VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Urban stormwater quality control analysis

Stormwater from urbanized and urbanizing areas continues to be one of the major sources of pollution loading to surface water bodies. As conventional point sources come under control, the significance of nonpoint source pollution from stormwater and its control cost demand that stormwater management systems be planned and engineered within a quantitative framework to effect higher levels of quality control. To meet such a challenge, analytical probabilistic models have been developed for urban stormwater management planning based on concepts from statistics and probability theory. The objectives of this thesis are to develop analytical models for urban runoff quality assessment, performance models for runoff quality control systems and planning-level optimization methodologies for designing runoff control systems. Other contributions include characterization of urban runoff quality which is based on evaluating the general statistical characteristics of runoff pollutant concentrations from separated and combined sewer catchments. Emphasis is placed on the determination of complete probability distributions of pollutant concentrations. Using a runoff coefficient based rainfall-runoff transformation and empirical pollutant buildup-washoff processes, analytical models are derived from probabilistic characteristics of long-term meteorologic records to estimate pollutant washoff loads and concentrations. The models are verified with available field data and a reasonable agreement is obtained between model results and observed data. Practical applications of the model are provided for runoff quality analysis and for regulatory purposes. Utilizing the developed probabilistic representations of pollutant concentrations, performance models are derived to assess the behaviour of quality control systems. Results from these models are compared to those from previous performance models which are based on a uniform concentration approach. Optimization methodologies are developed for designing stormwater management ponds to control both runoff quantity and quality in single catchment and multiple catchment scenarios. In the single catchment scenarios, the optimization procedure determines the least-cost values of system design parameters for specified levels of quantity and quality control. In multiple catchment systems, a dynamic programming procedure is used to determine least-cost values of the multiple pond system design, which is subjected to system performance constraints of specified levels of runoff quantity and quality control at a common discharge point. The proposed analytical models and methodologies, which are more computationally efficient than conventional numerical simulation models, contribute to the literature on addressing stormwater quality issues and the integration of urban runoff quality and quantity management.
Eleutherodactylus coqui orthologues of VegT and Vg1 and their localization during early development

Eleutherodactylus coqui develops directly on land to a frog. The large 3.5 mm oocyte of E. coqui has enough yolk to allow development without a feeding tadpole. In the smaller Xenopus laevis oocyte, 1.3 mm in diameter, mRNAs involved in germ layer formation, such as VegT and Vg1, are localized to the vegetal cortex of the oocyte. I hypothesized that an animal shift has occurred in the localization of the E. coqui orthologues of VegT and Vg1, due to the large egg size. Through a combination of degenerate RT-PCR and RACE I cloned 1634 by of EcVegT and 1377 by of EcVg1. Northern blot analysis shows that the lengths of these transcripts are 2.5 kb and 1.3 kb, respectively. This result suggests that I have obtained the complete Vg1 transcript, although this transcript has an extremely short 3′ UTR in comparison to X. laevis, 256 bp and 1268 bp respectively. Radioactive RT-PCR and in situ hybridization demonstrated the presence of EcVegT and EcVg1 predominantly near the animal pole of the oocyte. RT-PCR showed that EcVegT and EcVg1 are present in both animal and vegetal blastomeres after the first horizontal cleavage. Thus, the animal blastomeres inherit half of the EcVegT transcript although they occupy only about one percent of the embryo volume. Zygotic expression of EcVegT closely resembles that of VegT, supporting their orthology. 3′ RACE of EcVegT also resulted in a fragment of 1306 bp containing the VegT T-box and 3′ sequence of latent TGFβ binding protein. The unusual nature of this partial transcript, with a DNA binding domain and an extracellular domain, appears not to be a cloning artifact, as demonstrated by RT-PCR and sequencing. Early zygotic expression of UniT is identical to EcVegT expression, but late zygotic expression is distinct. The relative importance and functions of these two transcripts remain to be determined. Pieces of EcVlg, RpVlg and Rpdazl were also cloned for future analysis of germ plasm in E. cogui and Rana pipiens.
An examination of the relations among inattention, working memory, and the irrelevant speech effect in elementary school children

This study was conducted to examine whether background speech impairs serial recall performance relative to a silent condition, demonstrating an Irrelevant Speech Effect (ISE), and to observe whether individual differences in attentional ability and/or working memory (WM) influence the magnitude of the ISE. Children were assessed on behavioural and cognitive indicators of attention, and a serial recall task in silence and in two irrelevant speech conditions. Performance was better in the silent and steady-state speech conditions when compared to performance in the changing-state speech condition. Whereas behavioural inattention and WM were not found to be related to the magnitude of the ISE, those who had a previous diagnosis of ADHD performed worse on the WM measure than those without a diagnosis. Consistent with prior research, individual differences in attention and verbal WM do not appear to account for variability in serial recall in the presence of background speech.
The sign language skills of hearing mothers and their relationship to the sign language skills of deaf adolescents

As part of a longitudinal study of deaf students in Ontario, the sign language skills of 25 hearing mothers of deaf adolescents were assessed using a modified version of the Sign Communication Proficiency Interview developed by Newell, Caccamise, Boardman and Holcomb (1983). Features of English-based sign systems such as English vocabulary (initialization), English sign markers, pronouns and English word order were predominant while a few mothers incorporated some features of ASL in their signing such as negation, the use of space, facial grammar, and occasional use of ASL vocabulary. On a scale ranging from ‘Novice’ to ‘Superior’, the mothers' scores ranged from ‘Novice’ to ‘Intermediate’ with an average score of ‘Survival’. The majority of the mothers had been signing since their deaf teen was in preschool. Further analysis revealed no relation between the mothers' sign skills and the sign skills of their deaf teens.

Keywords: Sign language
Parents of deaf children, Language
Mothers, Language
Deaf children, Language
Deaf children, Means of communication
Roads and ruins: Fascism and the Roman cityscape

This dissertation examines the historic centre of Rome as it was left by the fascist regime between 1922 and 1943. In its two decades in power, the fascist state submitted the Roman cityscape to a massive series of demolitions literally rendering the Eternal City unrecognizable. From its inception, the fascist movement was obsessed with Rome seeing it both as enemy city and promised land. The regime's Master Plan of 1931 pretended to give to Rome the latest in urban planning, all the while using Rome's heritage to advance the cause of Romanita. The research was conducted in the state and municipal archives in Rome in 2000. The sources are varied, ranging from private letters, to architectural drawings, to correspondence sent to the government offices in charge of implementing the fascist state's urban plans. The thesis also uses extensive memoirs and diaries, as well as photographs and newsreels accessed at the Archivio LUCE in Rome. Much has been written on fascism's approach to Rome both in terms of urban studies and propaganda. Rather than focus on the intentions of the regime in these two areas, this thesis will instead analyze the landscape produced by the regime in its pursuit of these aims. An examination of that landscape reveals two dominant symbols which characterized the fascist landscape: roads and ruins. On the one hand the dynamic mobility of modernity, while on the other the decaying symbols of antiquity. This thesis is an exploration of the confluence of these symbols and the what they revealed about the cultural impulses behind fascism. The starting premise of the thesis is that fascism was primarily a cultural phenomenon, arising from the experience of the Great War. From this premise, the dissertation examines how the landscape of the war was interiorized by fascists and then reproduced in the movement's encounter with the Eternal City, a process which found its full realization in the days of Adolf Hitler's famous visit to Rome in 1938.
Reliability issues in strategic location problems

In this thesis we study the impact of facility failure on strategic facility location problems. In particular, we study a classical problem in Location Theory: the p-Median problem on a network. As is commonly done when p-Median problems are investigated, we also discuss the impact on the p-Center problem, another classical problem in the literature. The classical approach considers that facilities are reliable and service is always available whenever a customer needs it. The results of this work includes exact solutions for special cases, heuristic solutions to complexes, guaranteed worst case bound for some heuristics and insights into the solution behavior as a function of the probability of the facility disruption vector. Although the major component of this study is the variations on the p-Median problem, we also include a model that minimizes the expected maximum distance traveled by each customer subjected to some reliability constraint. The intention is to stimulate future research considering facilities' failure in a mini-max setting. Therefore, we start by considering that facilities may fail. This consideration has strong ties with current events in North America where terrorist acts have forced governments, in particular the Government of the United States, plan for planning service disruption. It is crucial to find ways to minimize the impact of disruptions caused by criminal and terrorist acts. Although this is currently an important issue, the models provided in this thesis address the problems caused in any type of disruption, whether caused by criminal acts or arising from the natural failure which all systems may undergo sometime. In this paper it is considered that disruptions will eventually occur. We propose that by carefully designing a strategic facility location plan, decision makers can minimize the long term effects of disruptions.
In the shadow of evil: exploring women's experience of being sexually abused by an older brother

The overall purpose of this study was to explore women's experience of being sexually abused by an older brother, to ascertain the meaning they attribute to this experience in general, and how they currently view themselves and their abilities in relation to various life domains (e.g., physically, emotionally, sexually, interpersonally, and so on). A qualitative approach, using narrative and heuristic research methodologies, was utilized. The narrative approach addressed the issue of telling the co-researcher's life stories, while the heuristic approach was used to place myself, as researcher and as incest survivor, into the phenomenon being studied. Each co-researcher was interviewed on two separate occasions. The co-researchers' own words were used to convey their stories. This was done in the form of direct quotes so as not to lose their authentic meaning. Core themes that emerged in the process of analyzing their stories were clustered together to form chapters. The study highlights the act that older brother/younger sister incest is a significant interpersonal boundary violation that has lifelong, detrimental effects on the victim and others. The results have implications for the helping professions, for victims and for future research and serves as a valuable, competent resource because it speaks directly to older brother/younger sister incest, thereby challenging the taboo that still exists in society at large. It also serves to clarify the sometimes contradictory and confusing information that currently exists in the literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Learning english and learning to teach english: the case of two teachers of english in Pakistan

In this study, I have examined how Fatima and Khulood, two experienced secondary school teachers of English in Pakistan, develop their classroom practices in two diverse educational settings: Fatima in a private English-medium school and Khulood in a government Urdu-medium school. In particular, the study examined two interrelated forms of learning: (a) learning English, both in a formal classroom setting and in an informal setting; and (b) learning to teach English by attending formal workshops and courses and by making self-initiated efforts to improve their practices on the job. The study not only depicts and discusses Fatima's and Khulood's current teaching practices through four teaching lessons but also takes a broader perspective on the development of their classroom practices over their careers. This study employed narrative inquiry which places importance on the teachers' subjective understanding, presenting their experiences, as they themselves understand them. Through the two teachers' stories, the study provides a detailed analysis of the way English is learned and taught as a second and a foreign language in Pakistan. Two themes emerged from the analysis of Fatima's and Khulood's development of classroom practices: (a) continuity and change, and (b) change and continuity. The first theme, continuity and change, traces the various ways in which Fatima and Khulood follow the continuity of their teaching tradition and at the same time initiate minor changes in their teaching development. The second theme, change and continuity, focuses on the ways they bring about such changes within that continuity. It describes what they learned to do on their own while teaching and how they developed their practices over time on the job. The study demonstrates how teacher development is both a biographical and an experiential process. Teachers develop and understand their classroom practices by: (a) recalling and reconstructing memories of how they learned English and how others taught English; and (b) engaging in, reflecting on, adapting, and adding to their day-to-day practices. This inquiry is significant because it offers a more in depth portrayal of how teachers of English in two different contexts in Pakistan understand the development of their classroom practices.

Keywords: English language, Study and teaching
English language, Pakistan
English teachers, Pakistan
Teaching
Coarse-to-fine object recognition using shock graphs

Shock graphs have emerged as a powerful generic 2-D shape representation. However, most approaches typically assume that the silhouette has been correctly segmented. In this thesis, we present a framework for shock graph-based object recognition in less contrived scenes. The approach consists of two steps, beginning with a construction of a region scale-space. For a given region, we traverse this scale-space, using a model hypothesis to guide a region grouping process that improves the hypothesis. The result represents the best subset of regions that matches a given object model. In the second step, the region-model correspondence is used to initialize an active skeleton that includes a shock graph-based energy term, allowing the contour to fine tune the region shape while deforming under a stricter set of model constraints. Together, the two components provide a coarse-to-fine, model-based segmentation/recognition framework.
Fathers' perceptions of their children's exposure to unhealthy parenting: the importance of acknowledging responsibility and appreciating impact

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a self-report measure of fathers' ability to acknowledge responsibility and appreciate the impact of unhealthy parenting on their children. The measure developed consisted of four scenarios depicting emotional distress, interparental conflict, intimidation, and emotional neglect. Using open-ended questions and rating scales, 35 fathers from low and high-stress father-child dyads indicated the extent to which they appreciated negative impact of fathering behaviours depicted in the scenarios and whether they attributed unhealthy parenting to themselves, their child, spouse, or situation. Men's ratings on this measure were compared to their scores on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory, the Parenting Stress Index, and the Abuse Risk Interview. Item analysis revealed good psychometric properties and some convergent validity with interview ratings. Interview ratings, but not self-report, were related to measures of risk for abuse. Implications for assessment of fathers at risk for abusive behaviour are discussed.

Keywords: Father and child
Abusive men
Parenting
Family violence
Child abuse
Fathers, Attitudes
Trying, not trying, and trying-not: school-age children's understanding of intention

Attributions of intention are integral to making sense of human behaviour. Despite this fact, research on children's developing understanding of intention is sparse and data are especially lacking with respect to school-age children. The purpose of this study was to develop a story-book task that tapped school-age children's understanding of three facets of intention: trying, not-trying , and trying-not. Although examples of trying-not are apparent in our discourse (e.g., we try-not to break rules or hurt others' feelings), children's understanding of this facet of intention has not been previously studied. The story-book task was administered to 152, four to 11-year-old children, for whom language ability and SES were also determined. Children passed the story-book task if they correctly pointed to one of three pictures in which a child story character really tried, just didn't try, or really tried-not to fulfill an adult's request. Children also provided verbal justifications for these intention attributions and answered questions about intention more generally. The results indicated children differentiated trying, not-trying , and trying-not as separate and meaningful facets of intention. A developmental effect revealed a gradual increase in children's understanding of intention, which reached a plateau between 8 and 10 years of age. It is argued that older children's successful intention attributions may be associated with a growing appreciation of goal-action consistencies and inconsistencies as well as an ability to selectively discriminate when actions, facts, and intention state terms are relevant to specific facets of intention. Although language ability was strongly associated with intention task performance, SES was not. Since trying and trying-not served to disambiguate desires and intentions in this study, these terms may draw attention to goal conflicts in real life, thereby providing children with their first clues to the controllability of action. These results also emphasize the value of developing future tasks that situate intention attributions within a social context. This study is of interest to those concerned with (1) the complexity of intention understanding and the development of such in children; (2) relations between language abilities and intention understanding in children; and (3) the social cognitive underpinnings of behaviour control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Keywords: Knowledge, Theory of, in children
Intention (Logic)
Cognition in children
Philosophy of mind in children
Meaning (Psychology)
Inhibition of muscle cell osteodifferentiation by fetuin

Although the pathophysiology of HO is not well understood, it has been suggested that mesenchymal cells near surgical sites, are exposed to bone particles, containing bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP). Fetuin, also known as alpha2HS-glycoprotein (Ahsg), is a serum glycoprotein, which binds TGFbeta and BMP cytokines due its BMP/TGFbeta receptor-like region within the fetuin structure. We hypothesize that the osteodifferentiation of C2C12 cells under the influence of BMPs will be inhibited by fetuin. Mouse myoblasts were grown with BMP and fetuin added to the media. There was an increase AP activity in the presence of increasing doses of BMP/NCP or rhBMP-4. Fetuin inhibited induced increases in AP in a dose-dependent fashion with the most effective dose being in the range of 50--80muM fetuin. C2C12 cultures exhibited increased CK expression with the addition of 20ng/ml of rBMP-4. This increase was similarly inhibited by approximately 50muM fetuin. Using this model, fetuin has been shown to inhibit the effects of BMPs on target cells. As well, using this model we were able to approximate the doses of fetuin that might be required for regulation of BMP effects in vivo.
Manufacturing guilt: The trials and traumas of the British moderns

The British Moderns thought about the law in ways similar to contemporary critical perspectives of liberal jurisprudence. The modernist preoccupation with interiority that we have come to know so well speaks equally to the law's turn inward. Tracing the development of mens rea, the mental element of criminal culpability, and intention more generally, alongside some particulars in the literary histories of Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford and James Joyce, I contend that the moderns depict trials as psychologically traumatic events, events in need of reform. I map the cultural circumstances surrounding each author together with the ways that each of them interacted with his legal machinery. I posit a limited theory of the poetics of law and literature, in which the British moderns act as the site for exploring the common discursive frameworks in operation. The law's search for epistemological certainty, for legal truths, meant severe and often irreversible hardships for the characters in the works of the authors I survey. I define this result of giving testimony as ontological trauma. Siding neither with contemporary theories of liberal jurisprudence, nor the tenets of cultural studies, I argue that these perspectives need not be opposed. Chapter 1 provides a legal context for the trials of Oscar Wilde by historicising the half-century of law leading to his arrest. Chapter 2 argues that Wilde and Conrad both depict subject positions altered by the trauma of giving legal testimony. Comparing their styles of representing interiority to concurrent developments in mens rea, I argue that confession can also be a censorial tool for legal injustice. Chapter 3 adds another layer to this palimpsest, focusing on Ford and Joyce. Using the conversations that both Ford and Joyce carry on with the law, in person and in their texts, I foreground cultural studies notions of political power and its effects on individuals in courtroom situations. Chapter 4 brings my work full circle by re-introducing concepts of individual and group identity. I see my work here paving the road to a future project that places the moderns and their later legal activity alongside the BBC.