VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Extensions to active mobile IP and designs of multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) on active networks

In the current Internet, mobile IP recommendation provides mobility supports to mobile hosts. However, this recommendation suffers a “triangle routing” problem, in which packets travel longer paths from correspondent hosts to mobile hosts. In this thesis, an active mobile IP solution is proposed by taking advantages of active networks, in which a Path Optimization Agent (POA) provides route optimization, congestion avoidance and load balancing for the mobile IP on active networks. Further, to transparently provide route optimization with Quality of Service (QoS) support, a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) forwarding scheme for active networks is proposed in this work. By combining active mobile IP and MPLS, paths from correspondent nodes to mobile nodes are optimized. Active mobile IP reduces the latency due to high loading active node by relocating POA to a lower loading node while MPLS minimizes the delay among POAs by searching a path that satisfies certain QoS requirements.
Identification of a novel gene and its role as a putative suppressor of pancreatic cancer

The breakpoint on the short arm of chromosome 6 (6p) was refined to within 31 kilobases, bisecting a putative gene. Gene identification experiments demonstrated 3 isoforms of a transcriptional unit at this locus. Molecular analyses identified a novel gene (TPC) with 13 exons and a 495 amino acid open-reading frame. A portion of this protein has high sequence homology to a membrane-bound O-acyltransferase motif and co-localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum. Loss of heterozygosity was detected in 55.7% of the informative cases of pancreatic cancer. A sequence variant (F412L) corresponds to a highly conserved phenylalanine. The combined results suggest this newly identified gene should be considered as a candidate for involvement in pancreatic cancer. A patient with early onset pancreatic cancer and a familial germline balanced translocation t(2;6)(p25;p22) was characterized. We hypothesize that by characterizing the translocation breakpoints we may identify generic factors of importance in pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer.
Politic and civil words: The textual conversations of early modern women, 1590--1660

This study considers how five women from the Sidney and Cavendish families use written conversational interaction, what I call textual conversation, to mediate relationships within and through their texts. Attention to the interactive dimensions of the writings of Mary Sidney Herbert, Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, Jane Cavendish, and Elizabeth Brackley sheds important insight into the question of how these writers were negotiating the complex interrelationship among language, architectural and physiological space, and political and sexual agency. Conversation, both written and oral, was a vital political tool for male courtiers in the early modern period. I argue not only that Pembroke, Wroth, Cavendish, and her stepdaughters were attuned to the strategic potential of conversational interchange but that they redeployed the tenets of decorous oral and epistolary conversation in their writings to construct authoritative speaking positions for themselves and their female protagonists. The conditions for such agency are paradoxically fostered through the construction of fictional conversational spaces. Chapter One considers the conflated spaces of the closet, cave, and heart within which Pembroke's psalmist converses with God. Chapter Two explores the ludic spaces that pervade Mary Wroth's closet drama Love's Victory (c. 1620) and sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621). Chapter Three focuses on the space of the salon in relation to Jane Cavendish's occasional poems and collaborative household drama The Concealed Fancies (c. 1645), co-authored with her sister Elizabeth Brackley, while Chapter Four delves into the fantasy social space of Margaret Cavendish's epistolary paratext. In each case, the delimitation of conversational boundaries, coupled with the development of alternative conversational codes, sanctions considerably more authority within an interchange than would be possible in oral contexts. Like the exclusive closets and courts characteristic of humanist dialogues, these spaces create the possibility for simultaneously pointed and civil critique and train female speakers in the powerful potential of language use. My readings of textual conversation demonstrate its significance as a form of rhetorical practice and situate it as an alternative site of social interaction that facilitates political alliance and self-authorization even as it problematizes the boundaries between public and private, speaker and addressee.
Optimal feedback quantization schemes for multiuser diversity systems

In a system utilizing multiuser diversity, regular feedback of channel qualities to the base station is required for each user. Typically, the measure of channel quality has to be quantized at each mobile station before it can be sent back. In this paper, we present two distributed scalar quantization schemes that optimize two different performance criteria: the minimization of the probability Pe of incorrectly identifying the user with the best channel quality and maximization of resulting transmission capacity C. For a typical Rayleigh-fading system with 30 users, simulation results show that the Pe and C realized by the uniform quantization strategy with 16 quantization levels for each user can be achieved by only 3 quantization levels using the two proposed strategies. A practical approximation of the proposed schemes is studied and is shown to provide near-optimal performance as the number of levels L becomes large.
Household education and earnings: evidence from rural Peru

This dissertation investigates the returns to education for households in rural Peru. In these and similar areas of the developing world, economic activity is typically observed at the household rather than at the individual level. Estimating the returns to education and other labour supply parameters becomes a complicated task of identification when the majority of income is derived from household level ventures such as farming and non-farm self-employment activities. This task is further complicated by imperfections in local markets, such as job rationing and poor access to markets. As a result, wages are not observed for a substantial proportion of economic activity. After a description of education in rural Peru in the first essay, the analysis turns to an investigation of the channels through which education affects earnings at the household level. Issues of aggregation over household members are discussed in the second essay. The analysis reveals that an allocative effect dominates education's effect on household earnings: households with more educated members are more likely to diversify their sources of income and generate more income from non-subsistence and non-farm activities. The last essay decomposes household earnings returns to schooling into various structural parameters of labour supply behaviour. In particular, this essay develops a simple methodology that allows the estimation of wage-dependent parameters, such as the elasticity of labour supply and the wage returns to education, when wages are unobservable. This analysis exploits regional variation in access to and the development of local markets in the problem of identification. Results indicate that education affects earnings disproportionately to its effect on hours. Thus, the results provide evidence of wage returns to education in rural Peru. Furthermore, the evidence provided in this dissertation quantifies the role of local market development in the determination of the returns to education. In more developed areas, education facilitates access to lucrative opportunities. These opportunities provide better wages and better hours than those in more isolated areas that depend more on subsistence agriculture. As a result, the interaction between education and local market development improves household welfare by increasing earnings and the consumption of leisure.
Design, simulation, and testing of the structural separation system for the CanX-3 CanX-4/-5 nanosatellite missions

The purpose of this thesis is to guide the reader in the steps followed by the author through the two years of his obtaining a Master's degree. The Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) at the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) looks to push the envelope of what can be achieved with a nanosatellite. The current missions at SFL will employ the Generic Nanosatellite Bus (GNB) and will include a stellar photometry satellite named BRITE and an autonomous formation flying mission using a pair of satellites named CanX-4/-5. The main focus of this paper is threefold: first, the design of a structural model with simulation results of launch scenarios for both missions, second is the design, testing and qualification of a new intersatellite separation system to be used in CanX-4/-5, and lastly is the mechanical design of ground support equipment for all future GNB missions.

Keywords: Aerospace engineering
Sexuality in the transition to adulthood: Legacies of the sacred and the secular in the lives of Ontario-based French-Canadian women

Little scholarly attention has been paid to how, in the realm of sexuality, women negotiate between religious and secular meanings. By examining what women think and do about sexuality, this study addresses the broader sociological question of how women reconcile the contours of secular post-modernity with social forces that encourage a religious approach to sexuality. Using an intersectional lens, the study focuses on a sample of French-Canadian women born between 1960 and 1980 and raised within anglo-dominant Ontario. The analysis relies mainly on in-depth interviews and shows that the social relations of sexuality are governed by two coexisting codes or registers of meaning. The sacred code is rooted in devout Catholic religiosity and holds that sexuality outside marriage is morally wrong. The secular code is rooted in the principles of secular individualism and encourages sexual autonomy. As rules for living, these codes are indeed social organizers.

Keywords: Women's studies
Families, Study and teaching
Ethnology
Multi level correlates of women's physical activity behavior following participation in an exercise-based primary prevention program

Regular physical activity (PA) reduces the risk of premature death and disability from a variety of health conditions, including cardiovascular diseases (CVD). In response to the growing burden of CVD in women, prevention and health promotion initiatives are fundamentally important for this population. Physical activity is a particularly important health behavior and warrants an increased effort to identify variables that predict a person's likelihood of engaging in and maintaining regular PA. Despite the known benefits of a physically active lifestyle, more than 55% of the Canadian population remains completely inactive during leisure time, and population wide surveillance data show a high prevalence of physical inactivity particularly among women, worsening with increased age groups. This study provides important information on the assessment of PA among women and the results can be used to help develop more effective interventions for women at risk for CVD.
Experimental development of a bio-oil burner for a combined heat and power Stirling engine

A Stirling engine burner was modified to handle bio-oil and a comparative study of the combustion characteristics of diesel and bio-oil were performed. The modifications consisted of: replacing the evaporative atomizer with an internal-mix air-assist nozzle, installing an in situ ceramic surface igniter, and placing the burner on an extension with optical access. The diesel combustion test emitted 51.8 ppm UHC, 94 ppm NOx and below detection limits of 10 ppm for CO, acetaldehyde, and formaldehyde. The PM emitted from the diesel test was 0.46 mg/m3 with morphology typical of fractal aggregate soot. The bio-oil used for the combustion tests was low quality with almost 40 wt % water. The bio-oil combustion test emitted 1266 ppm UHC, 2524 ppm CO, 127 ppm NOx, 728 ppm acetaldehyde and 833 ppm formaldehyde. The PM emitted from the bio-oil test was 125 mg/m3 with mainly circular morphologies present.
Indoctrination and situated knowers

With few exceptions, educators and educational theorists regard indoctrination as the antithesis of acceptable educational practice. Fearing charges of indoctrination, educators want to be clear about the distinctions between teaching and indoctrinating and philosophers of education have responded with hundreds of scholarly articles and books focused on clarifying this troublesome term. Over the course of the past century, their efforts to deliver a compelling normative conceptual tool for educators have produced a massive, fractious, and inconclusive discourse that appears unable to successfully indict those they would label indoctrinators or to explain the apparent harms of indoctrination to the satisfaction of those who claim to have been indoctrinated. In response, this dissertation identifies core, uninterrogated, epistemological assumptions that shape and constrain the dominant conceptions of indoctrination developed in the literature as impediments to better conceptions of indoctrination and the harms it is purported to induce. The epistemology of the dominant discourse on indoctrination (the "EDDI") is shown to be consistent with "mainstream epistemology" (ME) and its fixed, universalist-reductivist conception of rationality that permeates contemporary understandings of knowledge and teaching. ME is "troubled" through critiques based on feminist epistemologies of situated knowledges ("ESK"). The latter reject ME's universalist, artificially reductive "S knows 'that p'" rubric--on which the EDDI is predicated--as reliant on idealized notions of a form of detached, impartial rationality available to all universally interchangeable rationally autonomous individuals. Against this narrow, idealized, rationality, ESK present knowledge as constitutive of embodied, particular, situated, knowers. Applied to contexts of education, ESK radically reconfigure the notions of rationality and of acceptable and unacceptable education, under which indoctrination is subsumed, to reveal vastly expanded epistemological/moral responsibilities for those engaged in educational practices. In educational contexts that are understood as inherently moral, ESK are used to suggest revitalized and morally enhanced conceptions of indoctrination that can better account for the dialogical construction of knowledges among situated knowers in contexts of asymmetrical power arrangements. (Reproduced with permission of ProQuest LLC.)
Volume effects in radiation-induced lung damage

Patients with breast and lung cancer and with various lymphomas constitute a large demographic receiving radiotherapy that is affected by lung complications. The ability to deliver tumoricidal doses while preserving the integrity of surrounding normal tissue is critical to successful treatment with ionizing radiation. Developing an understanding of the mechanisms associated with radiation-induced normal lung damage is imperative. In this thesis a superoxide dismutase-catalase mimetic and a kinase inhibitor were studied for their effects on the expression of DNA and functional damage post irradiation. We hypothesized that chronic oxidative stress and inflammation generated post irradiation contribute to the progression of clinically evident tissue damage. The data suggest that chronic DNA damage is generated secondarily to the initial insult of radiation and is exacerbated by the chronic inflammatory response. Future strategies for reducing radiation-induced lung damage should focus on the development of chronic oxidative damage and the dysregulation of inflammation.
Neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation in subtypes of aggressive children

One of the most important tasks of childhood is learning to regulate the impulses that accompany negative emotions. Individual differences in the regulation of emotional impulses have been found to predict social competence, and children lacking emotion-regulation skills often develop aggressive behaviour problems. The objective of this study was to assess the neural mechanisms underlying different styles of emotion regulation corresponding to different subtypes of aggressive children. Specifically, the mechanisms underlying the regulatory abilities of purely aggressive children (EXT), children comorbid for internalizing and externalizing behaviour problems (MIXED), and their normal age-mates were examined. Eighty-one children, 8 to 12 years of age, performed an emotionally challenging go/nogo task, while EEG was collected. Two ERP components tapping the cognitive control of emotion and action were assessed: the nogo N2 and frontal P3. Cortical activation patterns for two regions of interest (ROIs) were estimated—a ventral ROI suggestive of orbitofrontal, ventromedial, and subgenual anterior cingulate activity and a dorsal ROI suggestive of dorsal anterior cingulate activity—two regions linked with emotion regulation. Go/nogo response-time data and the effortful-control cluster of the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire were used to assess behavioural characteristics related to children's regulatory abilities. MIXED and EXT children both revealed poor self-regulation but showed very different cortical activation patterns. For the N2 analysis, as well as the ventral and dorsal ROI analyses, MIXED children revealed high activation while EXT children revealed low activation. EXT children may not have recruited enough dorsally and ventrally mediated regulation to perform the task well. MIXED children, because they also have to regulate their ongoing negative ruminations, may not have used ventrally and dorsally mediated regulation efficiently to address task demands. Understanding both of these maladaptive regulatory styles at the neurocognitive level can help guide diagnosis and treatment of aggressive children.
Regulation of E75 by nitric oxide: a novel gas sensing mechanism for Drosophila nuclear receptors

Nuclear receptors belong to the family of eukaryotic transcription factors. Members of this family act as ligand-activated molecular switches that regulate gene activity. The elucidation of putative ligands may provide relevant information about the biological roles of nuclear receptors. Here, characterization of a Drosophila nuclear receptor, E75, is presented. This ecdysone-induced protein possesses a heme prosthetic group that enables it to bind nitric oxide (NO). E75 functions as a transcriptional repressor. However, in the presence of its ligand, NO, E75 activity is affected, resulting in de-repression. As an NO-sensing nuclear receptor, E75 presents a novel mechanism of regulation for Drosophila nuclear receptors. In the past decade, NO has gained tremendous attention as an important second messenger involved in many signaling pathways. Implications of E75 in Drosophila development and regulation of circadian clock is discussed. Further studies will provide additional insights into the biological roles of E75.
A pulse-echo model for nonlinear ultrasound imaging

A pulse-echo model for simulating nonlinear ultrasound images of multi-layered tissue-like media is described. Diffraction, attenuation, nonlinear propagation, and refraction and transmission losses at layer boundaries are accounted for on forward propagation. Back propagation transfer functions are calculated from a linear forward field by applying the principle of acoustic reciprocity. Point scatterers are randomly distributed in space and each has a frequency-dependent backscattering coefficient. Linear pulses and axial and lateral point responses compared well with an established pulse-echo model. Simulated fundamental and 2nd harmonic images of a tissue-mimicking phantom in water compared well qualitatively with experimentally acquired images. Also, plots of the mean pixel intensity of the images versus depth showed excellent quantitative agreement with experiments as did the speckle probability density function and autocovariance function (i.e. first- and second-order speckle statistics). This model provides an environment to optimize and test new nonlinear ultrasound imaging methods.
Keeping sisters together: cohesin and Ycs4 define distinct mechanisms for sister chromatid cohesion

The maintenance of genetic integrity during the eukaryotic cell cycle requires sister chromatid cohesion and chromosome condensation. I show that Ycs4p, a subunit of the condensin complex, has an important role in sister chromatid cohesion. My data suggest that Ycs4p functions in a distinct sister chromatid cohesion pathway from that mediated by the cohesin subunit Mcd1p. First, the two proteins localize independently on chromatin. Strikingly, and in contrast to cohesin mutants, a loss of Ycs4p-mediated cohesion can be efficiently re-established within mitosis following reactivation of the protein. Finally, Ycs4p appears specifically required for chromosomal arm cohesion but not at centromeric nor telomeric loci, whereas cohesins are needed throughout the chromosome length. Together these data demonstrate that Ycs4p is involved in a previously uncharacterized cohesin-independent mechanism for chromosome pairing in the budding yeast. This cohesion mechanism provides a unique opportunity to gain mechanistic insight into cohesin function and supports synapsis-based models for cohesin-dependent sister chromatid pairing.
Effects of internal curing methods on restrained shrinkage and permeability

Early age properties of concrete are vital to its long-term performance. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the ability of internal curing methods including superabsorbent polymers (SAP) and saturated lightweight aggregate to mitigate autogenous shrinkage and restrained shrinkage. This thesis also examines the changes in properties of concrete and mortar, such as permeability, when SAP, lightweight aggregate or shrinkage reducing admixtures (SRA) are introduced to the mix. This research found that mortar containing SAP was able to minimize the amount of autogenous shrinkage, but reduced the compressive strength considerably, similar to air-entraining concrete. SAP was also able to leave voids in the concrete, which simulate normal entrained air. SRA was most effective at reducing drying shrinkage. Lightweight aggregate had an interlocking bond with the paste at the interfacial transition zone, thus increased its tensile strength properties.
Conductance oscillations in superconducting nanoparticle films

We have studied electronic transport in disordered granular films fabricated by sintering superconducting Nb nanoparticles and have published the following results. Measurements of resistance versus bias voltage and magnetic field reveal zero-bias and zero field minima, respectively, as well as superimposed conductance oscillations. We attribute these observations to reflectionless tunneling (RT). Robust observation of such phenomena in a macroscopic system is remarkable given their mesoscopic origin. It is enabled by the ability of the present "bottom-up" approach to balance counterveiling considerations: sufficient disorder to induce both elastic scattering and interference combined with restricted averaging to limit dephasing.