VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Identification of Clk/Sty as a serine/arginine-rich protein kinase

I have investigated the function of the protein kinase Clk/Sty. To discover proteins that may interact with Clk/Sty, I performed a two-hybrid screen in yeast using Clk/Sty as bait. Twenty-six mouse cDNA clones were identified in the screen. Four of these clones encode known transcription factors c-Myc, ZFP38, N-CoR, as well as a novel zinc finger protein. Other clones identified in the screen suggest a role for Clk/Sty in RNA processing. For instance, one of the clones, CARS-Cyp, encodes a novel arginine/serine-rich (RS) cyclophilin which co-localizes with splicing factors to nuclear speckles. Furthermore, six of the two-hybrid clones encode RNA-binding proteins. One of these clones is a mammalian homologue of the Drosophila splicing regulator tra-2. Three of the remaining five RNA-binding proteins are members of the SR family of essential splicing factors. I focused my studies on one member of the SR family, ASF/SF2, and found that Clk/Sty phosphorylated ASF/SF2 in vitro on sites that are also phosphorylated in vivo. As well, a catalytically inactive Clk/Sty co-localized to nuclear speckles with SR family members. Interestingly, overexpression of wild-type Clk/Sty led to disassembly of nuclear speckles resulting in redistribution of SR proteins. Therefore, Clk/Sty regulates the intranuclear distribution of SR proteins, presumably by phosphorylation. SRPK1 was the first kinase to be cloned and identified as an SR protein kinase. I found that SRPK1 phosphorylated RSRS repeats in ASF/SF2. Clk/Sty, on the other hand, phosphorylated SPR and KSKS repeats as well as RSRS repeats. Therefore, Clk/Sty displays a broader substrate specificity than SRPK1 in vitro, suggesting that Clk/Sty may phosphorylate more substrates than SRPK1 does in vivo. Pre-mRNA splicing is a complex process that is executed with high fidelity. In order to choose splice sites appropriately, the splicing machinery must be responsive to its external environment. I propose that Clk/Sty functions to transduce signals to this machinery enabling proper splice site selection.
The effects of group development, member characteristics, and results on teamwork outcomes

The study of group development has a history which dates back over a half century and an extensive amount of literature has been accumulated. It is only in the last few years, however, that researchers have moved from hierarchical models to multi-sequence models which suggest that each group has its own unique development pattern. If groups do vary in development patterns then this suggests the possibility that specific development patterns may have more positive or more negative influences on group effectiveness. The relationship between group development and group effectiveness is a little studied area of research, yet it is also a potentially important contributor to creating high performing teams. This dissertation, therefore, examined the effects of group development patterns on the group effectiveness. The study also investigated how group member characteristics would affect group development and group outcomes, and the impact of negative disconfirming feedback on future group development. A multi-phase research process was used. The purpose of the first phase was to develop and assess the reliability and validity of a questionnaire which could be used to measure models of group development. This questionnaire was then used in the second phase to test the research hypotheses. In the primary study, questionnaire data measuring individual characteristics, group development processes, satisfaction, and outcome expectancies was collected from 42 student task groups. Performance measures were obtained from project marks. In addition, groups taped meetings on audio cassettes. This provided qualitative data on group development to support the questionnaire results. The research results indicated that group development processes are related to group effectiveness. The questionnaire data also provided evidence of the midpoint transition which was hypothesized in Gersick's punctated equilibrium model. In addition, group development results supported the multi-sequence models of group development suggesting that actual group processes can occur in a variety of patterns. Analyses of member characteristics showed that group composition was related to group development and to effectiveness. The theoretical and practical implications of these results were discussed.
Laser photothermal investigation of non-radiative bulk and surface sources in solid-state laser materials

The understanding of the problem of non-radiative energy conversion in solid-state laser materials is the key factor in improving the overall efficiency of solid-state lasers. Furthermore, the reduction of the heat generated in an optically pumped laser crystal can lead to several new applications of solid state lasers, especially in the high-power region. To improve the quality of grown crystals, laser crystal growers require accurate techniques to perform the quality control that is so vital to improving the growth process. In this work, we quantified the problem of non-radiative (heat) energy conversion by using three techniques to monitor laser crystal quality. We used a technique known as photopyroelectric spectroscopy (PPES) to measure the optical absorption and nonradiative energy conversion efficiency of Ti: Sapphire laser materials. We unexpectedly found that the non-radiative processes at the surface of the crystal form a greater fraction of the overall losses in a crystal than had previously been assumed. Based on our finding using PPES, we used the photothermal radiometry technique, which is more sensitive to surface effects than PPES. Using a time-domain approach and a time-domain theoretical treatment of the IR radiative emission signal, we determined that we can probe non-radiative surface and bulk processes by monitoring different time ranges. Our results show that photothermal radiometry can be used as a single technique to evaluate both the bulk and surface non-radiative energy conversion rates in a solid state laser material. The final technique we used was the standard method of laser crystal evaluation: measuring the laser output from a material in a laser cavity. By testing the same materials using PPES, PTR and a laser cavity, we were able to correlate our results with the standard method and also show that the PTR technique can give us information as to why a particular crystal is better than another, which cannot be done by the standard method.
A randomized trial investigating the effects of guided imagery in the promotion of self-soothing in bulimia nervosa

Bulimia nervosa (BN) is a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by a loss of control over eating in the form of binging episodes, extreme attempts to control body shape and weight, and a set of attitudes representing a morbid fear of becoming fat. Recently, BN has been categorized as a disorder of impulse control. Theories of impulsivity link impulsive behaviour to a lack of capacity for self-soothing or an inability to comfort oneself when alone. The objectives of this study were to provide quantitative information about the degree of impulsivity and self-soothing capacity in BN and to test a guided imagery therapy designed to enhance self-soothing. A randomized controlled trial with two groups measured pre and post intervention compared six weeks of individual guided imagery therapy to a control group. Fifty participants who met DSM III-R criteria for BN completed the study. Instrumentation included quantitative measures of eating disorder symptomatology, psychological functioning and self-reports associated with the experience of guided imagery therapy. The guided imagery treatment had substantial effects on the reduction of bingeing and purging episodes and also demonstrated improvement on measures of attitudes concerning eating, dieting and body weight in comparison to the control group. The imagery group had a mean reduction of binges of 74% (p $<$.0001) and mean vomiting reduction of 73% (p $<$.0001). In addition, the guided imagery demonstrated improvement on psychological measures of aloneness and the ability for self-comforting. Individuals demonstrating both high and low levels of impulse expression and those more receptive to soothing (or with a greater capacity for self-soothing) improved with the imagery treatment. Evidence from this study suggests that guided imagery was an effective treatment for BN, at least in the short-term, and promoted psychological soothing, possibly by providing patients with a transitional object. Further evidence suggests that the guided imagery therapy may have acted as a form of psychotherapy that provided personal insight. Guided imagery therapy may add an important new dimension to the treatment of eating disorders. Further research is required to replicate these initial findings and to investigate its longterm benefits.
Sampled-data repetitive control systems

Repetitive control is employed in numerous industrial applications to allow systems to track or reject unknown periodic signals of a known period. This thesis takes a novel approach to the design and analysis of such systems, by introducing a useful performance measure, referred to as the induced power-norm. This measure represents the maximum power-norm of the steady-state error vector in the system, for all periodic inputs of unit power-norm. The approach taken here is also new in that it is a sampled-data formulation. Hence, the intersample behavior is directly taken into account. First, a methodology is developed for designing optimal sampled-data repetitive controllers, based on minimizing the power-norm of the steady-state error vector for a given periodic input. It is shown that such an optimal controller always exists. This methodology is then generalized to the case of an unknown periodic input by minimizing the induced power-norm. Fast discretization is verified to be a useful computational tool for obtaining suboptimal controllers in both methodologies. To demonstrate these methodologies. active suppression of fan noise present in an acoustic duct is discussed with promising results. Also formulated and analyzed in this thesis is a robust tracking problem for sampled-data repetitive control systems in the presence of structured linear periodically time-varying perturbations. Specifically, we investigate whether the induced power-norm of the closed-loop system remains below a given bound for a class of such perturbations. The result is stated in terms of a necessary and sufficient condition that involves Dullerud's generalized notion of structured singular values for operators. Computational aspects are addressed with a numerical example.
Italy through the looking glass, aspects of British policy and intelligence concerning Italy, 1939-1941

This thesis examines British policy and intelligence concerning Italy between 1939 and 1941, paying particular attention to British images of Italy. In this period, British policy ran the gamut from appeasement to a pre-emptive strike, each corresponding to the prevailing image of Italy. This image was determined by the combination of net assessments, British fondness for the indirect approach and intelligence whose inability to ascertain Italian intentions gave expectations disproportionate influence over assessments. Chief among these expectations was the belief that Italian policy would further British plans to satisfy its strategic needs. After Italy joined the war on 10 June 1940, intelligence's inability to penetrate Mussolini's mind was less critical. Italy's declaration of war shattered the illusion that its policy would be compatible with Britain's strategic needs while breakthroughs in signals intelligence improved operational intelligence. In East Africa, this resulted in a policy of "raising the tribes", a plan to defeat Italy by supporting an indigenous rebellion in the Italian territories. British success in Abyssinia in May 1941 was a turning point in Anglo-Italian relations because it marked the end of Italy's ability to fight a parallel war. This thesis examines the interplay of image, intelligence and policy in Britain's relations with Italy between 1939 and 1941 in order to increase understanding of the nature and results of British policy for Italy in this period.
The Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great in the literary and religious culture of seventh- and eighth-century Europe

Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), valued in the Middle Ages as an authority on scriptural exegesis, preaching and administration, was an important source for early medieval churchmen. Though not the unique expression of Gregory's thought, the Dialogues which contained short accounts of the lives of saints in Italy, including the Life of St. Benedict, as well as a discussion of the afterlife, saw a rapid dissemination after its appearance in 594. Requests for books, entries in library catalogues, and the survival of early manuscripts, attests to its popularity. By tracing the use and interpretation of the Dialogues among seventh- and eighth-century authors through an examination of textual citations this thesis analyzes the Dialogues as an aspect of Gregory's influence in the early Middle Ages. The broad survey of authors from Spain, Ireland, England and Gaul offers points for comparison. It is clear that early medieval churchmen accepted the Dialogues as one of Gregory's major works, not an aberration in his corpus as some modern authors have suggested. Both theologians concerned with questions of the afterlife and hagiographers interested in models of sanctity used the Dialogues. The themes that attracted these authors include: Gregory's portrait of St. Benedict; the idea of purgatory not as a punishment, but as a doctrine of hope; visions of the afterlife, both the delights of heaven and torments of hell, as a means of moving people to lead virtuous lives; and Gregory's ecclesiology based on a monastic spirituality.
Convicts and the state, the administration of criminal justice in Great Britain during the reign of George III

This thesis examines changing English penal practices within the context of the late eighteenth-century state. Capital punishment, transportation and imprisonment are analyzed with reference to the interactions between central and local governments, between ministers and parliament, and amongst the ministers themselves. The main administrative and financial burden of criminal justice fell upon local officials. With the exception of metropolitan London, in which it had long had a particular interest, the central government saw its role in domestic regulation as being supportive of local priorities rather than directive. It was also concerned to limit national expenditure during an age of fiscal retrenchment. Examination of the state context of penal policy between 1770 and 1800 encourages a narrative of change that draws together various strands of penal and policing practice. The transportation of serious offenders--interrupted by the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775--was re-commenced with the opening of New South Wales in 1787. The Penitentiary Act of 1779 was as indicative of this continuing adherence to transportation as of the growing use of imprisonment to punish less serious offenders. Although the government failed to build the institutions proposed under that Act, it did so with an alternative strategy of preventive policing in mind. This strategy led to the failed Metropolitan Police bill of 1785 and, ultimately, to the Middlesex Justices Act of 1792. It continued to inform the government's thinking during the 1790s, when a strong body of opinion in parliament pressed for the realization of the penitentiary regime not only in London but throughout the nation. The government's decision to sanction Bentbam's ill-fated Panopticon project was an attempt to quell such concerns. No explanation for English penal change can ignore changing social and cultural imperatives. But the precise course that such change followed cannot be explained without close consideration of the structure and distribution of state authority that it upheld.
Modelling and forecasting airborne allergenic Ambrosia pollen concentrations at Toronto

As a consequence of reproduction in anemophilous plants, large quantities of pollen grains are released to the atmosphere. For roughly 17% of the human population, exposure to airborne pollen causes allergic symptoms. A thorough understanding of the dynamics of atmospheric pollen concentrations, and forewarning of high pollen concentrations of allergenic taxa, is required for the effective treatment of pollen related allergic disease. The general objectives of this thesis are to examine the timing and abundance of airborne pollen and elucidate possible processes involved in the production, release and dispersal of pollen. These relationships are used to develop a model that describes the airborne occurrence of Ambrosia pollen, the most allergenic taxon. The model is tested for its ability and accuracy in forecasting future pollen concentrations. A survey of atmospheric pollen in Metropolitan Toronto from 1985 to 1990 revealed a regular seasonal progression of pollination of anemophilous taxa. Interannual variability in pollen catch is high for trees, and exhibits possible 2-3 yr cycles for some taxa. Interannual variation in the start of the pollen season is approximately 20 d for trees, 5 d for grass and 2 d for ragweed. Alignment of yearly pollen concentration curves, to account for variations in start date, gives a more accurate representation of average pollen occurrence and abundance. Aligned average curves expose the underlying pollination biology which shows positively skewed airborne pollen curves for some taxa, such as Betula and Gramineae, while others are more symmetrical. Examination of diurnal Ambrosia pollen concentrations shows that the seasonal progression of flowering and pollen release is properly modelled by a Gaussian curve multiplied by a sinusoid. The standardized and square root transformed residuals of the model are compared with residuals of modelled temperature and windspeed during the season to examine the influence of meteorological factors on diurnal concentrations. Weak correlations are found due to the asynchrony of diurnal cycles. The best correlations are found between pollen and wind speed during the time of anthesis. Precipitation is effectively modelled, diurnally, by presence or absence. It is proposed that daily fluctuations in airborne pollen concentrations are due to a complex interaction of the phenomena of weather.
Design and evaluation of Web-based dynamic hypertexts

The objective of this research is to establish the feasibility of dynamic linking as a viable complement to traditional static links in very large hypertexts. An experimental prototype was developed, in order to investigate the effects of dynamic linking on (1) users and (2) user performance and interaction styles during hypertext information exploration. This prototype executed queries in the background to identify appropriate targets for dynamic links. Two experiments were conducted. The first experiment evaluated user performance, with either static or dynamic links, in terms of task time, decision time, reading time and accuracy. The second experiment studied how user performance and behaviour were affected by the visibility and modifiability of interaction feedback. This thesis also examines the effects of dynamism on mental workload, as measured by a specially modified (hypertext) version of the Subjective Mental Workload Assessment Technique (HSWAT). Finally, the thesis considers implications for the overall relationship between information retrieval and hypertext approaches to information exploration. The results indicated that dynamic hypertext can improve performance in question answering, particularly for domain novices or those with little computer expertise. The dynamic interface reduced workload differences between experts and novices. Link transparency had only a weak effect in improving performance in Experiment 2.
Esthétique du discours antillais, une analyse dans Un arc-en-ciel pour l'occident chrétien de René Depestre

This thesis examines the role of Rene Depestre's poetics in the Caribbean literature. Based on A Rainbow for the Christian West, this study analyzes the historical and political factors which determine the Caribbean identity from the Black Code to the post-colonial systems. This thesis shows how the representation of the Haitian Voodoo in the text of Depestre signifies the evolution of the Caribbean movements. The possession of the "loa" becomes a metaphor of resistance and allows Depestre to conceive a pattern of modernity in the Caribbean literary discourse. At this point, the thesis establishes the relationship between different post-colonial theories from the Negritude to the Marvelous Realism. It analyzes the points of convergence and divergence between Depestre and other Caribbean authors like Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Jacques Roumain, Jean Price Mars and Rene Menil. Furthermore, the thesis criticizes some analytical approaches which tend to study the Caribbean literature in comparison to the western literature and especially the Surrealism.