VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Working-class computer learning, an historical materialist analysis of participation, practice and learning in the everyday

In this thesis I explore the class dimensions of adult computer learning amongst industrial workers in Southern Ontario (Canada). My interests are to understand the full range of computer learning that working-class people engage in which is largely obscured by a coherent set of universalized, individualized, pedagogically-oriented tendencies that run through conventional adult learning theory. I use historical materialist and neo-Vygotskian frameworks in an integrated analysis of in-depth interviews (n = 73), case studies of micro-interaction as well as original analysis of large-scale survey data. I argue that computer learning is deeply embedded in relations of advanced capitalism. Central concepts include "common sense" (Gramsci, 1971), working-class learning "habitus" (Bourdieu, 1984), and "frame analysis" (Goffman, 1974). The material structure, orality and commodification in working-class computer learning are considered. Combining this analysis with a careful consideration of social standpoints in everyday activity we are able to understand computer learning as composed of differentiated and differentiating patterns of participation. Focusing on everyday practices, I claim that class standpoints provide the starting point for understanding a working-class learning habitus. When fully expressed in materially stable conditions this habitus gives rise to spontaneous, mutualistic and democratic learning communities. The establishment of these conditions is also influenced by gender and racial standpoints. Working people's computer learning activities centre around tactical methods, interstitial locations of practice, and class-based cultural networks. At the same time, computer learning activity is mediated by a highly fragmented and contradictory technological common sense which is dominated by individualized consumption, mystification of technology, exchange-value oriented activity and a process of incorporation into capitalist political economic relations.
Interactive strategies used by early childhood educators to facilitate conversation with preschoolers with and without language delays

An advantage of integrating children with language delay into community childcare settings is that conversational interactions with teachers may provide the impetus for developmental progress in language acquisition. However, studies of teachers' language to children in segregated settings reveal that teacher talk may be directive, lack many language models, and provide few attended conversational opportunities. This study compared the structural features, complexity, and conversational features of teacher input to an integrated group (which included one child with language delay) and a typical group (all typically developing children). Comparisons were also made between two childcare contexts, book reading and playdough. Results revealed the language addressed to the child with language delay was directive and not finely tuned to the child's language level. Playdough promoted teacher-child interaction that was less directive, and more interaction promoting than book reading. Clinical implications include training teachers to use input that promotes interaction and descriptive language models.
Sleep and musculoskeletal pain in workers following a soft tissue injury

In a longitudinal prospective study of 15 males (mean age = 36.7 yrs, s.d. = 9.3) with low back pain (LBP), sleep and symptoms were assessed at 6,10, 15, and 19 weeks following a work-related injury. They were compared to 9 "pain-free", age and gender comparable controls. At each session, subjects wore an actigraph and completed the Hospital Anxiety Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the University of Toronto Sleep Assessment Questionnaire$\sp\copyright$, the Roland Scale, and the Chronic Pain Grade. Compared to controls, workers with LBP showed greater anxiety (Hospital Anxiety Scale p = 0.02), depression (Beck Depression Inventory p = 0.03 and Somatic subscale of Beck Depression Inventory p $<$ 0.01), and self-reported sleep disturbances (Sleep Assessment Questionnaire p $<$ 0.01 and non-restorative subscale of Sleep Assessment Questionnaire p $<$ 0.01). Compared to controls, LBP subjects experienced longer awakenings (p = 0.02) and slept 38 minutes less once they returned to work (p = 0.01).
Matrix attachment regions in the human dystrophin gene

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a lethal degenerative muscle disorder caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. Dystrophin is a cytoskeletal protein associated with the plasma membrane. The dystrophin gene is exceptional with respect to its size and complexity. It is the largest gene identified to date, containing 79 exons across 2300 kb and at least seven distinct tissue-specific promoters. This X-linked gene is characterized by a high mutation rate, with most affected individuals having chromosomal rearrangements. Approximately 60% of males with the disease have deletions in the dystrophin gene and 6% have duplications. In this study, the role of chromatin organization of the dystrophin gene in nuclear functions is investigated. The interactions of DNA with proteins of the nuclear matrix may be involved in such functions as defining chromatin loops or domains, DNA replication, transcriptional regulation and illegitimate recombination. The DNA regions involved in these interactions are specific DNA sequences called matrix attachment regions (MARs). This work examines the possible involvement of dystrophin gene MARs in both disease-causing chromosomal rearrangements and transcriptional regulation. Specifically, points of attachment of the dystrophin gene to the nuclear matrix have been identified in this study at the breakpoints of a duplication from a DMD patient and in the muscle-specific promoter region. MARs have been identified at both the intron 7 and intron 9 breakpoints of a dystrophin gene duplication which resulted from a non-homologous recombination event. This finding indicates the possible positioning of these breakpoints in close proximity to one another on the nuclear matrix, providing the opportunity for recombination to occur. Both breakpoints contain topoisomerase I consensus cleavage sites, suggesting a molecular mechanism for DNA exchange in this recombination event. In addition, two MARs have been found to flank the internal muscle-specific promoter of the dystrophin gene. The proximity of these two MARs to this cis-acting regulatory element indicates a possible role for these MARs in transcriptional regulation from this promoter, perhaps through interactions with transcription factors on the nuclear matrix. These results suggest important roles for dystrophin gene MARs in both illegitimate recombination and transcriptional regulation in this gene.
Shaping social space from information space

As an individual browses the web they are unaware of others who may be visiting the same information spaces. Providing a tool that gives visitors awareness of one another and lets them communicate may facilitate the formation of communities of interest. Agora is one such tool; it provides both synchronous communications functions for immediate interaction between visitors, and asynchronous functions for long-term community building. The motivation and design for Agora is presented, including its place among the many other Internet communications tools. The architecture of both the client-server networking and the persistent storage behind the tool is discussed, as well as the details of its initial deployment 'in situ '. Anonymous logs of participant activity reveal interesting patterns of behaviour and yield measures of visitation frequency, duration and repetition. Though these results highlight several design improvements, they show failure to reach communicative 'critical mass'; usage declined steadily over time. The question of whether social space can be shaped from information space requires an audience larger than is likely to be available in an academic environment, and remains an open question.
Ultrafast laser written bulk waveguides and gratings

The field of photonics has been growing tremendously in popularity and market share within the past few years. It has moved beyond the telecommunications market to encompass many different applications, yet industry generally views photonics as still lagging behind microelectronics by ten to twenty years. To follow in the footsteps of electronics, photonics must become miniaturized and integrated. The nonlinear absorption of ultrafast lasers confines laser-matter interaction in three dimensions, permitting the exploration of three-dimensional integrated optics. This thesis studies the effects of scan speed, repetition rate, fluence, accumulated fluence, and sample material on laser-induced refractive-index modulations. The results extend current research by covering a larger parameter range and are compared with deep-ultraviolet F2 results to evaluate the efficiencies of these two forefront processes. This thesis also characterizes bulk waveguides in terms of transmission and scattering loss measurements. These results suggest processing parameters for commercialization of the waveguides. General conclusions of this thesis are that a higher repetition rate and tighter focus have the potential to induce higher index changes, although they also increase the likelihood of causing damage. The processing window for fused silica is quite small: the upper limit is a fluence of ~13 J/cm 2, and number of pulses <105. The lower limits have not yet been identified.
Endothelial cell-specific expression of endothelial constitutive nitric oxide synthase, the role of post-transcriptional regulation

The endothelial constitutive isoform of nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), the enzyme that catalyzes the formation of NO, is relatively restricted in expression to endothelial cells. In-situ hybridizations performed in a wide variety of human tissues reveal that the mRNA transcript for eNOS is localized to vascular endothelium. Surprisingly, promoter/reporter studies indicate the eNOS promoter exhibits strong functional activity in a number of non-endothelial cell-types that do not normally express eNOS. The mRNA of eNOS is relatively stable with a half-life of 24-48 h under baseline conditions. However, several models of endothelial activation have been shown to greatly enhance the rate of decay of the eNOS message in endothelial cells. We therefore hypothesized that there is an important contribution of mRNA half-life to the endothelial restricted expression of the eNOS mRNA transcript. To investigate the role of mRNA half-life in regulating the cell-specific expression of the eNOS transcript, experiments were performed to assess the contributions of transcriptional and post-transcriptional components of regulation. To determine eNOS transcript half-life, stable endothelial and non-endothelial cell lines expressing the full-length human eNOS cDNA under the transcriptional control of the serum inducible human c-fos promoter were generated and RNase protection assays were utilized to assess the rate of mRNA decay. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Hepatic clearance of drugs, effect of zonal factors; transport and metabolic studies on enalapril with rat, zonal hepatocytes

Enalapril, an angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor, was chosen as a model substrate to illustrate the effects of zonal factors on drug processing in rat liver. Zonation has been observed for enalapril hydrolysis in rat liver HAPV and HAHV perfusion studies, in which it was found that the perivenous (PV) zone exhibited a higher capacity than the periportal (PP) region in the conversion of enalapril to its active metabolite, enalaprilat. The aims of the present investigation were to: (i) determine the 'in vitro ' kinetic parameters for enalapril uptake by intact hepatocytes from zonal and homogeneous hepatocytes and for enalapril hydrolysis in subcellular fractions prepared from whole rat liver and periportal or perivenous zones, and (ii) assess the appropriateness of models of hepatic clearances with scaled up 'in vitro' parameters for uptake and metabolism for prediction of whole organ parameters. We wished to test the hypotheses that: (i) metabolic and not transport activity is zonated and (ii) a zonal-compartment model best describes the events 'in vivo' in the processing of enalapril. Studies were undertaken with the objective of furthering the development of hepatic clearance models by incorporation of zonal factors on transport and metabolism. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Les idées politiques d'Helvéetius et leurs fortunes en France de 1789 à 1799

Cette thèse se donne l'objectif principal d'analyser dans un premier temps, la philosophie politique d'Helvétius et, ensuite, de prendre connaissance de sa fortune. Mais tout d'abord elle doit s'occuper de rejeter les idées politiques qui n'appartiennent pas à Helvétius mais qui néanmoins ont été ajoutées à sa philosophie par La Roche, démarche nécessaire afin de pouvoir arriver à la vraie matière helvétienne, car ces ajouts ont fait d'Helvétius un philosophe plus radical et plus militant qu'il ne l'était en réalité. Nous avons aussi profité de ce travail pour introduire l'analyse d'un document attribué à Helvétius, un essai sur le gouvernement français. Nous sommes d'avis que les ouvrages d'Helvétius sont parsemés d'idées révolutionnaires, qu'il les a développées selon la situation socio-politique en France. Nous soutenons cette position en analysant la philosophie d'Helvétius telle qu'elle se trouve dans ' De l'Esprit' et 'De l'Homme' et en examinant la relation entre le philosophe et la monarchie, examen important pour situer sa préférence politique, tout en tenant compte de son penchant pour le système de gouvernement anglais. Les opinions d'Helvétius relatives à la liberté, à l'égalité, à l'éducation et à la législation ont aussi été étudiées dans le contexte de son temps. Bien après la mort d'Helvétius en 1771, ses idées influencèrent les mouvements révolutionnaires grâce aux Idéologues qui ont trouvé dans sa philosophie une source d'inspiration pour développer leur propre philosophie, tant morale que politique. Contrairement aux autres philosophes qui ne furent que des théoriciens, les Idéologues purent mettre en pratique les théories politiques, parfois ouvertement calquées sur la philosophie helvétienne, à laquelle ils souscrivaient. Ainsi Helvétius devint le maître spirituel des Idéologues. Les Idéologues étaient partisans de la politique girondine et aux yeux de la faction de Robespierre, adversaire des Girondins, ils étaient eux aussi membres du groupe girondin. Helvétius, qui était vu de l'extérieur comme le philosophe qui régnait en maître sur la Société d'Auteuil, devint lui aussi un membre du même groupe. Ainsi, la fortune d'Helvétius suivit de près celle du groupe originaire de Bordeaux, elle crût avec les Girondins au pouvoir, elle subit des baisses lorsqu'ils furent déchus du pouvoir. Il est attaqué par Robespierre durant la Terreur mais la fortune d'Helvétius rebondit après la chute de celui-ci.
Probing magnetic fields in clusters of galaxies

Galaxy clusters represent the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. Detailed morphological studies of galaxy clusters indicate that they are relatively young objects, currently in the formation process. Observations toward these objects reveal that the major components of the clusters are the galaxies, the diffuse, thermal cluster gas, and the dark matter. There is, however, evidence that the intracluster medium also contains magnetic fields distributed through the intracluster gas. The presence of magnetic fields within the intracluster medium can lead to significant effects on the dynamics, and energy transport throughout the cluster. Embedded magnetic fields can modify the pressure of the intracluster medium, suppress thermal conduction, which may lead to the onset of cooling instabilities, and magnetic fields may even bias the initial mass function of star formation. Therefore, in order to understand the overall picture of the evolution of galaxy clusters, it is necessary to understand the role magnetic fields have played in this evolution. The most direct method of probing intracluster magnetic fields relies on the Faraday rotation effect. As linearly polarized radiation passes through a magneto-ionic region, the rotation of the plane of polarization displays a characteristic wavelength dependence. This thesis combines radio and X-ray observations, in a statistical study of Faraday rotation toward a sample of nearby galaxy clusters. A comparison of the Faraday rotation measures of sources viewed through the intracluster medium, to the rotation measures of sources falling beyond the edge of the X-ray emitting gas, reveals the presence of excess Faraday rotation in the former sample. This excess rotation is interpreted as originating in the diffuse intracluster medium. A detailed investigation of the Faraday rotating medium indicates that the Faraday screen is well represented by a model of Faraday cells distributed through the intracluster medium. An analysis of the cluster impact parameter distribution over the rotation measure sample indicates that the Faraday cell scales vary from <1 kpc in the central regions of the clusters, to over 100 kpc at large impact parameter. Further, the rotation measure distribution indicates the widespread existence of intracluster magnetic fields out to the edges of the X-ray emitting gas. The overall distribution of magnetic field strengths inferred from the data suggests that the fields may play a dynamically important role in the evolution of galaxy clusters.
The role of phonological memory in vocabulary development in ESL children

There is evidence that phonological memory skills contribute to the learning of unfamiliar phonological sequences in English-as-a-first-language (EL1) children (Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998) and older English-as-a-second-language (ESL) children (Service, 1992; Service & Kohonen, 1995). The present study investigated the specificity of the role of phonological memory skills in the vocabulary development of young ESL learners. Ninety-eight first-graders, 40 EL1 children and 58 native speakers of Punjabi learning English as a second language participated in a longitudinal study. Measures of phonological memory, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word recognition were administered at age 6 and again 1.5 years later. With the exception of a phonological memory task consisting of Hebrew pseudowords (administered for the purposes of reducing the influence of existing long-term phonological knowledge on performance), all other tasks used English-language stimuli. Cross-lagged correlational and hierarchical regression analyses suggest that the ability to repeat unfamiliar phonological sequences, a measure of phonological memory, is a significant predictor of later vocabulary knowledge in EL1 and ESL children alike. Commonality analyses further suggest that for both native and second-language learners, the role played by phonological memory skills in vocabulary development is largely independent of other phonological processing skills such as phonological awareness. Parallels are drawn between the interrelatedness of phonological memory and phonological awareness skills in explaining vocabulary development and in explaining reading development. These results extend the already established link between phonological memory skills and native vocabulary development to the realm of second-language learning. The present findings also suggest that the role played by phonological memory skills continues to be critical in vocabulary development into the early elementary school years.
Effects of antecedent hypoglycemia, antecedent hyperinsulinemia, and antecedent corticosterone on subsequent counterregulation in normal rats

This study examined the effects of antecedent hypoglycemia, antecedent hyperinsulinemia, and antecedent increases in plasma corticosterone on subsequent counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia in normal rats. Four days of intermittent treatment with antecedent hypoglycemia and antecedent hyperinsulinemia resulted in impaired epinephrine responses to subsequent hypoglycemia on the fifth day. This correlated with the diminished incremental increase of hepatic glucose production during the hypoglycemic clamp in these groups. Surprisingly, rats that had undergone antecedent corticosterone also displayed impaired glucose production response in spite of normal neuroendocrine counterregulation. We conclude that both antecedent hypoglycemia and antecedent hyperinsulinemia may cause defective hormonal counterregulation leading to impaired glucose production during subsequent hypoglycemia. This suggests that antecedent hyperinsulinemia 'per se' plays an important role in the pathogenesis of hypoglycemia-associated autonomic failure. Moreover, antecedent increases in corticosterone may cause deficient glucose production without altering the neuroendocrine responses to hypoglycemia, implying that other mechanisms might be involved.
A study of the effects thermal processing, temperature and external acid concentration on the d.c. conductivity of Nafion 117 membranes

The process of thermal bonding of Nafion® 117 polymer electrolyte membranes to electrodes and the effects of the thermal bonding process on the ionic conductivity of the membranes were investigated. The thermal bonding process was investigated by first constructing a hot pressing unit. The press was then used to determine which combination of temperature, pressure and time resulted in the strongest thermal bond. Membrane ionic conductivity was investigated using both d.c. and a.c. methods. The conductivity of the various membrane configurations was measured (using both methods) in different concentrations of H2SO4 and in 0.6 M KCl and at different temperatures. The mechanically strongest thermal bonding occurred under hot pressing conditions of 170°C, 11 MPa for 90 seconds. Conductivity measurements showed that thermal bonding does not introduce an interfacial resistance between membranes. The data show that as the membrane thickness increased so did the conductivity. It was also shown that heating the membrane above its glass transition temperature improved the conductivity of Nafion® 117 membranes. The d.c. method used was determined to be accurate in measuring Nafion® conductivity as the data are in good agreement with those of other workers.
Epidemic methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (EMRSA) in Canada, a phenotypic and genotypic perspective

Epidemic MRSA (EMRSA) are resistant to multiple antibiotics, have the ability to spread easily within the hospital, and cross large geographic distances. We hypothesize that epidemicity may be related to a strain's ability to efficiently colonize its host. The accessory gene regulator locus ('agr') of 'S. aureus' plays a major role in a strain's ability to colonize and invade tissues. Hypervariability within the 'agr'BDC locus of 'S. aureus' strains represents a bacterial interference mechanism that could promote the ability of EMRSA to colonize in the presence of resident microflora. We therefore assayed a collection of epidemic and sporadic MRSA (SMRSA) based on factors expressed under the control of ' agr'. Three Canadian EMRSA clones A, B and C as typed by PFGE have been identified and consist of 10, 5 and 2 strain subtypes, respectively. Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the 'agr'BDC locus revealed that Clones A and C belonged to previously identified groups II and I, respectively, which was also most prevalent amongst the SMRSA strains. Clone B was assigned to a different 'agr' group (Ia) that showed a similar RFLP profile to 'agr' group I. A few significant nucleotide and amino acid sequence differences between 'agr'BDC groups I and Ia suggest that Ia may represent a novel 'agr' type rather than a minor variant of group I. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)