VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Math computation difficulties in grade 7 and 8 students

Little research has been done on the underlying factors contributing to math computation difficulties. This study investigated some of the cognitive abilities and basic mathematics skills that are believed to be related to success in math computations. From a pool of 187 grade 7 and 8 students, thirty students were identified as having math disabilities (AM) based on the WRAT3 Arithmetic standard scores. Thirty peers who achieved WRAT3 Arithmetic, Reading and Spelling standard scores within the Average range were selected as members of the normal control (N) group. Comparisons were made between the two groups on variables thought to be related to math computation: processing speed, memory, basic numeration concepts and number facts. The results revealed that the NC Group scored significantly higher than the MD Group on the measures of basic numeration concepts such as place value, estimation and number patterns. Many of the procedure errors made by the MD Group could be related to these concepts. The NC Group also outperformed the MD Group on all of the processing speed measures and on a sequential memory task. The processing speed measures, along with the numeration concepts and number fact automaticity level, predicted a significant amount of the variance in the WRAT3 Arithmetic scores. Surprisingly, no group differences were noted on the working memory tasks, nor were verbal short-term memory differences found. As expected, the NC Group knew significantly more number facts automatically than the MD Group in all four operations. There was however, growth in the MD Group across grades. The pattern of automaticity was similar across operations and groups, with ties being easier in most cases. Both groups used the same type of back-up strategies for non-automatic facts. The possibility of heterogeneity within the MD Group was explored by dividing this group of students into subtypes based on their academic profiles. The expected pattern of visual-spatial deficits in the students with exclusively arithmetic disabilities (Group A) was rare. Few differences were found on the cognitive and math measures between students in Group A and those with deficits in arithmetic, reading and spelling (Group ARS).
Making change, women doing community economic development

Community Economic Development (CED) involves marginalized communities working together to achieve financial benefits, as well as to develop new skills and support systems. Economic activities are the explicit organizing mandate for the CED project studied in this thesis, and the main reason behind the group's government funding. At the same time, within CED economic development acts as a catalyst for the building of skills and community amongst marginalized women. Many women active with the initiative identify the construction of community and the opportunity to learn about themselves, to learn about others, and to learn tangible skills as the main benefits of their participation in CED. This thesis explores the experiences of a group of marginalized women participating in CED. It also examines the challenges and tensions involved in carrying out a women's CED initiative in the current economic climate of Ontario.
Epidermal growth factor receptor overexpression as a target for imaging and radiotherapy of breast cancer

The overexpression of the epidermal growth factor receptor in 30-60% of human breast cancers was investigated as a target for radiopharmaceuticals specifically directed against the receptor for diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy of the disease. Using phantoms (models) of breast cancer lesions targeted ' in vitro' with indium-111 labelled human epidermal growth factor ( 111In-hEGF), it was demonstrated that diagnostic imaging through targeting EGFR overexpression in breast cancer could be a very sensitive technique able to detect as few as 5 * 104 to 105 cancer cells under ideal conditions. The sensitivity was reduced up to 300-fold however by receptor heterogeneity or a low proportion of tumour cell targeting combined with tissue attenuation. A comparison of the tumour imaging properties of 111In-hEGF and 111In-labelled anti-EGFR monoclonal antibody 528 (111In-mAb 528) in athymic mice with human breast cancer xenografts showed that macromolecules are more effective tumour targeting agents than peptide growth factors due to higher absolute tumour uptake at only slightly lower tumour/blood ratios. The 10-fold higher tumour uptake of 111In-mAb 528 compared to 111In-hEGF was likely due to its prolonged residence time in the blood. The internalization and nuclear translocation of 111In-hEGF after binding to its receptor was exploited to selectively deliver 111In into the cytoplasm and nucleus of breast cancer cells overexpressing the EGFR. Internalized 111In-hEGF was radiotoxic 'in vitro' to the breast cancer cells with <5% survival at <130 mBq/cell. The radiotoxicity was probably due to the emission of Auger electrons by 111In at close proximity to the chromosomal DNA. There was no evidence of radiotoxicity ' in vivo' in mice administered high doses of the 111In-hEGF to normal tissues such as the liver and kidneys which express moderate amounts of EGFR. These results are encouraging for the application of radiopharmaceuticals specifically targeted to the EGFR for diagnostic imaging or radiotherapy of advanced forms of breast cancer in humans.
Effects of biomass growth on pressure drop in biofilters

The effects of microbial mass accumulation and distribution in biofilter air pressure losses were experimentally studied. A model was proposed to predict pressure drop as a function of biomass concentration in a biofilter. Two bench-scale biofilters, one packed with inert porous pellets (Nova Inert®) and the other with wood chips, were operated with excess nutrients under similar conditions to treat air polluted with methanol (loading rates of 100 to 150 g methanol/m3 bed/h) and generate biomass. Uneven biomass distribution, described by localised high and low biomass concentrations in the biofilter beds, was the key factor affecting increased pressure drops due to extreme local porosity reduction by clogging. The highest pressure drops in the beds (2600 Pa/m in the wood chip biofilter and 550 Pa/m in the Nova Inert® biofilter) were caused by thick layers of biomass with high moisture content. and high extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) concentration. Pressure drop varied exponentially with the amount of biomass and bed moisture, and cumulative methanol consumption. Pressure drop increased significantly at a critical point in methanol removal and biomass accumulation. Six-fold higher pressure drops were measured in the wood chip biofilter compared to the Nova Inert® biofilter due to more biomass growth and bed compaction.
Women in cardiac rehabilitation, our stories

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death and disability worldwide for women. Even so, women are under represented in cardiac research and there remain few studies that focus specifically on women. This life history inquiry project was designed to arrive at an in depth understanding of the lived experience of a few women in cardiac rehabilitation and explore how their personal qualities and life experiences influence their involvement in such programming. Three women between the ages of 40 and 80 years, who were regularly participating in a non-medically supervised, graduate cardiac rehabilitation program, were recruited to engage in multiple conversations regarding personal life experiences. Consistent with life history research processes, additional research techniques included a review of related cardiac rehabilitation and personal documents and observation within the cardiac rehabilitation setting. These stories provide an understanding of the complexity of life experiences that an individual brings to cardiac rehabilitation. Insights emerged regarding personal qualities (resilience, positive outlook, sense of self and view of health) and environmental qualities (social support, relationships with health professionals) that facilitate cardiac rehabilitation participation, both initially and long-term. Desirable program features were identified including an individualized and informed orientation process, close supervision, approachable and flexible staff, support from staff, and "women's only" programming. Five themes emerged from the stories regarding the meaning of the cardiac rehabilitation experience: connecting with others, gaining perspective, reaping the benefits, learning with others, and having fun. The desirable program features and meaning of cardiac rehabilitation are grounded in adult learning and theory, thereby supporting the notion that the link between adult learning and cardiac rehabilitation needs to be explicit and operationalized.
Cartographies of violence, women, memory, and the subject(s) of the internment

In this thesis, it is argued that the expulsion of Japanese Canadians from the Canadian west coast and their incarceration, dispossession, and displacement in the 1940s were critical acts in Canadian nation-building, acts that served to further the notion of Canada as a space of white supremacy. These nation-building processes, aimed at producing a hegemonic notion of nation and citizenship, were also intrinsically violent. Yet in order to reproduce the notion of Canada as a benevolent country, violence of such enormous consequence must be forgotten through various processes and the thesis examines how certain representational discourses contribute to the forgetting of the enormity of the violence and its long-term effects. Through interviews with eleven women who were incarcerated and their daughters, I trace how memory of this history is mobilized and transmitted across generations. Using a contrapuntal spatial analysis, I examine how women describe the spaces of incarceration. I illustrate how memory and subjectivity are heterogeneously and relationally produced through seemingly disparate yet interconnected incarceration sites. also argue that this production of subjects must be seen as contingent upon interlocking systems of domination and emphasize that hegemonic social relations of white supremacy, male domination, class, heteronormativity, and physical/mental ability arrange subjects relationally and hierarchically. Throughout the thesis, I problematize the predominant notion of the "silent" Japanese Canadian subject. The focus upon the "silent" subject must be critically examined in relation to a racializing and en-gendering Western gaze of domination and the forgetting of the silences of the many non-Japanese Canadians who devised, enforced, witnessed, and benefited from these multiply situated violent practices. The discourse of the "silent" subject is concretely interrogated when I examine the ways in which knowledge of this history is transmitted to children of families who were incarcerated. Also undertaken through this study is an interrogation of the liberal humanist subject underpinning hegemonic notions of nation, citizenship, and subjectivity. This analysis is applied, for example, in illustrating how interpretations of testimonies may presume and reify the liberal subject. The thesis also acknowledges how women contest domination and challenge us to re-imagine the subject, citizenship, and nation.
The state and the culture of violence in London, 1760-1840

This dissertation provides a broad historical survey of attitudes towards violence in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century English society. It is the first to contextualize evidence about interpersonal violence in metropolitan London. The dissertation explores the ways in which changing attitudes towards violence relate to larger issues of legal reform and to the remarkable shift in penal practices in this period. The dissertation combines a dose study of the records of various metropolitan courts with a more general assessment of popular attitudes towards the everyday experience of violence. The records of the court of King's Bench proved a particularly rich source for this study, illuminating both the procedures of this court, as well as the motivations of litigants in cases of interpersonal violence. The records of the quarter sessions revealed significant changes in penal practice especially with regard to the prosecution and punishment of assault. In general, the courts began to take a harsher attitude towards violence in the late decades of the eighteenth century and made use of imprisonment to punish such behaviour more seriously than in the past. This shift in penal practice reflects larger changes in attitudes towards violence in English society. Modifications to other penal practices were also occurring in this period. Violent punishment lay at the heart of the English judicial system's repertoire of penal strategies. But as a consequence of the political and philosophical debate over the nature and rationale of judicial punishment, in concert with more mundane changes in the physical geography of the metropolis, violence and humiliation rapidly declined as central aspects of the English penal ethos. Through its exploration of how violence relates to these larger issues of legal reform, and the notable shift in sentiment regarding penal policy during this period, the dissertation illuminates the complexity of social reform discourses, revealing the extent to which changes in attitudes towards violence, including violent punishment, drew upon deeper cultural norms for their legitimacy and moral backing.
I know who I am: A Caribbean woman's identity in Canada, agency and resistance in community organizing

The identity of Caribbean women in Canada is often subsumed and homogenized in the concept of "immigrant women" and contributions of these women to Canadian society are erased. This thesis is an inquiry which transforms this picture of an uni-dimensional Image to one of multiple subjectivities and radicalism among forty-six women from the English speaking Caribbean. These women represent diverse heritages; cultures; class positions and different sexual orientation. They have in common their residence in Canada for periods of twenty to thirty years. Their stories demonstrate how these Caribbean women, reinvent their identities, opposing the pathologized victim identity of an 'immigrant woman' by using agency to apply to strategies of education; networking and community organizing. I historicize these experiences from early colonization to modern day political activity in the region. As a result the interconnectedness of their histories becomes apparent and I hypothesize a collective subjectivity. I am then able to interpret their stories with three arguments: (a) home is a site of learning resistance; (b) independence is an ethic in Caribbean female ideology; and (c) an alternative women's movement was formed in Canada to reproduce a Caribbean brand of feminism. I further argue that this learning at home produced independence as an ethic which them to act on behalf of themselves and their communities. The activities of the women in this study culminated in an ongoing alternative women's movement with strong anti-racist thrust. I conclude that such collective resistance was only possible because home, despite its contradictions and contestations, is an educative education that provided Caribbean women with lessons of independence and resistance.
Immigration in Canada: Context, assimilation and labour market impacts

In Chapter I, I introduce the reader to immigration in Canada. This includes the contextual environment, immigration policies and brief reviews of three types of immigrant studies: those on assimilation, those on take-up rates of transfer payments and those on the labour market impact of immigration on native-born Canadians. In Chapter II, I investigate the economic assimilation experienced by immigrants over the 1980s. Previous studies of the labour market experience of male immigrants to Canada have uncovered two disturbing trends: declining entry earnings for successive new immigrant cohorts, and low assimilation rates. These findings suggest that many cohorts may never assimilate. The 1991 Census provides a first look at the immigrant cohorts arriving in the 1980's. These immigrants appear to avoid the plight of their predecessors; entry earnings have stopped falling, and those immigrants arriving between 1981 and 1985 experienced a 17% assimilation rate. I am unable to explain this turnaround based on the observable characteristics recorded in the census data. In Chapter III, I explore the economic impact of immigrants! presence within the Canadian labour market on the wages of native-born Canadians and earlier immigrants. Most of the existing evidence on this question uses data from the United States and finds no impact. In this paper I estimate the impact of immigration on native wages using Canadian data, paying close attention to the important econometric issues, such as the potential endogeneity of immigrants' choice of location upon arrival. The "labour market" is defined by occupations. Two important innovations are the use of immigrant source-country characteristics and immigrants' intended occupation at entry as instruments in predicting immigration flows to the labour market. My results consistently point to no evidence of adverse effects of immigrants on the labour market outcomes of native-born Canadians. This chapter also contains an analysis of the impact of immigration on educational and age wage differentials. Larger impacts are found on the wage differential between young and older workers. Lastly, I find some evidence that natives exit labour markets that immigrants enter and that new immigrants may be confined to lower paying occupations.
The construction of Eritrean women's identity in the Canadian context

This research is about Eritrean-Canadian immigrant women and their political mid cultural experiences in Eritrea as well as their adjustment experiences in Canada and the impact of these experiences on their identity. While past socio-political and cultural backgrounds construct identities, the complex adjustment process in Canada continuously re-defines identities, resulting in a range of outcomes from new synthesized Eritrean-Canadian identities to culture conflict and resistance. The intersection of race, ethnicity and gender within the structure of power relations in Canada contributes to Eritrean women's roles and identity as they adjust to a Western culture and different socio-political framework with balanced or conflicting allegiances to Eritrean national identity and Canadian citizenship. While the thesis studies the adjustment experiences of Eritrean-Canadian women in Toronto, it also lays some groundwork for understanding Eritrean nationalism and culture through the literature review and through the subject location of the researcher as an Eritrean-Canadian woman.
Antidotal mechanisms for hydrogen sulfide toxicity

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) toxicity mechanisms are still not well understood and currently used antidotes are ineffective. H2S was found to be not only toxic 'per se' but was metabolically activated to reactive metabolites which can react with GSH or protein thiols to form persulfides. The activation was probably catalyzed by cytochrome P450 CYP 3A and 2B as cytotoxicity and GSH depletion was prevented by metyrapone or SKF-525A and markedly increased by hydroperoxides. Cytochrome 'c' prevented H2S cytotoxicity, a process in which cytochrome ' c' was reduced. Methemoglobin prevented H2S cytotoxicity by trapping H2S to form sulfmethemoglobin which catalyzed H2S autoxidation. Molybdenum, barium and lead prevented cytotoxicity by forming sulfide complexes without H2S autoxidation while copper, cobalt, nickel and iron formed active complexes that catalyzed H2S autoxidation. Hydroxocobalamin was highly effective as an antidote in preventing H2S cytotoxicity ' in vitro' and 'in vivo', where it was more potent and effective than currently used nitrite.
The calculus of conformal metrics and univalence criteria for holomorphic functions

Let 'D' be the unit disc in the complex plane, and <math> <f> <g>l</g><fen lp="par">z<rp post="par"></fen>=<fr><nu>1</nu><de> 1-<fen lp="vb">z<rp post="vb"></fen><sup>2</sup></de></fr></f> </math> the hyperbolic line element. Let <math> <f> <sc>S</sc></f> </math> be the class of holomorphic functions <display-math> <fd> <fl>&cubl0;f<hsp sp="0.167">:<hsp sp="0.167">D<hsp sp="0.167"> &rarrr;<hsp sp="0.167"><b>C&vbm0;<mit>f<rm>1-1,<hsp sp="0.167"> <mit>f<fen lp="par"><rm>0</rm><rp post="par"></fen><hsp sp="0.167"> <rm>=0,<hsp sp="0.167"><mit>f<sup>'</sup><fen lp="par"> <rm>0</rm><rp post="par"></fen><hsp sp="0.167"><rm>=1&cubr0;</rm> </mit></rm></mit></rm></mit></b></fl> </fd> </display-math> Define higher order Schwarzian derivatives by <display-math> <fd> <fl><g>s</g><inf>3</inf><fen lp="par">f<rp post="par"></fen>= <fr><nu>f<sup>'''</sup></nu><de>f<sup>' </sup></de></fr>-<fr><nu>3</nu><de>2</de></fr><fen lp="par"><fr><nu> f<sup>''</sup></nu><de>f<sup>'</sup></de></fr> <rp post="par"></fen><sup>2</sup>,<hsp sp="0.167"><g>s</g><inf> n+1</inf><fen lp="par">f<rp post="par"></fen>=<g>s</g><inf>n</inf> <fen lp="par">f<rp post="par"></fen><sup>'</sup>-<fen lp="par"> n-1<rp post="par"></fen><fr><nu>f<sup>''</sup></nu> <de>f<sup>'</sup></de></fr><g>s</g><inf>n</inf><fen lp="par"> f<rp post="par"></fen></fl> </fd> </display-math> We show that for any <math> <f> f&isin;<sc>S</sc></f> </math>, <math> <f> <fen lp="vb"><g>s</g><inf>n</inf><fen lp="par">f<rp post="par"></fen> <fen lp="par">z<rp post="par"></fen><rp post="vb"></fen><=6 ¤4<sup>n-3</sup><fen lp="par">n-2<rp post="par"></fen>!<g>l</g> <fen lp="par">z<rp post="par"></fen><sup>n-1</sup>[for all]z&isin; D</f> </math>. These bounds are sharp. We also give sharp two-point geometric distortion theorems for these in term of hyperbolic distance. Furthermore, we develop the calculus of the non-holomorphic derivatives of Minda and Peschl for conformal metrics, in order to facilitate function- theoretic computations. The relation of these derivatives to the Levi-Civita connection is given in terms of the curvature of the conformal metric. Necessary tools for differentiation and integration are also developed.