VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Microscopic cybernetics, mathematical logic, automata theory, and the formalization of biological phenomena, 1936-1970

This thesis highlights the intellectual origins of theoretical studies of biological phenomena based on automata theory and mathematical logic. The study spans the period from the groundbreaking work of mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954), who in 1936 developed a "logical machine" for the process of mathematical computation, through to the work of Stuart Kauffman (b. 1939), who, circa 1970, developed a model of genetic regulation in cells using mathematical logic. It is argued that automata theory and methods of logic offered a way of simplifying complex biological phenomena into logical, discrete terms, while at the same time characterizing these processes as complex, dynamic, and interactive. Automata theory arose out of the cybernetics movement, which involved making analogies between organisms and machines. "Automata" in with a finite size, a finite number of internal states, and certain specified inputs and outputs. The functioning of an automaton was governed by the rules of mathematical logic, embodied in an "algorithm" or program. The algorithm was rigorous, exhaustive, and unambiguous, and a central point in automata theory was that simple rules could lead to complex behaviour. This thesis demonstrates that the "algorithm" concept proved to be a powerful conceptual tool for many scientists who developed models of complex biological phenomena. It will be shown that these applications of automata theory to biological phenomena were consistent with many of the philosophical assumptions of many theoretical biologists of the period. Chapter One examines Alan Turing's conception of the Turing machine, highlighting the role of mathematical logic in its functioning. Turing presented "computation" as a process that could be carried out in a finite number of logically defined, discrete steps. Chapter Two illustrates that a community of mathematical biologists in Chicago, who formalized biological phenomena, provided an important intellectual space for Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who in 1943 developed a model of neural activity based on the principles of Boolean logic. Chapter Three examines the work of John von Neumann. Influenced by Turing's work and the McCulloch-Pitts model, von Neumann developed a general theory of automata that addressed, in logical terms, the complexity of biological self-reproduction. Chapter Four focuses on the work of Michael Apter, who made strong arguments for the value of automata theory in modeling the process of biological development. Chapter Five further explores the connections between automata theory and theoretical studies of biological phenomena, highlighting the work of Stuart Kauffman, who, in collaboration with Warren McCulloch, developed a logical model of genetic networks.
Communications infrastructure for the MOST microsatellite project

This thesis reports results from several areas of development, but they have a common theme: all are selected pieces of a complete satellite communication system, from the spacecraft computer and telecommand systems through the radio link to ground station data analysis and dissemination. Each component has several tasks in common: researching alternatives, evaluating a promising selection, implementing that selection (or a subset thereof), and analyzing the results. The key components of this work were: (1) Creating a prototype suite of spacecraft software to run under SCOS. (2) Creating a prototype suite of ground station software and using it to communicate with the prototype satellite. (3) Establishing an amateur satellite ground station at UTIAS and using it to communicate with present amateur satellites.
Hierarchical data visualization in desktop virtual reality

While desktop virtual reality (VR) offers a way to visualize structure in large information sets, there have been relatively few empirical investigations of visualization designs in this domain. This thesis reports the development and testing of a series of prototype desktop VR worlds, which were designed to support navigation during information visualization and retrieval. Four methods were used for data collection: search task scoring, subjective questionnaires, navigational activity logging and analysis, and administration of tests for spatial and structure-learning ability. The combination of these research methods revealed significant effects of user abilities, information environment designs, and task learning. The first of four studies compared three versions of a structured virtual landscape, finding significant differences in sense of presence, ease of use, and overall enjoyment; there was, however, no significant difference in performance among the three landscape versions. The second study found a hypertext interface to be superior to a VR interface for task performance, ease of use, and rated efficiency; nevertheless, the VR interface was rated as more enjoyable. The third study used a new layout algorithm; the resulting prototype was rated as easier to use and more efficient than the previous VR version. In the fourth study, a zoomable, map-like view of the newest VR prototype was developed. Experimental participants found the map-view superior to the 3D-view for task performance and rated efficiency. Overall, this research did not find a performance advantage for using 3D versions of VR. In addition, the results of the fourth study found that people in the lowest quartile of spatial ability had significantly lower search performance (relative to the highest three quartiles) in a VR world. This finding suggests that individual differences for traits such as spatial ability may be important in determining the usability and acceptability of VR environments. In addition to the experimental results summarized above, this thesis also developed and refined a methodology for investigating tasks, users, and software in 3D environments. This methodology included tests for spatial and structure-learning abilities, as well as logging and analysis of a user's navigational activities.
Union pension funds, worker control and social investment in Canada, implications for labour education

Canadian pension fund assets are estimated at just under $500 billion and are second only to the combined financial assets of the major banks in Canada. These pension funds have become a critical source of capital for national and international markets. They are controlled by an intricate web of financial and legal standards such as fiduciary responsibility and yet as deferred wages, are largely beyond the control of workers or their unions. This study argues that, given their tax-exempt status, pension funds can provide the long-term capital needed to build a new economy based on real productivity. To test this assumption, a participatory research methodology was applied to a real estate development company in British Columbia funded through the pooling of capital from 26 pension funds with union trustees. The study focused on investments targeted to a working class community in Vancouver. Social accounting models were used, broadening the criteria normally used in traditional accounting practice. It was found that the company doubled its direct, attributable hours of employment in indirect and induced hours of work in the community. Further, its contribution to community productivity was more than double its total cost over a ten year period. This net social gain was calculated based on the differing social and economic value to the community of construction of rental accommodation and market housing. Finally, for all levels of government, tax revenues from Concert and Mortgage fund One far outweigh foregone taxes through pension fund contributions and investment returns. A social action model for union control of pension fund investment illustrates the major components that enable union trustees to invest pension funds for social, or collateral benefit. These components are leadership, social support and expertise, and education. The study recommends strong educational programs for pension trustees in social investment strategies.
In-line colour monitoring

The topic of this thesis is the monitoring of the colour of extruded polymer by measuring the reflectance spectrum of the polymer melt, which is flowing through the extruder during processing. The "in-line monitoring" work had three main objectives: (i) to utilize a new charge coupled device (CCD) spectrometer for such monitoring in a manufacturing environment; (ii) to assess the ability of the monitoring system to quantitatively distinguish amongst different colours; (iii) to assess mathematical methods of predicting the colour of the cold polymer product from the in-line reflectance spectra of the polymer melt. To accomplish the first objective a new monitoring system was assembled. It consisted of an extruder/monitor interface, the CCD instrument and software. The interface required significant modifications from previous designs. The CCD instrument was tailored to the in-line monitoring task and a completely new Windows compatible software package ("COLOUR I") was written. Extruder trials at GE Plastics (Cobourg, ON) revealed the system functioned well except that placement of the interface prevented sufficient surface renewal of the coloured melt. The thesis contains detailed recommendations for overcoming this difficulty. The third objective, assessment of mathematical prediction methods, was accomplished by using previously published data. As expected, the colour of the polymer melt was very different from that of the cooled plastic product. Excellent predictions of this product were obtained using an Artificial Neural Network program. Results of using Partial Least Squares and Principal Component Regression were less satisfactory.
The Bermuda Triangle, homeless youth, social services and education

This study seeks to evaluate the provision of social services to Toronto's street youth population. Recently, Toronto has seen an alarming increase in its population of homeless youth, despite the presence of a variety of educational and social service programs that target youth homelessness. In looking to the causes of this discrepancy, where multiple services exist in the face of a swelling population, a review of the relevant literature on street youth, interviews with educators and social service workers, and an analysis of Ministerial Statutes is conducted with an eye to understanding systemic constraints upon "service." The outgrowth of this inquiry indicates that strong organizational territoriality exists between professionals and, implicitly, in the Ministerial statutes that coordinate "service." Territoriality, it is argued, effectively compromises the existence of a "system" by unwittingly creating a Bermuda Triangle effect, where homeless youth become the victims of partialized service and conflated agendas.
Intervention and the public/private distinction in world politics, a normative inquiry

How ought one to conceive of state privacy in international society, specifically understood as the freedom of states from external intervention in their domestic affairs? This question lies at the heart of contemporary normative debates about 'humanitarian intervention' in world politics. The formulation of state sovereignty as privacy reveals the significance of the public/private distinction in disciplining these debates. This work seeks to examine realist, communitarian, and cosmopolitan conceptions of the public/private construct in international relations, with a view to constructing a morally defensible interpretation of the public and private lives of states in international society. My examination reveals the inconsistency, inadequacy and incompleteness of realist and communitarian accounts of state privacy in international society. The atomistic realist conception of privacy as the absence of external intervention is misleading as it obscures the social foundations of state privacy in international society. At the same time, organic communitarian justifications of privacy are morally problematic to the extent that they rely on idealizations of intrastate politics, placing individual members in positions of vulnerability within states. Both realists and communitarians rely on a false dichotomy between international and domestic normative and political structures that renders the suffering of victims of intrastate violence to be private national tragedies rather than public international injustices. A cosmopolitan perspective, by recognizing the mutual interconnectedness of public and private spheres, acknowledges that cases of intrastate violence are not isolated expressions of particular national deviance. Cosmopolitanism as an ethical perspective entails recognition of common human vulnerabilities derived from our mortal coil, and of common human potentialities derived from our capacity for reasoned agency. The public interest, in serving the one and many faces of humanity, translates into domestic and international moral obligations to protect individual personal privacy claims to bodily integrity and decisional agency. States' rights to sovereignty as privacy have moral validity only when their exercise is consistent with sovereign humanitarian obligations to citizens and non-citizens. A cosmopolitan ethical perspective thus obliges public and private, domestic and international, actors to confront the tragedy of intrastate violence with moral imagination and innovation rather than with moral indifference or despair.
Satori, the return to true nature

What is our true nature? What we consciously recognize as ourself or something much deeper? In this work I will try to find an answer by giving the insight into Zen Buddhist doctrine of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, in Zen terminology known as Satori, is what reveals our true nature and it takes place in one's mind. Mind in Zen does not consist of subconsciousness and consciousness. These two realms are not standing against each other It a all one consciousness that is differentiated only by our levels of awareness. The higher one's level of awareness is, the closer one gets to own am nature. The Mind is the vehicle that carries one from one "shore" to the other. And it is this very process of enlightenment that takes place in one's mind that will be examined in the work.
Comparison of the protein composition of Ca²§+-storage/release sites in postnatal and adult cardiac sarcoplasmic reticulum

During excitation-contraction (E-C) coupling in adult cardiac myofibers, Ca2+-entry via the 1,4-dihydropyridine receptor (DHPR) in the sarcolemma (SL) and T-tubules, is believed to trigger Ca2+-release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) (Katz, 1992). Junctional SR (jSR) and corbular SR (cSR) are believed to represent the Ca2+-release sites of the SR. Both of these domains contain the ryanodine receptor (RyR) and calsequestrin (CSQ). In addition, jSR has unique proteins including triadin (Zhang et al., 1997). In contrast to in adult cardiac myofibers, studies support the conclusion that the SR of newborn ventricular myofibers is underdeveloped and only provides a small proportion of the Ca2+ required for contraction (Vornanen, 1996). A recent immunofluorescence study in isolated newborn ventricular myofibers (Haddock et al., 1999) has proposed that the RyR is confined only to cSR, and not detected in jSR. This, combined with the results of a previous study that noted that increased SR Ca2+-release appears to correlate with the development of T-tubules, led me to test the hypothesis that the RyR does not appear in jSR until after the onset of T-tubule formation. In contrast, however, the results of the present study suggest that the role of newborn SR as a source of Ca2+ for E-C coupling is not limited by either qualitative or quantitative differences in the protein composition of the SR Ca2+-release sites, with respect to the RyR, triadin, and CSQ, nor by the subcellular distribution of jSR in relation to that of the DHPR, when compared to those of adult ventricular myofibers, ' in situ'.
Recasting program reverse engineering through On-Line Analytical Processing

Program reverse engineering is the task that helps software engineers understand the architecture of large software systems. We study how the data modeling techniques known as On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) can be used to enhance the sophistication and range of reverse engineering tools. This is the first comprehensive examination of the similarities and differences in these tasks, both in how OLAP techniques meet (or fail to meet) the needs of reverse engineering and in how reverse engineering can be recast as data analysis. We identify limitations in the data modeling tools of OLAP that are required in the area of reverse engineering. Specifically, multidimensional models assume that while facts may change dynamically, the structure of dimensions are relatively static (both in their dimension values and their relative orderings). We show both why this is required in current OLAP solutions and provide new solutions that effectively manage dynamic dimensions.
Neuroanatomical correlates of cholecystokinin-4-induced panic attacks in healthy humans, a time-course study

Past studies using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have revealed that anxiety produces changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), however no study has yet investigated the time-course of a panic attack. We hypothesised that in response to a cholecystokinin-4 (CCK-4) bolus injection, in 20 healthy volunteers, a distinct brain activation would occur as a function of time. To determine the time effect of panic attack on brain activity, we performed "early" and "late" PET scans covering the first and second minute after the CCK-4 injection. The results revealed that the early effects of CCK-4 were accompanied by $\sim$3% increase in the hypothalamic rCBF, whereas the late scan revealed an $\sim$7% increase in the claustrum-insular. Separate scan for anticipatory anxiety demonstrated $\sim$5% rCBF increase in the anterior cingulate region. These results support the hypothesis that brain activity associated with panic attacks starts in the brain-stem and progresses to the cortical region.
KV currents in tissue-printed rat microglia

This study analyzed the properties of two voltage-dependent K$\sp+$ (Kv) currents in rat microglial cells and determined whether current expression correlates with cell proliferation. In order to study microglia that most closely retain properties seen in vivo, a cell-isolation technique known as tissue printing was used. Microglia were distinguished from other cell classes by morphological and phenotypic characteristics. Using the whole-cell patch-clamp technique, Kv currents in tissue-printed microglia were then characterized. On the basis of biophysical, pharmacological, and molecular profiles, we identified the Kv current in freshly isolated tissue-printed microglia as Kv1.5-like. In contrast, the Kv current in cultured tissue-printed microglia developed Kv1.3-like properties. We found 93% of microglia (14/15 cells) with Kv1.5-like currents were not proliferating, while 100% of microglia (8/8 cells) with Kv1.3-like currents were dividing. Our results demonstrate the isolation of a new current and suggest the expression of the current is not correlated with microglial proliferation.
Novel biological approaches for detecting oncogenic cooperation with Bcl-2

Seventy to ninety percent of follicular lymphomas possess a characteristic t(14;18) translocation resulting in deregulated expression of the proto-oncogene Bcl-2. Overexpression of Bcl-2 alone is not sufficient to cause full cellular transformation. According to the "two-hit" hypothesis, cellular transformation in lymphoma occurs when, at least, one other genetic alteration cooperates with deregulation of Bcl-2. c-' myc' has been suggested to fulfill this role. Using a non-transformed, overexpressing Bcl-2 only, and a transformed, overexpressing Bcl-2, c-'myc' and possessing mutant p53, cell line we developed various assays in which we can detect oncogenic cooperation with Bcl-2. When we used a transformed cell line that only overexpresses Bcl-2 and c-'myc' we were not able to detect oncogenic cooperation. Our results suggest that co-overexpression of Bcl-2 and c-'myc' is not sufficient to cause full cellular transformation and that additional cooperative genetic lesions must be acquired.
The influence of psychosocial and physiological factors on smoking behaviour after coronary artery bypass graft surgery: A descriptive correlational study

This descriptive correlational study examined the influence of physiological factors (dyspnea, angina, incisional pain, severity of disease, and smoking history), psychosocial factors (social influences, anxiety, depression and concern for health) on smoking behaviour during the six weeks following coronary artery bypass graft surgery. A convenience sample 38 adult smokers, undergoing CABG surgery for the first time was obtained. Results indicated that the grade of left ventricle and the frequency of incisional pain had a statistically significant effect on smoking behaviour after surgery. The major limitation of the study was its small sample size. Implications of the study concerning practice include more intense follow-up of patients after discharge from hospital to enhance smoking cessation efforts. Implications for theory and research involve replicating the study using a larger sample size, using an investigator unknown to the subjects, utilizing validated measurement tools and employing a longer follow-up period.
Comparison of low glycemic index high carbohydrate, high glycemic index high carbohydrate and monounsaturated fat-enriched diets on insulin sensitivity in the treatment of impaired glucose tolerance

The purpose of this thesis was to compare the effects of altering the source and amount of carbohydrate on insulin sensitivity (SI) and mean insulin levels in subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). IGT subjects (n = 34) were randomized to either a high-glycemic-index-high-carbohydrate (high-GI), low-glycemic-index-high-carbohydrate (low-GI) or high-monounsaturated-fat-low-carbohydrate diet (MUFA) for four months using a randomized parallel design. No significant difference in SI was found on any of the dietary treatments. The glucose disposition index (SI X AIRglu) improved by 56% on the low-GI group compared to a 16% reduction in the MUFA group (p = 0.01). Free fatty acid levels decreased significantly by 25% (p = 0.027) on the low-GI diet, but not on the other diets. There were no differences in fasting blood lipids, glucose, HbA1c or insulin. If these changes were sustained (over the long-term), a low-glycemic-index-high-carbohydrate diet would be expected to reduce the rate of progression of IGT to diabetes.