VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A comparison of unbalanced rating scales in scoring competency assessments

Assessments of professional competencies often rely on the judgement of peer assessors who observe performance and examine professional artefacts. The assessors' judgements may, be influenced, however, by the rating scales they use to record their judgements. Much research has examined the characteristics of rating scales for appraisals of professional competence for hiring or compensation decisions; less research has focused on regulation-driven competency assessments intended to identify professionals who do not meet the standards for their profession and to assign a course of remediation specific to the level of deficiency. The College of Physiotherapists of Ontario's (CPO's) 2004 pilot test of its redesigned competency assessment program provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of rating scale characteristics in a regulatory context. Most registrants consistently meet competency standards; however, for those who do not, fine distinctions in deficiency are essential for decision-making about the appropriate remediation strategy. It was expected that a rating scale that was unbalanced in the direction of negative ratings and had more rating points would have greater discriminatory power and therefore greater utility for the CPO. Two unbalanced rating scales were developed for the study: negatively-labelled 3-point and 4-point scales. The results showed that, regardless of the scale used, reliability was near perfect when the rating for a competency area was Meets standards. For competency areas that did not meet standards, ratings varied considerably. This may have been due to: (1) varying levels of leniency and stringency among assessors, (2) uncertainty on the part of assessors about the degree of deficiency that was to correspond to the labels for sub-standard competency, or (3) insufficient information reported by on-site assessors in the assessment reports to enable off-site assessors to fully appreciate the practice situation and competency levels. Assessors expressed preferences for more points on their assigned scale to accommodate a rating of excellence and rewording the negative labels with positive terms to indicate degree of improvement required rather than degree of deficiency.
Identification and characterization of the signaling mechanisms downstream of Dok-R that mediate cell migration and actin reorganization

Dok-R was also shown to bind c-Abl in a processive manner that required binding of the c-Abl SH3 and SH2 domains. The binding of c-Abl and Dok-R resulted in increasing c-Abl kinase activity, tyrosine phosphorylation of Dok-R and an increase in c-Abl-mediated membrane protrusions. Together, these results demonstrate a physiological role for Dok-R in modulating cytoskeletal dynamics through complex formation with Nck and Pak and with c-Abl. Angiogenesis requires endothelial cells to undergo several cellular processes such as proliferation, migration and differentiation. Angiopoietin-1 is a growth factor that binds the Tek/Tie-2 receptor tyrosine kinase resulting in Tek autophosphorylation. Various signaling proteins can bind Tek in a phosphotyrosine-dependent manner and activate initiate downstream signaling pathways such as the phosphatidylinositol 3 (PI3)-kinase pathway. Dok-R was originally identified as a Tek-binding partner and can bind in a phosphotyrosine-dependent manner to RasGAP and Nck. The aim of this thesis was to determine the physiological function of Dok-R and to identify the molecular mechanisms that mediate its responses. Since Dok-R was first identified as a Tek-binding protein, angiopoietin-1-dependent cell-based bioassays were developed in order to elucidate the physiological function of Dok-R. Angiopoietin-1 could promote tubule formation, cell migration and survival of endothelial cells with the latter two processes being mediated through the PI3-kinase pathway. These results demonstrate that angiopoietin-1 can mediate multiple endothelial cell processes and may serve as a cell-based system to elucidate the physiological role of Dok-R. Since Dok-R was shown to associate with RasGAP and Nck, two proteins implicated in cell migration, it was hypothesized that Dok-R may also serve a similar role. By using various tyrosine point mutants of Dok-R that abolished binding to either Nck or RasGAP, it was found that angiopoietin-1-mediated migration was enhanced upon overexpression of wildtype Dok-R which required binding to Nck, but not RasGAP. Angiopoietin-1 could activate the serine/threonine kinase Pak, which binds constitutively with Nck, to form a ternary complex resulting in Pak activation and motility. These results demonstrate a role for Dok-R in cell migration through Nck and Pak.
A regional economy in medieval England

The chief aim of this PhD thesis is to demonstrate the integration of local economies into larger economic regions. Numerous studies of village economies in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have noted the mobility of both people and goods within a regional nexus, but there has as yet been little sustained analysis of the economic structures within which this movement occurred, nor of its impact on society. In the first part of the thesis, I devote one chapter to describing the nature of medieval markets, and a second to describing the patterns of inland trade. Markets were regulated by a well-developed set of legal principles formulated gradually over the course of the thirteenth century. Knowledge of these principles can be used to provide clues to how markets functioned in local and regional economies. This is the subject of chapter 1. In chapter 2, I cull the available sources to offer a description of the spatial relationships of market participants to the market, and I offer an analysis of the kinds of goods in common circulation in medieval markets. Part Two of this thesis is intended to serve as a case study of a regional economy. Four separate chapters describe different aspects of the economic arrangement of the county of Huntingdonshire in the period 1200–1348. Chapter 3 discusses the transportation system of the county, looking at the related subjects of the location of roads and bridges, the way local people made use of the system, and the cost and efficiency of transport. Chapter 4 is devoted to a study of the markets of the county. The main concern of the chapter is to determine the applicability of central-place theory to the county's markets. I argue that the timing and location of the markets conform closely to the tenets of the theory, indicating that each market can be seen as part of a coordinated regional marketing network. In chapter 5, I offer a demonstration of the regional economy in action. English kings repeatedly called on a number of shires, including Huntingdonshire, to provide large amounts of foodstuffs for the armies campaigning in Scotland and France. The arrangements made locally to carry out the royal will demonstrate the existence of a well-developed infrastructure used to transport bulky agricultural goods out of the county. This infrastructure was adapted, not created, to permit foodstuffs to be carried to the army; thus, when one studies war provisioning one is in effect studying the economic organization of the regional economy. The final chapter of this work looks surplus production. The same records used in chapter 5 to describe war provisioning also contain information about the individual suppliers of provisions. Along with the names of suppliers, information is often given about the quantities supplied by each individual. I argue that one can discern in these patterns a group of peasant producers regularly participating in the regional economy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Hostile women, sullen men and the social-psychological consequences of power, control, and the occupational personality

This study examines the impact of occupational roles on aberrant behavior across gender lines. To do this, the research draws on power-control theory to explore the effect of relational class on antisocial behavior, depression, and drinking patterns in a sample of adults. Measurement of these psychopathologies is based on the International Classification of Diseases. Several hypotheses are tested. For antisocial behavior and alcohol abuse-dependence I hypothesize that women in the professional class will be more likely to be antisocial and to drink excessively relative to non-professional women; that there will be a gender convergence in “masculine-type” behaviors in the professional class; and that professional women in successive cohorts will be more antisocial and have more drinking problems than women from earlier cohorts. For depression, I hypothesize that unemployed men will be more depressed than will men in the professional class; that there will be a gender convergence in depression in the non-professional class; and that non-professional men in successive cohorts will be more depressed than are non-professional men in previous cohorts. Results suggest that occupational characteristics are associated with atypical behavioral patterns for males and females. Women who occupy positions of power and authority in the workplace (professionals) are at increased risk of aggression relative to professional men and at increased risk of alcohol abuse-dependence relative to their counterparts in non-professional occupations. On the other side of the gender divide, men in non-traditional roles (unemployed) are at greater risk of depression than are employed males. These findings suggest that there is a relationship between occupational subculture and the “working personality.” In the patriarchal nature of the professional environment, focused on competition, men and women exhibit similar personality traits. It may be that women learn from their male associates, supervisors, and from the working environment how to perform professional roles. Conversely, the home environment gives rise to a different set of personality characteristics. Traditionally, women were relegated to the home environment and this context creates its own set of rules on how to cope with the lack of control inherent in the isolation of the home. The findings in this study suggest that males, facing the same situation react similarly to females and become depressed.
Landed: Labour, literature, and the politics of mobility in twentieth-century Canada

Despite the currency of interrogations of the so-called natural emanation of cohesive identities from particular geographical spaces, there has not yet been a sustained critical examination of how relationships between identity and place in Canada are articulated in literary representations of labour. While there is an important historical relationship between the conventions of literary realism and representations of labour, the representation of what I call "mobile labour" in literature published since 1930 almost exclusively occurs in literary forms that in some way experiment with the conventions of literary realism. In particular, these diverse texts demonstrate the contradictions embodied in what Raymond Williams calls the realist convention of the "knowable community." This thesis employs theorizations of citizenship in historically attentive ways to analyze how writers from various periods use the theme of mobile labour to either explore the impossibility of the "knowable community" or to lament its passing. Part One analyzes the rail-riding and road motifs of the Depression era in short fiction and poetry published in leftist magazines, in Irene Baird's novel Waste Heritage (1939), and in Hugh Garner's novel Cabbagetown (1968). These chapters explore how a distinction between native-born vagrants and foreign-born immigrants emerged in socialist and social realist writing as a means of asserting the white, Anglo mobile labourer's claim to the nation and, by extension, to the social rights of citizenship that became such an important component of the social welfare state in the postwar period. Part Two of the study turns to fiction published since the late 1960s. Chapter Three considers the contradictory tension between nostalgic realism, the sedentarist assumptions of literary regionalism, and diasporic labour practices in Alistair MacLeod's fiction. Chapter Four looks at Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion and posits that the novel's postmodern "nomadic metaphysics" privileges mobility and deterritorialization, while simultaneously erasing the diversity it ostensibly celebrates. The final chapter discusses the work of Afro-Caribbean writers in Canada and argues that their use of counterrealist satire promotes a cosmopolitan ethics of reading and a model of negotiated citizenship that offers a potential alternative to the binary of sedentarist and nomadic thinking that I trace throughout the project.
Institutional racism in British Columbia: the Japanese case

This thesis is a contribution to the study of the Japanese-Canadians. It focuses on the Japanese-Canadians in British Columbia and analyzes the anti-Japanese legislation enacted by the province from the early acts of the 1880s, until the 1928 Gentlemen's Agreement that drastically restricted Japanese immigration. Those acts go under the definition of 'institutional racism': the provincial and federal enforcement of a legislation that discriminated citizens on the base of their race. British Columbia was characterized by socio-economic conditions that created a high level of competitiveness between white and East Asian workers. What brought about the enforcement of the discriminatory laws was the determination of unionized workers, and those politicians who sustained them, to eliminate 'oriental' competition. Popular beliefs and misrepresentation of East Asian immigrants, and the irrational hysteria that arose from an ad hoc manipulation of them, were used to create a consensual base for the perpetration of those actions.
Aerobic and resistance training in subjects with coronary artery disease: Optimizing the exercise intervention

Resistance training (RT) added to aerobic training (AT) has been shown to improve exercise capacity, however, the optimal dose of this intervention is not known. Subjects (72) were randomized to AT 5d·wk -1 or AT 3d·wk-1 with either 1 set (AT/RT1) or 3 sets (AT/RT3) of RT 2d·wk-1. Fifty-three subjects, mean age 61+/-11 years completed 29 weeks of training. Change in V dot;O 2peak (L bull;min-1) averaged 11% for AT (p
Edition critique du "Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes" par Laurent de Premierfait (1400)

La première traduction de Laurent de Premierfait a obtenu un succès tardif : des sept manuscrits qui nous conservent aujourd'hui le texte de 1400, deux seulement dateraient du premier quart du XVe siècle : il s'agit de Paris, BNF, fr. 24289 et Bruxelles, KBR, ms. IV 920. Ce constat se dote d'une dimension supplémentaire lorsqu'il est mis en parallèle avec le succès retentissant de la version de 1409, que notre traducteur offre au duc de Berry.
Longitudinal and concurrent predictors of oral text fluency and reading comprehension in bilingual and monolingual primary-level children

This study examined the (1) extent to which the Oral Language Proficiency (OLP), Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN), Phonological Awareness (PA), Orthographic Knowledge (OK), Word and Text Fluency and Reading Comprehension profiles of English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) resemble the profiles of monolingual (L1) children; (2) relationship between oral text fluency and reading comprehension; and the (3) relative longitudinal and concurrent contribution of individual differences in OLP, RAN, PA, OK, and word fluency on text fluency and reading comprehension. Results indicated that L1 outperformed ESL children on measures of OLP, reading comprehension and pseudoword spelling, but the two groups did not differ on PA and word spelling. ESL were significantly faster at reading words than L1, but not at reading text. Text fluency was significantly related to reading comprehension for both language groups. Contribution of the current study to ESL reading research includes the finding that the same predictors do not equally explain variability in reading fluency and comprehension between the language groups.

Keywords: English language, Study and teaching (Elementary)
English language, Study and teaching
Reading (Elementary)
Two practices, three styles: the evolution of typologies of compositional genre in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian writings on music

Prescriptions for specific genres of musical composition began to appear in Italian treatises on music around 1550. Considerations of text type, affective or expressive goal, social function, place of performance, decorum and propriety became associated with the specific musical materials constituting a musical work. In the writings of Vicentino and Pontio, compositions were divided into ecclesiastical, secular and instrumental types. The art of composition, however, was governed by the understanding that however diversely materials were used in musical ‘kinds’, all works were governed by a uniform set of contrapuntal standards. By 1600, perception of the relationship of musical genres was critically affected by increasing awareness of a bifurcation of contrapuntal practices. Standards remained based ostensibly in a unified theory, but musical works were understood to belong either to a first, or strict and observant practice, or to an ‘other’ second practice using justifiable irregularities of counterpoint premised on affective text expression. This reorganization came about in part due to the reciprocal effects of a series of seventeenth-century polemics and tracts—Monteverdi-Artusi, Scacchi-Siefert, Cazzati-Arresti, Liberati—which subjected works in a ‘strict’ style to intense critical scrutiny. In setting out ‘objective’ criteria by which compositions could be assessed, writers were forced to annotate generic prescriptions, and to re-think and re-modern musical practices generally. This process is clearest in the writings of Marco Scacchi (c.1600–87?) and his students. After 1650 schematics of musical genres took distinctions of ‘practice’ into account, so that music was divided into three ‘styles’, church, chamber and theatrical, and two ‘practices’, first and second. Meanwhile church music style in the observant manner had been strongly affected by the humanist mandate for a simplification of counterpoint for text presentation in performance and the traditionalist stream in music theory. For sociological and historical reasons, this aesthetic became focussed on Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and his Roman successors as its model and central authority. Examination of seventeenth-century prescriptions for this style, particularly in the writings of Antimo, Liberati, supplement and adjust our understanding of the relationships among ‘first practice’ composition, particular requirements for liturgical genres in this period, and ‘modern’ practice generally.
Essays on the economics of information and competition

The focus of this thesis is on issues of information and competition related to the fields of industrial organization and economics of the family. In Chapter 1 and 2, I theoretically analyze the effect of the accuracy of the buyer's private information and the effect of competition on consumer fraud. In general, informational asymmetries create obvious incentives for opportunistic behavior by the sellers: a seller with a low quality good could attempt to defraud the buyer by demanding a price higher than her willingness to pay for the low quality good. I demonstrate that in equilibrium, a more precise customers' private information leads to higher levels of fraud and incidence of fraud for some parameter values. Furthermore, I show that the level of fraud is weakly increasing in the level of market competition in equilibrium. The aim of Chapter 3 is to analyze whether training-according-to-sex can be supported in equilibrium in a transferable utility environment in which individuals are heterogeneous in terms of their aptitudes to perform one task (I call it task A) and in which matching is done according to economic criteria. If a task can be executed perfectly by an individual who receives complete training in that task, then this task is mechanical. I show that if the task at which individuals have a homogenous aptitude (I call it task B) is mechanical, then training-according-to-sex is a Nash equilibrium independently of the size of the market and the sex ratio. Instead, if task B is nonmechanical, then the existence of training-according-to-sex Nash equilibria in large marriage markets requires either a sufficiently high sex ratio or that the average individual has a high aptitude for some task. Finally, the training-according-to-sex can help coordinate people efficiently in the choice of premarital investments in small markets, which are characterized by a high risk associated to mismatches in the population. In general, as the marriage market expands and/or the sex ratio approaches unity, training-according-to-aptitude eventually replaces training-according-to-sex as the optimal strategy.
Chemical heterogeneity of proton and metal complexation by bacterial cell and bacteriogenic iron oxide surfaces

This study focuses on the detailed characterization of proton and metal reactivity on the surface of bacterial cells. Studies concerning proton and metal cation binding to reactive cell surfaces were designed to assess surface chemical heterogeneity through the development of new or custom modified chemical equilibrium models. The linear programming model (LPM) was used to assess metal sorption on intact Escherichia coli (Gram- ) and Bacillus subtilis (Gram+) cells. This method was also used for the study of metal cation interactions in the presence of bacteriogenic iron oxides (BIOS). In the first instance, the validity of LPM was determined from comparison of its efficiency with that of other models such as FITEQL. Proton affinity to intact bacterial cells, mentioned a priori, and BIOS were assessed using a f barbelow;ully o barbelow;ptimized c barbelow;ontinuo us pKa affinity spectral model (FOCUS). Results from the LPM analysis of intact bacterial cells showed that there are at least three metal cation reactive sites on the surfaces of Gram+ and Gram- cells. This is consistent with recently reported spectroscopic studies and validates the use of LPM to the study of complex geochemically reactive solids. The BIOS are composed of a highly porous matrix of ferrihydrite with embedded intact and fragmented bacterial cells. Analysis of this material using LPM suggested the presence of an average of three metal binding sites on the BIOS surface as well as on its organic (bacteria) fraction. LPM methods disclosed the non-additive nature of the BIOS, along with the similarity of its surface reactivity with that of pure iron oxyhydroxide surfaces. Intact bacterial cells were investigated using a combination of empirical and electrostatic models. FOCUS and a Donnan shell model were used to calculate apparent and intrinsic acidity constants on the Gram+ and Gram- surfaces as a function of varying ionic strength. These models found minimal difference between apparent and intrinsic acidity constant values, suggesting little effect of ionic strength variations on the proton affinity of surface functional groups. FOCUS was then employed to investigate the proton binding characteristics of the BIOS. This analysis revealed a striking similarity between the reactivity of the BIOS and that of pure iron oxide phases such as goethite and lepidocrocite. This indicates an extensive masking of underlying organic functional groups by ferrihydrite, which emphasizes the non-additive nature of the BIOS.