observation and document collection. The main data sources are interviews, supplemented by a questionnaire which employs a framework entitled "The Equitable School Indicators Framework" which was developed for this study. The findings from this study reveal some of the intricacies and complexities of the manner in which equity in-service impacts on schools and on educators. This study has key findings regarding the effectiveness of equity in-service: the impact of the structure and process of the equity in-service staff development, the need for an understanding of the intersections of equity areas, and indicators of supports and barriers to equity implementation. The implications of this study can be used to guide development, implementation and review of equity in-service staff development at the participant level, at the school level, and at the system or district level.
A study of dual use of modern and traditional mental health systems by the Bedouin of the Negev

This study analyses the utilization of modern and traditional mental health care systems by the Bedouin, with particular emphasis upon such patterns of dual use from the patients' perspectives. In addition, the study describes the patients' experiences through the course of the treatment in both systems, and the reasons for utilizing both systems concurrently. It also examines particular aspects of the modern and traditional systems that treated the same patients, among them, etiology/explanation, diagnosis, symptomatology, prognosis, and course of treatment. The first subject set consisted of an initial population of 60 Bedouin patients newly referred to the psychiatric outpatient system of these, a subset, consisting of 20 patients (10 female and 10 male) used 'both' the modern and traditional healing systems concurrently. There were gendered differences in terms of help-seeking processes, perceptions, patterns of utilization; decisions regarding which system to utilize, and degrees of familiarity with the modern and traditional mental health systems. The modern system was helpful with respect to medications, follow-up, certain types of instrumental support, and for female patients especially, in providing a greater network of support outside the home. The traditional system was quite useful in mobilizing the patients' families as networks of support. It was also therapeutically significant in addressing and improving family dysfunction. The Bedouin patients find the modern system helpful in addressing somatic issues, and the traditional system, in addressing emotional and behaviourial aspects of illness. The patients' families played an important role in terms of managing the treatment in both systems. The second subjects were seven Jewish psychiatrists, who treated the Bedouin patients. They graduated from medical schools in Russia, Romania and Italy. The third subjects were twenty traditional healers, who treated the same Bedouin patients. The psychiatrists relationships with their patients tended to be formal, and diagnoses Western, whereas the traditional healers built quasi-familial relationships, shared the same world-view as their patients, and used familiar terminology. The implications of these findings for the integration between both systems, social work practice, and the significance of social work in the modern health systems are discussed.
Target characteristics and cross-correlation detectors

Tracking a set of stationary targets in the field of view of a head-mounted camera can provide an estimate of head motion. In this thesis, a theoretical model is developed relating the probability of false detection (POFD) of a stationary target by a cross-correlation detector, to the size, bandwidth and power of the target and spatially disjoint scene noise. Closed-form expressions are developed to provide insight into the fundamental processes that affect the POFD. It is shown, through modelling and computer simulations that (1) by reducing the difference in area between the image and target and by increasing the input SNR, the POFD is lowered and (2) that increasing either the signal or noise bandwidth results in a POFD curve which rises initially, reaches a maximum and then falls. The POFD is shown to be governed by the signal and noise peak variance and the number of independent noise peaks. The results provide a foundation for the examination of "optimal" target selection criteria when targets suffer from additive noise or geometric distortions.
Bosnian refugees in Canada, trauma, resettlement and health in temporal perspective

It has been assumed by many investigators of refugee health that refugees experience more pathology and resulting poor health than host populations. However, contradictory findings have emerged from some of these studies. The goal of this study was to put aside initial assumptions pertaining to the health of Bosnian refugees. Rather, health was largely defined by participants through personal perceptions, accounts and descriptions of their experiences pertaining to trauma and resettlement and how these experiences influenced their health over time. A snowball sample of ten Bosnian refugees was selected according to age, gender and period of time spent in Canada. Each participant was visited on three separate occasions over a 9-week period. The methodology was primarily qualitative with informal, indepth interviews. Investigator observations as well as formal, structured health and demographic data were also gathered. This research has shown that the participants in this study faced suffering, adversity, and resettlement challenges that posed risks to their health over time, yet all verbalized and were observed to be experiencing adequate health and function. All participants were independently performing the activities of daily living, working and/or upgrading their skills, caring for themselves and/or their families, establishing new social supports, making realistic plans for the future and using the health care system sparingly. The positive health experienced by participants in this study appeared to be largely due to interactions between personal, psychosocial, and cultural characteristics with life events over time. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Spatial dynamic queueing models for the daily deployment of airtankers for forest fire control

Each day regional fire duty officers must decide how many airtankers to acquire and where to deploy them to minimize their initial attack response time. We developed three mathematical initial attack airtanker system models that capture important aspects of real airtanker systems. These models can be used to assess the time-dependent performance of an initial attack airtanker system in terms of response time throughout the day. We then developed more realistic simulation models that were used to assess the accuracy of the mathematical models. We also developed deployment heuristics that fire managers can use to obtain pragmatic solutions to daily airtanker deployment problems. Our models provide novel insight into the forms of dispatch policies that fire managers can use to develop effective daily airtanker deployment strategies.
Northrop Frye and the educational responsibilities of contemporary criticism

This thesis is a rereading of Northrop Frye's literary theory within the current critical and cultural milieu. It addresses the charge by literary, social, and feminist theorists that Frye's criticism constitutes an escape from irony into romance, one more concerned with the mediation of literature by convention than with literature's disintegrative effect on the conventions of contemporary ideology. For his critics, Frye's is a liberal criticism, eager for the expression of individual concern in literature, deaf to its radical social voice. Also, feminist critics argue that Frye's liberalism is evidenced in his conflation of literary experience with the study of texts as spatial structures made familiar by the categories of patriarchal ideology: an understanding of literary experience that relegates engagement with literature in time to the status of a stock response. According to this thesis, Frye's critics can be answered through a comparison of his criticism with that of Theodor Adorno. On the basis of similarities between these two thinkers, Frye's criticism is seen to go beyond liberal ideology, apprehending literature as an ironic recuperation of romance from its indoctrinating role in contemporary mass culture. But the ironic recuperation of romance as literary form is also a remedy to the postmodern culture industry's neutralization of ironic response; that is, to mass culture's conflation of viewer savvy with world-weary resignation to there being nothing to experience beyond the self-interested slogans of patriarchal ideology. Frye's prescribed education in literary convention, then, is prerequisite to the contemporary reader's literary experience being more than an unconscious affirmation of culture industry formulas. His criticism gives priority to the expression of individual concern in literature in order that readers might apprehend literature's capacity to resist contemporary society's reduction of social concern to expressions of ideology. And Frey's criticism insists that literature be apprehended as a spatialized structure to resist the unreflective linearity imposed on experience by the culture industry and patriarchal interpretation. Critical resistance to patriarchy, however, also entails a poetics of refusal, which the logic of Frye's system accommodates but which Frye, as critic, rejects.
Serotonergic fuctioning in depressed stroke, nondepressed stroke, and in healthy elderly

Background. Considering age-related decline in 5HT function, we examined the effect of aging, gender, and a fixed dose of 30mg of oral d-fenfluramine (d-FEN) on prolactin (PRL) and cortisol (CORT) responses in healthy elderly subjects. Method. Twenty-three healthy male and female volunteers aged 60-86 years participated in a single-blind, placebo-controlled, fixed-order, crossover-design challenge test. Baseline PRL and CORT values and the responses of these hormones to 30mg of oral d-FEN and placebo over a 4 hour period were measured on two separate sessions. Results. Compared with placebo, the net changes in PRL and CORT responses (change scores from baseline) were significantly greater following d-FEN, (drug by time, F = 18.60, df = 3.66, p = 0.001; F = 4.13, df = 3.66, p = 0.01). Peak PRL responses (maximum change from baseline following d-FEN) were relatively robust compared to CORT responses. Women had greater peak PRL concentration than men (p = 0.014). Peak PRL concentration was positively correlated with plasma nor-d-FEN concentration (p = 0.039) and negatively correlated with body weight (p = 0.037). Although the weight adjusted dose used in this study (0.44mg/Kg) was higher than the recommended therapeutic dose of d-FEN (0.2-0.3mg/Kg), the peak PRL responses were modest and only two participants experienced side effects. Within this group of elderly subjects, age had no effect on d-FEN induced PRL and CORT responses. Conclusions. d-FEN can be employed as a safe serotonergic probe in the elderly and PRL responsivity to d-FEN is a reliable index of central 5HT function in this age group. Given the modest prolactin responses, it might be desirable to employ a dose in the upper therapeutic range (45-60mg) to maximise hormonal responses to d-FEN challenge tests in the elderly.
Examining mental models, attributions, and social sharing of emotion in clinical and non-clinical populations using the error diary method, an exploratory study

This study is an exploratory investigation of how participants from two very different populations--primarily graduate students (n = 30) and psychiatrically at-risk mothers (n = 8) from a Toronto housing project--respond to a mini life event. The error diary, originated by Oatley and Larocque, has been modified here to examine mental models of self-in-relation and social sharing of emotion following an error in a joint plan. The findings showed that, contrary to expectations, joint errors evoke malign simulations (negative thoughts) and intense negative feelings in both clinical and non-clinical participants. A significant difference was successfully predicted, however, within the clinical group; those who were the most severely at-risk experienced malign mental models more frequently than those who were less at risk. Surprisingly, results also showed that the non-clinical males were more likely to socially share (speak) with three or more confidants about the error than were the non-clinical females. Results are discussed in terms of communicative and appraisal theories of emotion.