VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Variability in the quality of life of literate and non-literate rural women, a Nigerian account

Discourses related to world trends in il/literacy are replete with accounts of the ameliorative potential of literacy vis-a-vis the subordinate condition of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. But, despite the extensive coverage of the problem in academic literature, there is a paucity of field-based research showing how il/literacy affects the quality of women's lives in the region. This study was designed to explore the quality of life of literate and non-literate rural women in Nigeria. The study progressed on the assumption that the fundamental cause of women's peripheral condition is rooted in their collective status as the subordinate gender within Nigerian society. Women's limited access to literacy/education is as much a question of economics as one of legitimacy, uneven distribution of power and access to social rewards. Theoretically, the study examined the link between women, literacy and power, emphasizing the structural nature of women's subordination often through hegemony. The question of women's access to literacy touches virtually all spheres of women's private and eocial life within organised society, including issues of power, politics, economics, demographics, health and child welfare as well as women's psychological well-being. To varying extents, this work touches on all of these. Additionally, the study addresses the broader implications for society as a whole when literacy levels among women are low. Guided by the philosophical underpinnings of critical realism, the data were collected through the use of qualitative methods that relied substantially on individual and focus-group interviews as well observations by the researcher within the lived milieu of the women themselves. The findings suggest that while the literate participants have not become the leaders of their respective rural communities, they do enjoy a comparatively enhanced quality of life, have increased life options as well as some social influence. But the evidence also indicates that non-literate rural women are ambivalent about literacy programmes because their abject economic conditions make participation in such programmes an unattractive option. Finally, the results strongly suggest that empowering rural women in Nigeria requires the adoption of praxis-oriented intervention policies that are geared towards critical social reconstruction, linking educational empowerment with economic independence.
The facts of life, the sex instruction of Ontario public school children, 1900-1950

During 1900 to 1950 a broad and uneasy coalition of sex reformers--educators, physicians, feminists, sexologists, social workers and public health officials--who identified themselves with the social purity movement prior to the First World War and then with the social hygiene movement after 1918 raised their voices in favour of incorporating sex instruction into Ontario public elementary and secondary schools. The impetus for children's school-based sex instruction was the moral and medical threat posed by what was perceived to be the dreaded corollary of prostitution and the double standard of sexual morality: venereal disease. Sex reformers' discourse on incorporating sex instruction into Ontario public elementary and secondary schools would peak in intensity as venereal disease rates in the civilian and military populations rose co-incident with the First and Second World Wars. This study argues that first, children's sex instruction--variously labelled purity education, sex hygiene, social hygiene, sex education, eugenical instruction and family life education--was heavily influenced by the paternalism, classism and racism of the social purity movement as it came to be constituted after 1885. Second, even when supervised by the social hygiene movement after the Great War, children's sex instruction was predicated upon the post-1885 social purity movement's emphasis on the moral approach to sex reform. This moral approach involved a two-fold undertaking: training the child's will in favour of sexual self-control and imparting rudimentary information on sexual physiology. Third, children's sex instruction was rationalized by the post-1885 social purity movements invoking of three spectres of child-life familiar to middle-class child savers: the child ignorant of sexual matters, the feeble-minded child and the juvenile delinquent. Classed, gendered, racialized and sexualized, these spectres served as "poison containers" or receptacles into which sex reformers poured their anxieties over venereal disease, thus allowing them to conveniently ignore the societal inequalities which contributed to the spread of the malady. As such, between 1900 and 1950, sex instruction, or what British sexologist Havelock Ellis termed "the instruction of children in the essential facts of life," had less to do with teaching children about sexual anatomy, biology, physiology and psychology and much more to do with channelling Canadians toward compulsory heterosexuality, reproducing the patriarchal nuclear family, maintaining the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race, building a healthy, patriotic citizenry and protecting the nation state from harm.

Keywords: Sex instruction for children
History
Sex instruction for teenagers
History
Sex instruction
History
Éducation sexuelle des enfants
History
Éducation sexuelle des adolescents
Histoire
Éducation sexuelle
Histoire
Precipitation processes as deduced by combining Doppler radar and disdrometer

Precipitation processes are investigated in stratiform and convective weather systems by combining Doppler radar and disdrometer measurements. Vertical scans are designed to measure the standard radar data fields and the power spectrum of the vertical Doppler velocities with high spatial and temporal resolution. A new method, based on iterative application of a disdrometer-determined Z-R relation, is developed to estimate vertical winds from the vertical scan data. Using this method, radar-based raindrop size spectra calculated near the surface in light stratiform rain compare well with simultaneous measurements from a collocated disdrometer. A full raindrop size spectrum profile is deduced for a specific steady state case. It is found that the spectrum does not vary with height, suggesting that the spectral shape is mainly controlled by the ice particles occurring above the 0$\sp\circ$C level. Vertical scan data are also combined with volume scan data obtained by the Atmospheric Environment Service King City radar to examine the precipitation structure of a hail producing region within a severe squall line. The vertical scan shows a large variation in precipitation structure and also reveals important storm features which, in this case, are not detected by the conventional volume scans, such as a weak echo vault, a downdraught outflow, and streaks of very high downward velocity corresponding to separate hail trajectories. The power spectra were used to identify and locate hailstones, to deduce the growth of descending hailstones, and to qualitatively examine properties of raindrop size spectra. A conceptual model of hail formation is proposed by comparing the deduced storm structure and precipitation processes with the analyses of two somewhat similar storms documented in the literature.
Measuring physical disability following limb preservation for lower extremity sarcoma

Sarcoma is a life-threatening disease in which patients with extremity tumours undergo surgery with or without the use of adjuvant chemotherapy or irradiation to achieve local and systemic disease control. The goal of surgery is complete removal of the tumour to prevent local recurrence while preserving a functional limb. The consequence of treatment is that patients become physically disabled in order to potentially survive their disease. An outcome measure is required for monitoring patients' status over time and to evaluate different treatments within the context of clinical trials. The Toronto Extremity Salvage Score (TESS) is a measure of physical disability and was designed to serve these purposes. Previous work has shown that the TESS is feasible in a clinical setting and that it has test-retest reliability adequate for both group and individual patient use. The purpose of this thesis was to validate the TESS, particularly to confirm the content of the measure and to evaluate construct and criterion validity and the ability of the measure to detect change in status over time. Subjects completed the TESS and SF-36 pre-operatively and at 6 weeks, 3, 6 and 12 months post-operatively. The Musculoskeletal Tumor Society Rating Scale (MSTS) was completed by the clinician. Open ended questions did not result in any items being added to the TESS nor were any items eliminated. For the TESS, Cronbach's alpha was high at 0.94 but factor analysis did not inform the item structure of the measure. A summary score was, therefore, calculated based on clinimetric criteria. The TESS was shown to have construct validity by anticipated relationships with the SF-36 subscales and MSTS scores. Criterion validity was demonstrated by the ability of the TESS scores to differentiate between subjects with bone versus soft tissue tumours and amongst subjects based on the type of gait aid used. Over time, the TESS scores produced the anticipated pattern showing responsiveness to time and clinical events. The effect sizes detected were moderate. The current study has confirmed the content of the TESS and demonstrated its validity and responsiveness. The TESS is a useful measure of physical disability for evaluating treatment effectiveness in clinical trials, educating patients about their expected recovery and in monitoring individual patients.
Total responsibility and absolutely no control, a case study of participatory research as a health promotion strategy

Participatory research has been much touted as a tool for contributing to the development of empowerment for its participants; however in-depth analyses of such projects are largely absent from the literature. This case study investigated a public health department's use of participatory research as a health promotion strategy for working with adolescents. Of central importance was the discussion of: power, empowerment, and control, and what each of these terms meant to the front-line staff. Guided interviews were held with six staff members and nine youth partners in the project. Findings revealed substantial differences in the experience of the participatory research process for the professionals and the youth. Facilitating the development of empowerment for the youth made the professionals aware of their own powerlessness within their work environment. While the professionals learned to give up control for the project they were still held responsible for the project's outcomes. Giving up control challenged the nurses' sense of professional identity and conception of nursing practice. Analysis of the data revealed however, that the nurses not only developed a new sense of themselves and their practice, they also developed insights into the relationships among knowledge, power and health. For the youth, the key elements of the process were the opportunities presented to voice their opinions and have those opinions seriously considered. The youth learned they could design the research, present their findings and have an impact on their community; however, becoming participatory researchers was not as significant to the youth as it was to the professionals. A new relational model of empowerment is presented which describes the reciprocal influence and integration of three spheres: externally generated knowledge and information; subjective experiential knowledge; and critical knowledge; each domain being influenced by events in the environment. Implications of this study suggest that practitioners working in bureaucratic organizations can facilitate empowering processes but in so doing may find their views of themselves, their professions and the organizations which employ them, challenged. While this may be disquieting, it may also contribute to personal growth and the development of a more reflective practice.
Water distribution network rehabilitation: Selection and scheduling of pipe rehabilitation alternatives

The most expensive component of a water supply system is the distribution network. Aging water supply infrastructure, coupled with the continuous stress placed on the pipes by operational and environmental conditions, have led to system deterioration which manifests itself in increased operation and maintenance costs, water losses, reduction in the quality of service and reduction in the quality of water supplied. In this thesis, a methodology is proposed to select, for each pipe in an existing network, the rehabilitation alternative and the time of its implementation, so as to minimize the cost of the rehabilitation investment and all maintenance costs over a pre-defined time horizon and subject to certain constraints. The methodology explicitly considers the deterioration over time of both the structural integrity and the hydraulic capacity of every pipe in the system. The cost associated with each pipe in the network is calculated as the present value of an infinite stream of costs. The proposed method, named the multistage network rehabilitation analysis procedure (MNRAP) is based on a dynamic programming approach combined with partial and (sometimes) implicit enumeration schemes. A computer program was developed to implement the methodology. Subsequently, the validity of the MNRAP was established in two ways: (1) Some simple systems were exhaustively enumerated for all possible combinations of rehabilitation alternatives selection and scheduling, and their minimum cost sequences were compared to those obtained by applying MNRAP. An excellent agreement was demonstrated between the two sets of results. (2) A study was conducted in which six water utility managers from the Greater Toronto Area and the Region of Waterloo (the participants) were presented with a sample water distribution system including all pertinent data that would typically be available when preparing a long-term rehabilitation program. The participants were required to implement their best engineering judgment and analysis tools in determining an optimal rehabilitation policy, subject to stated constraints. These policies were then compared to that obtained by the MNRAP. The comparison demonstrated the advantages of MNRAP over existing analysis practices; (a) in its comprehensiveness and (b) in the explicit, robust manner with which the economics and the hydraulics of the water distribution system are simultaneously considered over a planning time horizon. In conclusion, the MNRAP promises to provide a valuable decision support system for engineers and decision makers in devising long-term network rehabilitation plans.
From Christian maternalism to risk technologies, penal powers and women's knowledges in the governance of female prisons

This thesis offers a genealogy of some current forms of penal governance, roughly based on the history of Canadian women's imprisonment. Women's imprisonment is used to understand the complexity of penal power and to show how the meaning and content of women's penal governance changes over time: it is not my aim to provide a full historical account of Canadian women's imprisonment. This study contributes to the literature on governance by showing that penal reform strategies intersect and evolve into complex patterns of governing, and that governing is always gendered. Furthermore, my analysis shows that expert, non-expert, and hybrid forms of power/knowledge all inform penal strategies. This thesis also makes a contribution to feminist criminology and feminist theory in general by providing an alternative approach to analysing the governance of women by other women, and by the state. Avoiding universal and reductionist claims about women's oppression and about governance, I argue that relations of power are complex and fractured and that feminists and others need to explore the specificity of institutional power relations. This analysis allows for an examination of the governance of women by women (and potentially by men) through non-repressive techniques such as pastoralism or through hybrid techniques such as Christian mothering that combine disciplinary and pastoral governance. The thesis is based on a Foucauldian view of power as decentralized and heterogeneous. It highlights five strategies of reform and punishment: pastoral, maternal, disciplinary, actuarial and empowering/responsibilizing.
Experimental and theoretical investigation of roughness effects on thin laminar fluid films

The thesis provides an insight into the complex physical phenomena of thin laminar lubricant films between rough surfaces in relative motion. Micro-inertia effects of two-dimensional surface roughness on hydrodynamic lubrication are analyzed in the light of similitude principles involving a newly conceived reduced Reynolds number, the length parameter of surface steepness, and the classical parameter of relative roughness. Experiments described are performed in a specially designed, essentially two-dimensional, laminar-flow wind tunnel of adjustable depth. Tests on large-scale magnified reproductions of both idealized and real surface elements of bearings are carried out in the wind tunnel with the aid of hot-wire anemometry and flow visualization by the smoke-wire technique. Finite-element-method solutions of the Navier-Stokes equation for the case of an idealized rough surface, i.e., a sinusoidally wavy wall, are compared with corresponding experimental findings. Comprehensive quantitative analysis of the results leads to a proposal for the threshold of applicability of the classical Reynolds equation in the case of surface roughness. The generalization of the concept of micro-inertia to randomly rough surfaces underlines the practical utility of the work.
Evaluation of paediatric physical disability and exploration of contributing factors

Introduction. The purpose of this research was to assess the measurement properties of the Activities Scale for Kids or ASK (a physical disability measure for five to 15 year old children with musculoskeletal conditions), and to explore the magnitude and nature of the difference between measures of what children can do (capability) and what they usually do (performance). Methods. The ASK's measurement properties were assessed by: item characteristic analysis, comparison of the ASK to clinician observation, clinician global ratings, the Childhood Health Assessment Questionnaire (CHAQ), the construct of clinically meaningful change, and the Health Utilities Index (HUI$\sb3).$ The difference between capability and performance were explored by quantitative and qualitative comparisons of ASK-capability and ASK-performance reports. Results. Item characteristic analysis confirmed the unidimensionality and item structure of the ASK (n = 200, mean age 10 years). Validity was confirmed by strong relationships with clinician assessment (ICC = 0.89, lower limit of confidence interval 0.79), clinician global ratings (p $<$ 0.0001), the CHAQ (r = 0.81, CI 0.76-0.86), clinical change (r = 0.77, CI 0.58-0.88), and related HUI$\sb3$ sub-scales (r = 0.74 and r = 0.10) and minimal relationships with unrelated HUI$\sb3$ sub-scales (r = $-$0.15 and r= 0.09). Comparison of performance and capability scores confirmed that there was a difference (p $<$ 0.0001) related to the framing of disability questions. The interviews with respondents identified several factors related to the expression of disability: affinity for the activity, formidability of the activity, and the availability of modifications (i.e., assistive devices). Conclusions. The ASK has acceptable item characteristics and is a sensible, reliable and valid measure of physical disability in children. Since capability scores significantly exceed performance scores, the situation of relevance must be carefully considered in selecting an outcome measure. The factors that contribute to this difference may offer insight into alternative mechanisms by which to modify physical disability in this group of children.
Studies of intermolecular interactions

In this thesis results from three separate experiments are reported. In the first experiment, the resolved fluorescence spectra of I$\sb2,$ clustered with Ar, Kr and Xe and excited at 193 nm to the first ion pair manifold is measured. In Ar and Kr clusters, a broad, featureless emission band is seen, which shifts to lower energies as the cluster size increases. In Xe clusters, this band is not observed; there is very efficient quenching of all emission. Under some expansion conditions, XeI* excimer emission is observed with a 2-photon dependence on the intensity of the 193 nm excitation laser. These results are all explained by a model in which excitation of I$\sb2$ into the ion pair manifold is followed by a harpooning-type electron transfer and formation of an excited charge transfer complex between I$\sb2$ and a rare gas atom. In the second experiment, emission from ion-pair states of I$\sb2$ is observed when HI clusters are photolyzed at 248 nm. The emission depends quadratically on the laser intensity and quartically un the stagnation pressure of neat HI. The results strongly suggest that the four-center photoinduced reaction $\rm(HI)\sb2\to H\sb2+I\sbsp{2}{\*}$ takes place in HI clusters, followed by excitation of the I$\sbsp{2}{\*}$ to the ion-pair levels. The third experiment studies the scattering of an atomic beam of helium from the surface of an aligned nematic liquid crystal film (4$\sp\prime$-pentyl-4-cyano biphenyl, 5CB). Collisions of atoms with the surface initiate a transient loss of order in the film. The magnitude of this change depends on the momentum direction of the atomic beam with respect to the liquid crystal alignment director. The effect is significantly more pronounced when the incoming beam is perpendicular to the director than when it is parallel. This anisotropy may be due to a more efficient alignment-changing torque exerted by He atoms colliding perpendicular to the long axis of the 5CB molecules.