VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The influence of early loading on bony crest height and stability in TiUnite implants placed in the anterior mandible during the first 4 months

The aim of this prospective pilot study was to investigate differences in TiUnite dental implant stability and crestal bone height in two patient groups. Early loading group. Two implants placed in the anterior region of the mandible of 10 patients. They were connected with a Dolder bar within 10 days and placed into function immediately. Delayed loading group. 21 implants were placed in the anterior region of the mandible of 13 patients using a two-stage procedure with an intervening four month unloaded interval. Stability was measured with resonance frequency analysis, bone levels were measured with a custom made instrument. There was no statistical difference between the two treatment groups for changes in stability and bone levels. Within the limits of this pilot study, early implant loading does not appear to influence bony crest height and stability in TiUnite implants placed in the anterior mandible during the first 4 months.
Utilisation of health services in a publicly funded health care system: Example of musculoskeletal disorders

The primary objective of this cohort study of individuals with arthritis and rheumatism (A R) was to determine what individual, primary care physician and health area level factors were predictive of an ambulatory encounter with a musculoskeletal (MSK) specialist (rheumatologist, orthopaedic surgeon, or general internist). Separate examination of primary care physician referral rates to MSK specialists found that male, older physicians, higher percentage of A R patients and higher percentage of patients aged 65 years and older were positively associated with their referral rate. The health area of the primary care physician explained most of the variance and was significantly associated with his/her referral rate. In conclusion, after adjusting for age and need, there were financial and geographical barriers for seeking ambulatory MSK specialist care for A R in a universal health care system. The geographical barrier continued to exist when examining the referral rate of prirnarycare physicians which would affect who had the opportunity to have been referred to a MSK specialist. These findings suggest the location of MSK specialists needs to be evaluated for A R care. Future research should investigate if these identified barriers exist for treatment of arthritis conditions where rheumatology referral is highly recommended. The cohort comprised 1996/97 Ontano Health Survey respondents who either self-reported A R and/or had an A R primary care visit during the two-year period preceding the survey. Respondents who had exposure to MSK specialists during this time-frame were excluded. There were 5,052 respondents aged 15+ of whom 10.4% had an ambulatory encounter with a MSK specialist dunng the three-year period after the survey. Multilevel logistic regression at the individual and area levels found that respondents who were older, had supplemental health insurance, lived closer to an orthopaedic surgeon, self-reported a below normal health utility index, had frequent visits to physicians and lived in a health area with local availability of MSK specialists were more likely to have had an A R-related encounter with a MSK specialist. Respondents who lived in health areas which had a high percentage of marred or First Nation individuals were less likely to have had an A R-related encounter.
L'emploi d'être et avoir chez les apprenants du Français langue seconde de première année d'université

Cette étude avait pour but d'examiner l'effet d'un enseignement analytique dans l'emploi, à l'écrit, des verbes et auxiliaires ÊTRE et AVOIR, chez les étudiants d'un cours de première année d'université. L'étude visait aussi à examiner si l'effet de cet enseignement aurait les mêmes résultats sur le progrès des étudiants venant des classes d'immersion et ceux venant d'autres programmes. Ce deuxième objectif vérifiait donc si les erreurs que certains apprenants font depuis plusieurs années sont fossilisées. Il y a 56 étudiants qui ont participé à cette étude. Le groupe expérimental comprenait 41 étudiants et le groupe de comparaison en comprenait 15. Les participants étaient répartis dans quatre des six sections du même cours. Le groupe expérimental, dont j'étais le professeur, consistait en deux classes. Le même professeur enseignait aux deux classes du groupe de comparaison. Trois tests ont été administrés dans le groupe expérimental et dans le groupe de comparaison à trois moments différents, soit immédiatement avant que l'enseignement élaboré pour cette étude ne commence (pré-test), immédiatement après la fin de cet enseignement (post-test) et finalement, cinq semaines après le post-test (post-test de durée). Du matériel pédagogique élaboré pour l'étude a été utilisé dans les classes du groupe expérimental pendant les six semaines qui ont suivi l'administration du pré-test. Les tests comprenaient trois volets. Le premier volet consistait en un exercice de traduction et vérifiait les connaissances des expressions qui s'emploient avec le verbe AVOIR en français. Le deuxième volet était une histoire dans laquelle on devait conjuguer les verbes au passé composé. Le dernier volet vérifiait ces connaissances dans un nouveau contexte, c'est-à-dire les ordres au subjonctif passé. Une comparaison du progrès accompli par les étudiants entre le pré-test et les deux post-tests (post-tests et post-tests de durée) a été faite en utilisant la fonction du programme SPSSx «Multivariate Analysis of Variance» (MANOVA). Les analyses révèlent des différences significatives entre le rendement des apprenants du groupe expérimental et celui du groupe de comparaison. Les résultats de ces analyses suggèrent que l'enseignement analytique a influencé positivement l'apprentissage des étudiants venant des programmes d'immersion ainsi que celui des étudiants venant d'autres programmes.

Keywords: French language, Study and teaching (Higher)
Languages, Modern, Study and teaching (Higher)
Second language acquisition
Age-dependent changes in the HPA axis in free-living Columbian ground squirrels (Spermophilus columbianus)

The glucocorticoid hypothesis for aging is based primarily on studies of laboratory rats with no published study on free-living mammals. The hypothesis predicts an increased dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis with age. My objective was to test the glucocorticoid cascade hypothesis in Columbian ground squirrels by examining the interaction between stress, survival, and age using non-invasive fecal techniques. I trapped two free-living populations of known-aged squirrels over two summers, and determined their glucocorticoid concentrations in one summer and their overwinter survival. Fecal metabolite levels were an accurate reflection of changes in the HPA activity. However, fecal glucocorticoid concentrations showed no age-dependent change and thus I saw no evidence for increased HPA dysfunction with age. Fecal glucocorticoid concentrations in summer also did not predict overwinter survival. I conclude that free-living populations may be shielded from the deterioration seen in the HPA axis laboratory animals owing to their genetic diversity.
"From wretched employment to honourable profession": the changing image of teachers in nineteenth-century Ontario

At the turn of the nineteenth century, schooling in Upper Canada was, for the most part, haphazard and unsupervised. Yet, in less than a century, the province could boast of a free, universal and compulsory system of state-run education which ranked among the best in the world. This transformation was due in large part to the ability of Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Schools for Upper Canada during much of the period, to after public perceptions of teaching. Ryerson's hope for a professional corps of teachers enjoyed considerable success. However, changing social and economic conditions, combined with the practical experience of teachers, altered the trajectory of Ryerson's initial vision. Through the reminiscences of superannuated teachers writing at century's end, this paper shows that teachers' view of themselves did not necessarily parallel the one constructed by Ryerson, or any other bureaucrat.

Keywords: Teachers, History
Teachers, Ontario
Education, History
Education, Ontario
Teachers, Public opinion
Analysis of non-traditional trademarks in North American countries

The purpose of this thesis is to study the Intellectual Property rights, in particular with trademark protection applied to non-traditional marks. Is the traditional theory of trademarks really protecting all the signs that can be used to distinguish wares and services? Is the reality of commerce compatible with the legal theory of the so called traditional trademarks? There are other marks different to those commonly recognized by law, that are capable to be used as trademarks but they are not recognized and therefore they have no legal protection under the scope of Intellectual Property Rights. The purpose of this thesis is to put forward some reflections on the present state of the existence of these "non-traditional trademarks" and the legal effects that they produce in Mexico, Canada and the United States of America.
Nature as the foundation to heal and reconnect mind, body, soul and emotions in urban elementary schools: the use of visualization and art in building and creating soulful classrooms

The state of education in the western world has reached a state of soullessness. The post-industrial technological culture has resulted in a brain-based educational system where children are disconnected from their whole beings. Mind, body, soul and emotions form the fundamental aspects of self and without nourishing that complexity in the classroom, children have become alienated from their souls. In urban environments, children have become estranged from their connection with the earth. Disconnection from soul and earth are connected together and require understanding and action. To heal this disconnection, nature-based guided imagery practices or visualizations and free, unstructured art-based expressions can reconnect children to their sense and understanding of the interconnectedness of all things in the universe. A movement towards renewing our fundamental connection with all things is essential for personal, social and global health. Children deserve to learn in an environment where their whole being can flourish and grow.

Keywords: Social sciences, Study and teaching (Elementary)
Social sciences, Ontario
Human ecology, Philosophy
Education, Humanistic
Education, Moral and ethical aspects
Values, Study and teaching (Elementary)
Mind and body
Metal specificity of the transcriptional repressor NikR in Escherichia coli

NikR is a 15 kDa protein, found in Escherichia coli, which regulates Ni(II) intake in the presence of stoichiometric or excess nickel by transcriptional repression of five genes encoding a Ni-specific membrane transporter complex. To determine the level of nickel specificity of transcriptional repression by NikR, affinity constants for metal-binding and DNA-binding with stoichiometric and excess levels of several metals were measured. The high-affinity metal-binding site was five orders of magnitude tighter for Cu(II) than Ni(II). The affinity for DNA in the presence of one equivalent metal was similar with copper or nickel. Binding with cobalt, cadmium, and zinc produced weaker DNA-binding. In the presence of excess metal, however, NikR binding to DNA was at least thirty-fold tighter with nickel than with any other metal. The allosteric influence of the high-affinity metal binding and secondary metal binding are believed to confer this specificity for nickel to the activity of NikR.
Determinants of womens' decision making regarding gestational antidepressant use

Up to 25% of women of childbearing age suffer major depression, so there is a need to evaluate misconceptions about gestational antidepressant use. Objectives. (1) To determine teratogenic risk-perceptions in women with depression; (2) To determine the efficacy of evidence-based counselling in decreasing risk-perception associated; with gestational psychotropic drug use; (3) To identify determinants influencing women in decision-making. Patients and methods. This study was prospective, comparative and interventional. Motherisk callers seeking antidepressant information, within the 1st trimester/planning, completed a questionnaire assessing teratogenic risk-perception associated with gestational antidepressant use. Decisions to continue/discontinue with prescribed pharmacotherapy, determinants of these decisions, and risk-perception changes, were compared with non-psychiatric controls. Results. 15% of antidepressant users chose to discontinue treatment, compared with 2.5% of comparisons. Of those who discontinued treatment, the primary determinant was inaccurate internet information; of continuers, Motherisk was a determining factor. Conclusions. Evidence-based counselling was able to encourage rational gestational medication use.
Who will watch the watchdogs?: human rights nongovernmental organizations and the case for regulation

Human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become a fixture within the international system and a driving force for creating and enforcing human rights norms at international law. This essay examines the growth of human rights NGOs and argues that the industry is in urgent need of formal regulation. After assessing the failure of informal market controls for ensuring accountability within the human rights NGO sector, this paper applies a law and economics consumer protection model to underscore the need for more formal regulation. However, rather than advance a case for government intervention, this paper proposes that human rights NGOs themselves undertake to develop and implement authoritative and meaningful standards. Such standards can ultimately function to boost objectivity, accuracy and relevancy in human rights reporting, as well as safeguard against the debasement of international human rights principles.

Keywords: Human rights
Non-governmental organizations, Law and legislation
Models of authority for Ontario schools

This dissertation seeks to present a consideration of some of the ways in which models of authority have been applied to Ontario's system of public education, need still to be changed. It contends three things. First, it states that the sociocultural realities of contemporary life profoundly affect the ways in which people relate to institutions such as school systems, and in turn the way school systems are able to govern themselves and the students for which they are responsible. Second, it observes that public education in Ontario has had a long history of broadly based liberal control, which has traditionally functioned using various versions of a centre-to-periphery pattern, now much more rigidly understood in narrowly economic terms. Third, it argues that although many changes have been made to facilitate student learning at each stage of the development of Ontario's public school system, the current ideologically-limited version of the model of authority used in its governance is even less able to maintain the system's relevancy in the face of the pressure brought to bear on it by (post-modern) life. A new dialogue must be established concerning what authority means in contingent terms for schools, starting from the basic classroom relationships between teachers and students, if the system as a whole is to be changed. The dissertation presents a definition of authority that is primarily relational, yet fully functional at the level of language. Such a definition is needed to consider models of authority as they may be applied to the fluidity of contemporary reality, in which norms themselves often become cross-contextual sets of practices rather than being representative of universally-acknowledged “metanarratives”. On the way, the definition is compared and contrasted with three artificially (designated) periods of centralization in the governance of Ontario's school system. A consideration of the mandate for public education itself then follows, along with the means by which authority may be legitimated within it. The distance between present realities and those versions of centralized authority used to govern Ontario's schools at present are held up over against the definition of legitimate authority provided at the outset, in order to prove the need for change.

Keywords: Authority
Education, Political aspects
Public schools, Ontario
School management and organization, Ontario
Education, Ontario
Education and state, Ontario
A Newton-Krylov solver with a loosely-coupled turbulence model for aerodynamic flows

Computational solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations have proven to be a useful tool in the design of aircraft. A Newton-Krylov flow solver for unstructured grids is developed in order to demonstrate that a formulation in which the mean-flow and turbulence mechanism equations are loosely coupled can be more economical than a similar fully-coupled formulation. The Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are derived for steady two-dimensional flows, and the turbulence mechanism is described. These equations constitute a model of the physics of aerodynamic flows. The model is validated against experimental data. The objective of this thesis is to examine a means to improve the iterative process by which the solutions are generated. The Newton-Krylov iteration is selected in order to refine the solution, and its features examined. The authors of current Newton-Krylov techniques have fully coupled the turbulence mechanism to the Navier-Stokes equations. A contrast and comparison study made here between the fully-coupled formulation and a loosely-coupled alternative favours the latter. An 'equivalent function evaluation' metric is selected for comparison purposes, and is assessed by means of diverse computers. Published results which use the metric are located, and the present loosely-coupled formulation for unstructured grids is found to be significantly faster in this metric than similar fully-coupled formulations. The advantages of the loosely-coupled formulation with respect to the fully-coupled formulation are stated and future avenues for exploitation of the proposed technology are examined. Appendices consist of: a formalism for the Favre average and consequences of its derivation; a short tract on Taylor series; and an essay on the Frechet differential.
The implication of somatotroph adenoma phenotype to somatostatin analog responsiveness in acromegaly

Persistently elevated GH and IGF-I levels are associated with increased mortality in patients with acromegaly. Their response to somatostatin analogs (SSA), however, is variable. This study sought to examine the significance of somatotroph adenoma type on response to SSA. Forty patients treated postoperatively with the SSA octreotide were evaluated and assessed for normalization of IGF-I levels and GH responses. Multivariate analysis confirmed that a densely granulated adenoma was the strongest predictor of complete response [adjusted odds ratio (OR), 58.41, 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.24--1000.00; P = 0.04] compared with other covariates, including older age at time of diagnosis (OR, 1.15/yr; 95% CI, 1.01--1.31; P = 0.03), and tumor stage of 3 or less (OR, 29.77; 95% CI, 1.01--885.45, P
Development of lead free thermal fuse wires using Ohno Continuous Casting

Thermal-fuse alloys with high bismuth concentration are not easily produced in the form of small wires by ingot casting and extrusion methods. This is because of the brittle nature of bismuth and its strong tendency for segregation. In this study, a heated-mold continuous casting process, known as the Ohno Continuous Casting (OCC) process was used to generate Bi-Sn wires of several compositions. Wires of different compositions were cast at speeds ranging from 15-150 mm/min. The microstructures were examined and tensile tests performed for these wires. The fracture behaviour of the wires was examined to establish a relationship between the deformation behaviour and the microstructure, which was in turn dependent on the casting speed and the composition. The results obtained provide the foundation for a new processing route for the generation of flexible alloy wires, which can be further processed to fine wires.
Interactions between inhibitors of mTOR and EGFR/ERK signaling in SiHa cervical carcinoma

PI3K/PKB/mTOR and MAPK signaling pathways display multiple cross-connections, one of the principal common targets being p70S6K---major kinase for S6, which plays important role in translation. Since HER1/EGFR inhibition can impair MAPK signaling in some cell types, we tested the combination of rapamycin and OSI-774 (already in clinical trials as anticancer agents) in human cervical carcinomas xenografts. Suppression of P-S6 was induced by either drug alone and P-ERK decreased with OSI-774, while enhancement of these effects was obtained using both drugs together. Continuous treatment with the combination of drugs led to significantly greater tumor growth delay and antiangiogenic effect than single agents, whereas rapamycin alone induced significant inhibition of tumoral proliferation. The quantification of the biological markers was performed by computerized analysis of wide field multispectral fluorescence imaging on triple labeled tissue sections. These results support the further clinical investigations of rapamycin and EGFR inhibitor combinations in anticancer therapy.
Translational regulation of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS)

The importance of translational control in gene expression has been largely neglected. Translational mechanisms are key to total cellular protein synthesis, the efficiency with which specific mRNAs generate protein, and the genetic basis for human disease. The neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) gene provides an excellent model to dissect several aspects of translational control. nNOS is transcribed from multiple, independent promoters in a tissue- and cell-specific manner. This results in diverse 5'-untranslated regions (UTRs). The majority of nNOS 5'-UTRs are long, G- and C-rich, and produce highly-structured mRNAs. These features inhibit cap-dependent translation, and make nNOS a good candidate for an internal ribosome entry site (IRES). Transfection of nNOS bicistronic RNAs did not support cap-independent translation. An nNOS IRES was not cell-specific, nor inducible by exogenous stimuli such as hypoxia or insulin. The effects of the translational modifier, insulin, on nNOS cap-dependent translation were assessed. Insulin increased steady-state and de novo nNOS protein synthesis. Insulin specifically enhanced the translational efficiency of nNOS mRNAs. Cellular nNOS mRNA levels fell in a translation-dependent manner. An insulin-responsive IRES was excluded, and the contribution of RNA localization was assessed. nNOS mRNAs localized to membrane-associated ribosomes. The translational efficiency of membrane-associated nNOS mRNAs was specifically enhanced by insulin. These studies suggested a new model of insulin action. Finally, an alternatively spliced (AS) exon within the 5'-UTR of a subset of nNOS mRNAs represses translation. The AS exon forms a putative stem-loop structure and binds a specific ribonucleoprotein complex. The cytoskeletal binding proteins actin and alpha-actinin were identified as components of this complex, and the AS exon was shown to target nNOS mRNAs to cytoskeleton-associated ribosomes. Inclusion of the AS exon in nNOS mRNAs also inhibited association with cellular polyribosomes. This provides an intriguing model whereby alternative splicing alters the subcellular localization of nNOS mRNAs, and subsequently affects their translation.