VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
FireSmart management of flammable wildland-urban interface landscapes

The term wildland-urban interface (WUI) refers to any area where structures are located adjacent to or within flammable forest or wildland fuels. WUI areas are exposed to the danger of wildfire that can result in extreme losses. FireSmart forest management practices can help reduce the risk that wildfire poses on WU1 landscapes. Fire managers and planners must assess the effectiveness of complex sets of activities to influence the impact of fire on the values at risk. Decision Support Systems (DSS) can be used to help develop and evaluate such FireSmart strategies. I designed a WUI Decision Support System with which users can specify fuel treatment activities by using a GIS interface which enables them to delineate where potential fuel treatment activities might take place. The performance of alternative fuel treatments is then evaluated by assessing the potential impact of such changes in fire activity on the landscape.
Sensorimotor interaction in stereopsis

Stereopsis is the reconstruction of depth from slight differences in the two retinal images. The first step in stereopsis is stereo-matching, the locating of corresponding visual features in the two eyes' retinal images. Stereo-matching is a demanding task, but it could be simplified by exploiting a geometric constraint: matching features are constrained to retinal bands called epipolar lines. The epipolar lines slide on the retina when the eyes move, so eye position information is necessary if the epipolar constraint is to be used. Using random-dot stereograms it is shown that human stereo-matching does not shift retinal search regions along with the moving epipolar lines, but searches large retina-fixed two-dimensional retinal patches instead. The size of these patches depends on the pattern of eye movements. In simulations of eye movement effects on the search zone size it is demonstrated that human eye movement follows a movement pattern that reduces the size of these search zones. This movement pattern is a compromise between motor advantages and the demands of stereopsis. It is also shown that the visual system could use the epipolar constraint with retina-fixed search regions by using visual information alone to compute the location of the epipolar lines. This process is called visual bootstrapping. Psychophysical data are presented showing that the visual system does use visual bootstrapping. The fusional horopter is the region of space where objects are seen single. A mathematical extension of the classical theoretical point-horopter horopter is presented that allows the computation of the point-horopter as a full two-dimensional surface. This dissertation shows that it is necessary to study the interaction of sensory and motor systems in order to fully understand the purpose of both. It uses the interaction of stereopsis and the oculomotor system as an example.
Nonlinear finite element analysis of beam-column subassemblies

An analytical investigation was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of the finite element modelling capabilities of VecTor2 in capturing the nonlinear cyclic response of beam-column subassemblies. The modelling efforts were utilized using the default behavioural or constitutive model options in order to prove that the program successfully captures the necessary response parameters without any modifications to the structure details. The specimens considered covered a wide range of conditions, and included interior and exterior and seismically and non-seismically designed beam-column subassemblies. The beam-column subassemblies were examined with particular attention to the effects of shear deformations in the joint regions and bond-slip effects of the beam longitudinal reinforcement. It was observed that VecTor2 analysis results showed better accuracy in estimating the seismic performance of seismically designed beam-column subassemblies opposed to non-seismically designed ones. Overall, however, the program exhibited good accuracy in predicting the strength, deformation response, energy dissipation, and failure mode of beam-column subassemblies.
Design and development of the ilute operational prototype: a comprehensive microsimulation model of urban systems

Transportation problems have exacted enormous economic, societal and environmental consequences in many urban areas over the past fifty years. While the public failure of transportation models in the 1970s led many planners to abandon their use, there has been renewed interest in recent years due to technological and methodological advances. The complex interconnection between transportation and the rest of the urban environment, however, necessitates an urban systems approach to transportation modelling. ILUTE is a comprehensive dynamic microsimulation model of urban systems based on the “ideal model” described in the final report of the Transit Cooperative Research Program's (TCRP) Project H-12, “Integrated Urban Models for Simulation of Transit and Land-Use Policies”. The contributions made by this thesis include the design of overall ILUTE software, the resolution of critical design issues, and the development of an initial operational prototype. Specific advances made in this thesis include an open design for collaborative development; fully-elaborated real-world classes; explicit representation of persons, households, and families; handling of multiple spatial aggregations; handling of joint decisions; handling of temporal leads and lags; a stressor-based decision-making mechanism; support for arbitrary time increments; integrated management of temporal data; and an improved technique for monetary handling. The operational prototype can synthesize a test set of objects; import external spatial, economic, and travel time data; evolve the state of the system to an arbitrary date using an arbitrary time step; track the behaviour of individual objects in the system; simulate population in and out migration; export spatiotemporal data for visualization in an animated 3D environment; and read and write state information to and from a relational database. ILUTE has been designed to replace conventional models in the analysis of a broad range of transportation and urban policy issues. It can also serve as an important tool to help engineers and planners understand the interaction between the urban environment and the transportation system. ILUTE has the potential to transform our urban landscape and significantly enhance our economic, environmental, and societal well-being—a prospect that few other technologies can offer.
A category-theoretic approach to representation and analysis of inconsistency in graph-based viewpoints

Eliciting the requirements for a proposed system typically involves different stakeholders with different expertise, responsibilities, and perspectives. This may result in inconsistencies between the descriptions provided by stakeholders. Viewpoints-based approaches have been proposed as a way to manage incomplete and inconsistent models gathered from multiple sources. In this thesis, we propose a category-theoretic framework for the analysis of fuzzy viewpoints. Informally, a fuzzy viewpoint is a graph in which the elements of a lattice are used to specify the amount of knowledge available about the details of nodes and edges. By defining an appropriate notion of morphism between fuzzy viewpoints, we construct categories of fuzzy viewpoints and prove that these categories are (finitely) cocomplete. We then show how colimits can be employed to merge the viewpoints and detect the inconsistencies that arise independent of any particular choice of viewpoint semantics. Taking advantage of the same category-theoretic techniques used in defining fuzzy viewpoints, we will also introduce a more general graph-based formalism that may find applications in other contexts.
Development and evaluation of an oral health literacy instrument for adults

Objectives. To develop and validate an instrument to measure oral health literacy of adults. Methods. The Oral Health Literacy Instrument (OHLI) was developed based on the Test of Functional Health Literacy of Adults (TOFHLA). The OHLI was validated on a convenience sample of 100 dental patients. Predictive validity was assessed by determining the association between the OHLI and dental knowledge, education level and frequency of dental visits. Concurrent and construct validity were assessed by correlating OHLI and TOFHLA scores. Test-retest reliability and internal consistency reliability were assessed using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cronbach's alpha, respectively. Results. The OHLI showed a significant correlation with the TOFHLA (rs= 0.613, P
5-HT1B receptors and their role in etoh self-administration behaviour with focus on the basolateral amygdala

The present studies were designed (1) To determine if peripheral 5-HT1B agonist administration alters EtOH's reward efficacy and (2) To examine the effect of manipulations of 5-HT1B function within the BLA. Animals trained to operantly self-administer ascending limb doses of 12% EtOH received peripheral administration of moderate to low doses of RU 24969 prior to test sessions in which the animals responded for EtOH according to an FR4 schedule. Animals trained to self-administer 12% EtOH or 1% sucrose were bilaterally fitted with cannula aimed at the BLA (AP 5.3, L ± 5.0, V 5.0, from IA0). EtOH trained animals received bilateral injections of CP 93,129 or GR 55562 prior to test sessions. Sucrose trained animals received bilateral injections of CP 93,129 prior to test sessions. Peripheral administration of RU 24969 decreased 6.0 mg EtOH responding but did not significantly affect responding for either 1.0 or 3.0 mg EtOH doses. Bilateral BLA injections of CP 93,129 increased responding for EtOH but had no effect on responding for sucrose. Bilateral BLA injections of GR 55562 did not affect responding for EtOH. We conclude: (1) RU 24969 does not alter EtOH's reward efficacy. (2) Activation of BLA 5-HT1B receptors produces an effect consistent with an inhibition of EtOH-induced reward. (3) BLA 5-HT1B receptors do not tonically mediate this effect and are not involved in the regulation of sucrose self-administration behaviour.
Regulation of expression of 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (PGDH) by corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) occurs through a calcium dependent pathway in human chorion trophoblast cells

Prostaglandins play a crucial role in mediating parturition events. The metabolism of prostaglandins is carried out by PGDH in chorion and throughout gestation there are increased amounts of CRH. We hypothesized that CRH produced locally in the chorion could act to modulate PGDH activity throughout gestation. To investigate this we obtained percoll-purified human chorion trophoblast cells from uncomplicated term pregnancies. CRH had no effect on PGDH activity; however, cells treated with astressin and cells treated with a CRH antibody showed a significant decrease in PGDH activity but increased mRNA expression. Cells treated with either BAPTA or EGTA had significantly reduced PGDH activity, but when CRH was added PGDH activity returned to basal values. PGDH mRNA was increased when calcium was chelated and this was reversed after the addition of CRH. We propose in the chorion CRH acts in an autocrine/paracrine manner to maintain PGDH and ensure only local actions of PGs.
Children's understanding of emotion in speech

Age-related changes in children's understanding of emotion as communicated in speech were explored, as were factors affecting children's ability to allocate attention to propositional and paralinguistic cues to emotion in speech. Chapter 2 presents three experiments that examined age-related changes in attention to propositional and paralinguistic emotion cues. The results revealed that children judge emotion primarily from what is said, whereas adults judge emotion from how an utterance is expressed. This difference was not attributable to young listeners' inability to label paralinguistic emotion cues: 4-year-olds were able to accurately label emotional paralanguage when the message content was unintelligible. Nor was it attributable to children's inability to simultaneously encode information about propositional and paralinguistic cues to emotion. All participants initially took longer to respond to utterances with conflicting cues than to those with non-conflicting cues, suggesting that they encoded both cues. Chapter 3 presents an experiment in which conflicting emotion cues were sung rather than spoken. As in speech, 6-year-olds judged the singer's emotion from the lyrics rather than the melody. Chapter 4 presents an experiment that examined the effect of elaborated and repeated instructions on 6-year-olds' attention to emotion cues in speech. Clear instructions to ignore content and attend instead to paralanguage were repeated at regular intervals. Children were probed for their memory of these instructions. Most children recalled the instructions but remained focused on content. Chapter 5 presents two experiments that examined 6-year-olds' apparent attentional inflexibility. In one experiment, 6-year-olds judged the emotion of a speaker from how she spoke after being primed to attend to paralanguage. Despite the presence of competing content, participants judged her feelings from her paralanguage. In a second experiment, 6-year-olds were required to switch from responding on the basis of content to responding on the basis of paralanguage under various conditions of instruction and performance feedback. Participants were also probed for their explicit recognition of the conflicting cues to emotion. Results suggest that representing the structure of the task and understanding the relevance of instructions make important contributions to successful switching. Chapter 6 summarizes the findings and outlines avenues for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
At risk: the racialized student marked for educational failure

This thesis investigates the role that educational discourse—in particular standardized practices like province-wide standards and testing—has played and continues to play in the production of student subjectivities. Using the theories of Michel Foucault, I argue that the discursive practices in and around the recent secondary school reforms in Ontario—especially the Grade Ten Literacy Test—have led to the increased categorization of racialized student bodies as marked for educational failure. The 'At Risk' designation that originally sought to identify and remediate students who were at risk of failing standardized tests and not graduating from high school, functions instead as part of discourse that profiles and pre-emptively punishes racialized bodies through techniques of discipline and in the guise of remediation. This research is therefore conceived of as a first step in identifying and understanding the ways in which power relations embedded in the discursive practices of the current education system effectively circulate to produce racialized subjects marked as potential failures. The thesis tracks the emergence of three tiers of 'At Risk' students: those who fail the Grade Ten Literacy Test, those who might fail the test as described in particular by two Ministry documents "Think Literacy Success" (2003) and "Building Pathways" (2003), and those who have characteristics or visual markers that indicate potential risk as described by the early intervention identification tools. The discursive shift from marking bodies based on academic merit or achievement to profiling based on potential failure is significant as it invokes a narrative that school failure is a condition that can be read on the body.
Poetic justice: the paradox of Plato as poet and its implications for a defense of literature

This thesis is a defense of poetry as a mode of thought. It is intended to be a corroborating document for the work of other apologists for poetry like Sir Philip Sidney and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The thesis attempts to establish that Plato, as legislator, ie. political philosopher, is an unacknowledged poet. Proceeding from Stephen Pepper's theory of world hypotheses, in which he legitimizes non-empirical data as evidence, the thesis analyzes Plato's Republic as a literary work, thus setting in tension Plato's pronouncements against poetry and Plato's literary achievement in the Republic as illustrative of his own appropriation of the very art he would banish. Plato's dual identity as philosopher-poet becomes an exemplar that serves to advocate for the educational value of poetry in terms that skeptics about poetry's educational value can apprehend and appreciate.

Keywords: Literature
Politics and literature
Assessing biodegradation pathways and in situ biodegradation of gasoline constituents using stable isotopes and metabolic intermediates

This thesis integrates compound specific isotopic analysis (CSIA) and analysis of metabolic intermediates in order to: (a) elucidate biodegradation pathways in laboratory experiments; and (b) identify and quantify in situ biodegradation. Carbon isotopic values of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and its metabolite tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) were measured during aerobic MTBE biodegradation by the bacteria Pseudonocardia sp. K1 in a laboratory experiment. Isotopic analysis of MTBE alone could not distinguish between two possible biodegradation pathways: SN1 hydrolysis and oxidation. However, isotopic measurements of daughter TBA suggested that the tert-butyl group does not participate in the reaction and that biodegradation of MTBE by this strain likely proceeds via the oxidation pathway. At a MTBE contaminated field site in New York State, the MTBE biodegradation daughter product, TBA, was present in groundwater samples. However, TBA is often a co-contaminant in gasoline spills and its presence is therefore not necessarily indicative of MTBE biodegradation. Carbon and hydrogen isotopic values of MTBE suggested that biodegradation of MTBE was only a minor contributor to natural attenuation at this site and that the TBA was likely a co-contaminant in earlier gasoline spills. At a subarctic contaminated field site studied in Alaska, toluene biodegradation was indicated by the presence of its unique metabolite benzylsuccinate (BS) in the wells with the highest toluene concentrations. Since BS accounts for a very small fraction of the parent toluene, the approach works best at higher toluene concentrations. In wells with lower toluene concentrations, where BS concentrations were below detection limits, stable isotopic values identified biodegradation via an isotopic enrichment in 13C and 2H, relative to the source zone values. Lastly, in a field study conducted in California, biodegradation of MTBE was documented by enrichment in 13C of MTBE through time and an increase in TBA concentration. However, TBA isotopic values at the site suggest that TBA biodegradation is not occurring. The results show that an integrated approach that draws on both measurements of metabolites and stable isotopes gives the best assessment of in situ biodegradation and biodegradation pathways.
Experimental and numerical study of liquid jets in crossflow

An experimental and numerical study of the injection of liquid jets in subsonic gaseous crossflows was conducted. The focus of the study was on spatial size distributions of this type of atomization in different flow conditions. An experimental setup was developed to characterize the spray in conditions similar to real applications. The test chamber developed enabled the use of various spray characterization techniques by providing optical access from four sides of the spray. This allowed for size and velocity measurements of the spray using various laser diagnostic techniques such as PDPA, IPI and PIV. Also, a model was developed to predict the size distribution of the spray downstream of the nozzle. This model is based on combining both theoretical calculation of a jet in crossflow and a modified KIVA3 numerical code.
Current density impedance imaging

Current density impedance imaging (CDII) is a technique that allows non-invasive measurement of sample conductivity. The conventional Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) technique suffers from the ill-posedness of this inverse problem. It tries to recover internal conductivity from surface potential and current measurements, which causes the sensitivity to decrease in deeper regions. Numerical simulations have shown the validity and robustness of this technique. It has been proven that if two non-parallel current flows can be determined within the same conductive region, the information is sufficient to recover the relative conductivity. Our method, current density impedance imaging (CDII) uses two current density distributions to calculate the value of nabla;lnsigma. Furthermore, combined with a quality-guided line integral algorithm, CDII can calculate the internal conductivity from this nabla;lnsigma. This technique is a non-invasive way of detecting conductivity changes, and also an effective quasi-local approach to circumvent regions with either low MRI signal or high susceptibility.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of bicycle helmet legislation

Background. Legislation requiring children to wear bicycle helmets has been enacted in countries around the world. Although the published evidence supports helmet legislation, most studies have methodologic limitations. Further, no studies have examined variation in the effectiveness of legislation in different socio-economic and geographic strata. Objective. The objective of this thesis was to provide an evaluation of the impact of bicycle helmet legislation on children's injuries and helmet use. This included the relationship between legislation and head injuries, changes in children's bicycling related to legislation, the long-term impact of legislation on helmet use, and the impact of legislation on geographic variation in bicycle-related injuries. Methods. This study included two data sources. The first was a database of injuries from the Canadian Institute of Health Information. All Canadian children hospitalized for bicycle-related injuries were included. Children were then classified as head injury and other injury. Injury rates were examined by the presence or absence of legislation, and by geographic location. The second data source was an observational study conducted in East York. Observers went to 111 pre-selected sites before and after the enactment of legislation, and counted the number of children bicycling and noted whether they were helmeted. Results. Examination of bicycle-related head injury rates determined a 45% reduction in bicycle-related head injuries in provinces with legislation, compared to a 27% reduction in provinces without legislation. There was no change in the number of child bicyclists post-legislation, but legislation was found to have only a short-term impact on helmet use in low and mid income neighbourhoods. Children living outside urban areas were at increased risk of bicycle-related head injuries, even subsequent to the enactment of legislation. Conclusion. Bicycle helmet legislation appears to be effective in reducing head injuries, and does not reduce children's exposure to bicycling. Although legislation appears to be effective in increasing helmet use in all neighbourhoods, helmet use declines in low and mid income neighbourhoods four years post-legislation. Finally, despite the evidence for effectiveness of legislation, children outside urban areas remain at increased risk of bicycle-related head injuries post-legislation.