VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Making connections, pre-reading reader response and mother-research from one family's perspective

This is a study of two lived aspects of family life. Using a phenomenological, narrative approach, the dissertation offers as its main focus a mimetic word tapestry of daily experience in the lives of two pre-reading children and their emerging mother-researcher in a family life that is abundant in orally shared reading. The first specific aspect is the verbal connections made by the two children to shared oral reading in their home. Locating these connections within the realm of pre-reading reader response, the author's main concentration is on the responses which occur long after the reading sessions are over and which are initiated and developed by the children themselves. The second aspect deals with the author's growing responses to these connections. Locating her responses within the realm of mother-research, the author offers the mimetic tapestry, and accompanying reflections, as a look at her lived experience as mother, graduate student and mother-researcher. Collected during the three-year span of the author's life as a graduate student, the data in this study stems from four main sources: videotaped early reading sessions; audiotaped spontaneous conversations and the according transcripts; family history (scrapbooks, calendars); the author's journal, consisting of records of the children's verbal connections and reflections about them, as well as pertinent graduate papers and portfolios. Using phenomenological analysis, the data is then woven into a mimetic word tapestry in an attempt to provide the reader with a sense of daily lived experience. Central to this study are several of the author's philosophies. The importance of daily, lived experience and the routines of life with small children, through the study of which much knowledge can be gained about such a life, is one philosophy. Furthermore, that the richness and vitality of stories, whether from books or children or their parents, informs our lives and the way we accordingly see the world around us, is another philosophy. Also central is the notion that, as readers, we bring the texts which we read to life and that, in doing so, they reciprocally offer us a heightened awareness and further knowledge. Lastly, the role of graduate work, and the writing of a dissertation, are also seen as ways in which we can simultaneously look outward at the world around us and inward at our own workings and, in the process, come to see both in enlightened, or possibly changed, ways.
A study of cognitive process and mediated compliance training, educational and clinical implications in the treatment of non-compliance for children with developmental disabilities

Non-compliance is a commonly observed behavioral problem among children, and especially among those with developmental disabilities. In contrast to traditional views of behavior therapy, in which little attention was paid to the cognitive process underlying the child's behavior, the author assumed that non-compliant behavior among children with developmental disabilities would be improved by facilitating their cognitive processes. This can be achieved through Mediated Compliance Training (MCT) in which additional cognitive information is progressively introduced with parental requests and presented to the children so as to help them better understand these requests and therefore behave more appropriately. Eight developmentally disabled children participated in three experiments in this study to test these hypotheses. Initially, trials were conducted to determine the participants' compliance to parental requests, and a set of Original Requests with low-probabilities (below 20% of compliance) were thus obtained for each child. These requests were then progressively modified by adding more cognitive information beginning with a lower level of cognitive information that concerned the features, locations or attribution of the objects (Level 1); and then including information about reasons or purposes for complying with the requests (Level 2), and finally extending to higher level of cognitive information that contained consequences of non-compliant behavior (Level 3). These three levels of cognitively enriched requests were presented to the children gradually and in sequence. It was observed that under MCT, without any punishment or remedial consequences involved, higher rates of compliance and fewer incidences of maladaptive behavior were obtained throughout both the treatment and follow-up sessions. The results show that cognitive information when added to the parental requests can facilitate a child's understanding of the task demands and thereby lead to better compliance and less maladaptive behavior. The educational significance and clinical implications of MCT are also discussed.
Investigation of genes involved in osteosarcoma development

Many genes involved in osteosarcoma development have yet to be described. The chromosomal regions commonly altered in osteosarcoma mark the location of further tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes. The study of these regions may yield further understanding of known cancer genes and the isolation of novel ones. I therefore had two objectives: (i) the investigation of 12q13-15, a region commonly amplified in osteosarcoma and (ii) the isolation of novel genes involved in osteosarcoma pathogenesis. Three genes located at 12q13-15 are most likely to be driving amplification: SAS, CDK4 and MDM2. Analysis of gene amplification and expression indicated that the region is more frequently amplified in the parosteol subtype of osteosarcoma and that SAS may be the most critical gene. In addition, the analysis of gene expression in osteosarcoma tumor samples isolated a number of genes potentially involved in tumor development and progression, including the von Willebrand factor gene.
Effects of potassium and carbonate on the deposition of synthetic recovery boiler carryover particles

Massive carryover deposit formation on superheater and boiler bank tubes in many kraft recovery units can cause a critical and production-limiting problem, which leads to an unscheduled boiler shutdown. It is therefore crucial to understand the tendency of molten carryover particles to accumulate on heat transfer surfaces in the upper furnace of recovery boilers. Plugging of flue gas passages is strongly related to deposit composition. Deposits accumulate as deposition exceeds the deposit removal capability of the sootblowers. Understanding the conditions that affect carryover deposition is important for better control of deposits and for optimizing boiler operation. Of the many components in deposits, potassium and carbonate are of great important since they lower the first melting temperature of carryover deposits. This project studies the effects of potassium and carbonate in carryover deposits using the Entrained Flow Reactor at the University of Toronto. The experimental results show that potassium has an effect on the deposition rate of carryover particles only when the chloride content is between 1 and 5 mole% Cl/(Na + K). The effect of carbonate in deposits containing various chloride and potassium contents on deposition was also examined. The results show that carbonate has an insignificant effect on the carryover deposition even when carbonate content is as high as 60 mole% CO3(Na2 + K2). The deposition rate of particles is affected mainly by liquid content, and a minimum liquid content of 15-20 wt% is essential for particles to deposit.
The impact of acute maternal nutrient restriction on the development and long-term function of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis

We hypothesized that maternal nutrient restriction affects HPA development and function. Pregnant guinea pigs were deprived of food or fed normally on gestational days 50 and 51, and subsequently allowed to feed normally. One group of offspring was euthanized on postnatal day (pd) 18 (juveniles). Another group was implanted with carotid artery and jugular vein catheters on pd65 (adults), exposed to HPA challenges on alternate days, then euthanized. Prenatal nutrient restriction (NR) reduced ACTH and increased glucocorticoid receptor (GR) mRNA in the ventromedial hypothalamus of juvenile offspring. In adult offspring, female basal cortisol was increased, and male basal ACTH and cortisol was decreased by NR. Responses to HPA challenges were consistent with basal adrenocortical function. Limbic MR mRNA was elevated in NR males, and reduced in females. NR decreased pituitary GR mRNA in females. In conclusion, maternal nutrient restriction during pregnancy, permanently modifies offspring HPA function in a sex-specific manner.
Effects of water chemistry and types of motion on the fretting-wear behaviour of zirconium alloy components at high temperature

Fretting-wear tests were conducted at high temperature and pressure to simulate the interactions occurring between the fuel claddings made of Zircaloy-4 and the supporting structure. The experiments consisted of two phases to investigate (1) the effect of water chemistry and (2) the type of fuel rod-to-spacer grid relative motion. The first phase, which consisted of six experiments, showed that boron and lithium hydroxide additions in water chemistry does not have a significant effect on fuel rod wear compared to ammonium hydroxide addition. In the second phase, a test machine was developed and commissioned to study bidirectional motions, prior to investigating the effects of types of fuel rod-to-spacer grid motion on fuel rod wear. Then eight tests were conducted. The type of motion and the level of static force applied were both found to have a strong effect on fuel rod wear coefficients.
Implements of labor, instruments of honor: Muslim, Eastern and Black African slaves in fifteenth-century Valencia

A prominent Mediterranean port located near Islamic territories, the city of Valencia in the fifteenth century boasted a slave population of pronounced religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity. While previous historians have focused their energies on defining the legal status of slaves, documenting the vagaries of the Mediterranean slave trade, or examining slavery--within the context of Muslim-Christian relations, this study explores the social and human dimensions of slavery in a rapidly expanding urban center. In six chapters, this dissertation traces the varied experiences of Muslim, eastern and Black African slaves from capture to freedom. In addition to describing how they arrived on the Valencian marketplace, this dissertation examines the substance of slaves' daily lives: how they were sold and who bought them, what sorts of labors they performed, and the degree to which they participated in the social, religious, and cultural life of the city. More fundamentally, however, this dissertation is concerned with analyzing the dynamics of the master-slave relationship and the degree to which both slaves and masters utilized the kingdom's court system to promote their agendas. While in recent years scholars have portrayed slavery in the late medieval Mediterranean as an institution working more towards the socialization than the subjugation of distinct peoples, this study reveals that in the city of Valencia, the religious, cultural, and increasingly racial boundaries separating slaves from their masters were not so easily erased, the path towards assimilation, manumission and integration not so smooth.
Mode of inheritance and demographics of pediatric-onset inflammatory bowel disease

'Objective'. To describe the occurrence and inheritance pattern of pediatric-onset inflammatory bowel disease in a population of children and adolescents of Jewish and non-Jewish ethnicity. Study design. Prospective clinic based study which approximates a population-based cohort study. Participants and setting. Children and adolescents (n = 974) diagnosed with IBD at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto between 1980 and 1996. 'Methods'. Ascertainment of families through probands prospectively registered On the HSC IBD database, family history questionnaire, age-specific prevalence rates and complex segregation analysis. Results. Complex segregation analysis included 974 kindreds with 3921 subjects. All of the genetic models had a significant interaction factor (gene x ethnicity) suggesting that the mode of inheritance of IBD was different for people of Jewish and non-Jewish ethnicity. Among the Jewish kindreds the complex segregation analysis was consistent with a Mendelian gene segregating with dominant inheritance. In the non-Jewish kindreds the recessive model was a better fit. The prevalence of pediatric IBD was 25 cases per 100 000 children in 1991 and 1996. The relative risk estimates of developing IBD for children and adolescents of Jewish compared to non-Jewish ethnicity by age groups ranged from 10 to 20 (95% CL: 8.4, 13.3 and 14.8, 27.0). Lambda s, the relative risk of IBD among siblings of probands compared to the general population, was 54 among individuals of Jewish ethnic origin. 'Conclusions'. Segregation analyses provided strong evidence that the mode of inheritance of IBD was different for children of Jewish and non-Jewish ethnicity. Pediatric-onset IBD among patients of Jewish ethnic origin appears to be the most genetically determined form of IBD. Pediatric patients of Jewish ethnic origin are an ideal population to focus joint segregation and linkage analysis.
Watching and praying: A psychoanalytic view of personality change in 18th-century British Methodism

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that John Wesley's model of spiritual development, and his interpretation of scriptural symbolism, is not only coherent in terms of theology, but also as a form of psychological transformation--a comprehensive and systematic method of personality change. The study provides a survey of modal tendencies in l8th-century British childrearing. It singles out three culturally normative developmental difficulties: invasive parental authoritarianism, early loss of primary caretakers and the precocious preoccupation with death and divine judgment. These stresses placed considerable strain on emotional development, thereby interfering with the integration of the positive superego. Wesley's model not only encapsulated these issues symbolically, but also facilitated a gradual resolution of conflict and allowed the ego greater access to the self-regulatory functions of the superego. During repentance, a spontaneous regret for past behavior was coupled with exacerbated self-reproaches. This stage included a deliberate practice of grieving that triggered the depressive components of the three traumata listed above. It culminated in an experiential sense of divine forgiveness, an ecstasy that Wesley deemed justification. The ecstasy manifested personal ideals amid euphoria, and provided a temporary condition of enhanced self-esteem. Justification is conceptualized psychoanalytically as the emergence of previously repressed ego-ideals which form the basis of conscience. Watching and praying consisted of the use of two meditation techniques that promoted a sense of God's favor, perpetuated self-esteem, and permanently consolidated the insights of justification. In psychoanalytic terms, the exacerbation of grief in the repentance phase may be viewed as the onset of a transference neurosis whose object was God. In context of Wesley's preaching of a loving deity, the theological analysis of the relation to God served as therapeutic insight into conflicted patterns of object relations rooted in childhood.
The cyclogenetic energy cascade

The life cycles of synoptic-scale baroclinic waves, and related subsynoptic-scale structures that develop along the mid-latitude jet stream, are examined by employing a dry non-hydrostatic anelastic model. The mechanisms that support the development of both synoptic-scale and subsynoptic-scale vortices are first identified on the basis of linear stability analyses in both one and two spatial dimensions. The existence of both a well-known (Charney-Eady) synoptic-scale mode and a controversial subsynoptic-scale mode of instability is confirmed and the nonlinear evolution of these structures is analyzed through solution of the associated initial value problems. The shallow subsynoptic-scale disturbances are found to be subject to an intense pairing interaction once the initial instability saturates. It is also found that the exponential growth of the synoptic-scale disturbance terminates in a positive barotropic energy conversion that accompanies frontal fracture. Moreover, the temporal and spatial characteristics of the irreversible non-isentropic mixing that is engendered during the life cycle of the synoptic-scale wave are quantitatively evaluated through application of two novel diagnostic procedures based upon use of the concepts of available potential energy and of thermodynamic entropy. In the saturation phase of the synoptic-scale disturbance, explicitly resolved meso-scale instabilities of both symmetric and Kelvin-Helmholtz type are also shown to occur along the surface fronts and in the vicinity of the tropopause. Synoptic-scale life cycles are thereby found to be an inefficient mechanism of irreversibly mixing stratospheric air into the troposphere with localized non-isentropic mixing being primarily associated with the secondary instabilities that appear to develop at the mesoscale.
Determinants of access to invasive cardiac procedures and their effects on outcomes in Ontario, Canada

There are large regional variations in the utilization rates and waiting-times for invasive cardiac procedures worldwide. These variations may be partially driven by a variety of non-clinical factors. The objective of this thesis is to examine the relationship between non-clinical factors, cardiac procedural utilization rates and waiting times, and outcomes among patients with cardiac disease in Ontario. This thesis is comprised of six individual studies. The non-clinical factors examined included institutional factors (i.e., on-site procedural availability at the admitting hospital), geographical factors (i.e., distance to the nearest tertiary facility), physician factors (i.e., attending physician specialty, physician affiliations to hospitals with cardiac catheterization facilities), and socioeconomic factors (e.g., median neighborhood income). Three separate data sources were used to conduct the analyses. They include a multi-linked administrative data base of patients with acute myocardial infarction, a provincial survey, and a prospective data collection of patients in the angiography queue. Our results demonstrated that on-site procedural availability, hospital teaching status, geographical proximity to tertiary hospitals, and socioeconomic status were consistent independent predictors of procedural utilization rates and angiography waiting-times. Variations in access to coronary angiography explained the majority of variations in access to revascularization post-MI. Hospitals with on-site procedural capacity not only referred a greater proportion of their patients for coronary angiography post-MI, but also selected a greater proportion of elderly, sicker patients for cardiac procedures. Despite these differences, long-term survival rates were equivalent to hospitals without on-site procedural capacity. Finally, there was a strong inverse relationship between income and mortality at one year post-MI. Each $10,000 increase in the neighborhood median income was associated with a 10% reduction in the risk of death within one year, after controlling for differences in baseline patient and hospital characteristics. Utilization rate and waiting-times inequities in cardiac procedure use could not explain mortality differences following acute myocardial infarction. In conclusion, despite efforts to ensure universal and equal access to health care in Canada, institutional-based and socioeconomic-related variations in access to specialized cardiovascular services and differences in cardiac health status following acute myocardial infarction are pervasive.
Conformity and dietary disinhibition, an examination of externality and ego strength in restrained eaters

This study was conducted to test two hypotheses: (a) that restrained eaters would conform more than would unrestrained eaters in an Asch-type situation, and (b) that restrained eaters who chose between conformity and independence in the Asch-type situation would eat more in a subsequent taste-rating task than would restrained eaters who did not exercise this choice. Greater conformity was expected in restrained eaters than in unrestrained eaters due to lower self-esteem and greater stimulus-binding in the former group. Contrary to this expectation, analyses revealed no significant differences between restrained and unrestrained subjects in degree of conformity. The depletion of ego strength resulting from the choice between conformity and independence was expected to undermine restrained eaters' diets. Consistent with this hypothesis, restrained eaters who exercised this choice ate significantly more than did restrained eaters who did not. Implications of an ego strength model of dietary restraint are discussed.
Supervisory control of Boolean discrete-event systems

'Boolean Discrete-Event Systems' (BDES) form a subclass of Discrete-Event Systems (DES) having a boolean vector state structure. Based on previous work, a more flexible modeling approach to BDES is presented. Specifications for BDES take the form of boolean predicates, which are compatible with the state structure of BDES. Based on the RW framework, a theory of supervisory control of BDES is developed. With the concept of marking and nonblocking, an algorithm for computing the supremal nonblocking-controllable subpredicate of a given predicate is presented. Modular control of BDES is discussed and a necessary and sufficient condition for modular control is provided. A concrete example is presented to show the concept of memory and dynamic control, which connects state-based control to language-based control. The forcing property is introduced to make the control action more flexible and realistic. Finally the state structure of BDES makes it convenient to implement the supervisory control action.
Phylogeny of the species of the superfamily Echeneoidea (Perciformes: carangoidei Echeneidae, Rachycentridae, and Coryphaenidae) with notes on the Echeneidae hitchhiking behaviour

A phylogenetic analysis, based on 138 putatively informative characters, of the 11 species of the superfamily Echeneoidea (Echeneidae, Rachycentridae, and Coryphaenidae) resulted in a single most parsimonious tree. This tree strongly supports the monophyly of the superfamily with the following relationships: Coryphaenidae + (Rachycentridae + ('Phtheirichthys lineatus' + (('Echeneis naucrates' + 'Echeneis neucratoides') + ('Remora brachyptera' + ('Remora remora' + ('Remora australis' + ('Remora osteochir' + ' Remora albescens'))))))). One of the traditional subfamilies, Echeneiinae, and one of the traditional genera, 'Remora,' were both found to be paraphyletic. A new classification of the family based on natural groupings eliminated the subfamilial designations and subsumed the genus 'Remorina' under the genus 'Remora' rendering it monophyletic. An examination of the behavioural data resulted in the hypothesis of a gradual step by step development of the hitchhiking behaviour from general schooling behaviour (outgroups) to attaching to a select few types of hosts in the pelagic environment (as exhibited by 'Remora osteochir').