VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Securities regulation in Canada: Rules-based versus principles-based approach

This thesis presents a study of the Canada's securities regulation from the perspective of the regulatory tools that should be used for capital market regulation in Canada. This research: (a) puts forward criteria that must be met for the establishment of an ideal capital market regulatory structure in Canada, (b) undertakes a comparative analysis of the current legislation, the Uniform Securities Legislation model and the British Columbia securities regulatory model on the basis of these criteria, and (c) draws conclusions as to the optimal means of regulating the Canadian capital market that would best meet the offered criteria and suit the unique nature of the Canadian common law regulatory system.

Keywords: Securities, Canada
Capital market, Law and legislation
Capital market, Canada
Reflections on treaty-making in British Columbia

Due to its unique history of indigenous-non-indigenous relations, Canada's most western province is the jurisdiction where tension about land tenure appears in truly distinctive forms. The tense relations, unfortunately, seem even more tragic when one learns of how much time and energy individuals and groups devote to alleviating hostilities. Efforts to facilitate resolution about land issues have been to little avail in British Columbia. In order to eliminate this oft-repeated pattern of failed strategies, the following presentation describes how all those involved in resolution must gain a better appreciation of the constitutive qualities that “treaty-making” contains. Misapplying these ideas has impeded resolution in the past and this error, if continued, will simply increase the unease about land tenure felt among all British Columbians in the future.
Rhetoric and history: Paolo Sarpi's Istoria del concilio tridentino

The present thesis is a rhetorical analysis of Paolo Sarpi's Istoria del concilio tridentino. My objective is to ascertain the meaning Sarpi intended to convey in his major work of history by uncovering the specific rhetorical strategies that he made use of in narrating the history of the Council of Trent. The theoretical underpinnings of my analysis come from two main sources: Giambattista Vico's original discovery of the mythopoetic foundation of knowledge and Hayden White's elaboration of this theory for the particular kind of knowledge involved in the construction of historical narrative. The chief idea is that all knowledge of the world is founded on rhetorical premises, since it is only through the channel of structured language that a thing can be brought to presence in consciousness, then conceptualized, and finally subjected to analysis and criticized. It is from this methodological standpoint that I analyze the Istoria del concilio tridentino, seeking to uncover the strategies of emplotment, argument and ideology at work in the historical narrative. This rhetorical analysis reveals the existence of three levels of meaning in Sarpi's historical discourse, each structured on a clear linguistic strategy. The emplotment of the history of the Council of Trent is developed in accordance with the logic of metonymy, emphasizing at all times causal relationships, and this strategy shows the progress of the story to be reactive, ultimately self-destructive, and therefore tragic. The argument, on the other hand, is constructed following the logic of irony, a strategy of narration which reveals that the positions of the institutions involved in the power dynamics of the council are based on the laws of deception. Lastly, the ideological message of the narrative is shaped by the logic of metaphor, a strategy that enables Sarpi to produce, in the guise of a neutral history of the Council of Trent, an idealistic critique of the contemporary church and to call at the same time for a rehabilitation of the principles and institutional structures of the early Christian community.
Catalytic switching and substrate recognition mechanisms of the RNA dependent protein kinase PKR

The RNA dependent protein kinase PKR is a key component of the anti-viral defense mechanism. Upon activation, PKR targets the Ser5l site in the alpha subunit of eukaryotic translation initiation factor, eIF2alpha. Through eIF2alpha phosphorylation, PKR regulates protein synthesis in an effort to promote recovery from and resistance to viral infection. In addition to PKR, the protein kinases, GCN2, HRI and PERK couple diverse stress signals directly to eIF2alpha phosphorylation. One of the main questions that I have addressed in this thesis is the structural basis for the remarkable substrate specificity of PKR and by extension the entire eIF2alpha kinase family. A second theme that I have investigated is the mechanism for the switch that regulates the conversion between the inactive and active states of PKR. Finally, I have explored the connection between the switching and substrate recognition mechanisms of PKR. The PKR-eIF2alpha structures reveal the manner in which the PKR kinase domain mediates both dimerization and substrate binding interactions. In the final chapter, I explore an allosteric connection between these interfaces and reveal a mode of regulation that is dependent on autophosphorylation. I test the structural models through mutagenesis and detailed binding analysis. Furthermore, I characterize a mutant of PKR that provides new insights into the PKR activation process. Together, the results of these studies support an exquisite coupling mechanism between PKR dimerization, autophosphorylation, and eIF2alpha substrate recognition. PKR is targeted for subversion by the vaccinia virus, which produces a structural mimic of eIF2alpha called K3L. In the first data chapter, I describe structural and mutagenesis analysis of K3L. These studies revealed a complex PKR targeting epitope within the globular fold of K3L and eIF2alpha. I also present preliminary experiments that reveal the influence of PKR dimerization on catalytic activation and substrate binding. In the second chapter, I describe crystal structures of PKR-eIF2alpha complexes. The structures reveal the nature of the PKR dimer interface and also the higher-order targeting mechanism for eIF2alpha recognition. I uncover several unique structural features of PKR, which I relate to PKR's biological function and in particular its ability to target Ser51 in eIF2alpha.
VLSI architectures for multi-Gbps Low-Density Parity-Check decoders

Near-capacity performance and parallelizable decoding algorithms have made Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes a powerful competitor to previous generations of codes, such as Turbo and Reed Solomon codes, for reliable high-speed digital communications. As a result, they have been adopted in several emerging standards. This thesis investigates VLSI architectures for multi-Gbps power and area-efficient LDPC decoders. To reduce the node-to-node communication complexity, a decoding scheme is proposed in which messages are transferred and computed bit-serially. Also, a broadcasting scheme is proposed in which the traditional computations required in the sum-product and min-sum decoding algorithms are repartitioned between the check and variable node units. To increase decoding throughput, a block interlacing scheme is investigated which is particularly advantageous in fully-parallel LDPC decoders. To increase decoder energy efficiency, an efficient early termination scheme is proposed. In addition, an analysis is given of how increased hardware parallelism coupled with a reduced supply voltage is a particularly effective approach to reduce the power consumption of LDPC decoders. These architectures and circuits are demonstrated in two hardware implementations. Specifically, a 610-Mbps bit-serial fully-parallel (480, 355) LDPC decoder on a single Altera Stratix EP1S80 device is presented. To our knowledge, this is the fastest FPGA-based LDPC decoder reported in the literature. A fabricated 0.13-mum CMOS bit-serial (660, 484) LDPC decoder is also presented. The decoder has a 300 MHz maximum clock frequency and a 3.3 Gbps throughput with a nominal 1.2-V supply and performs within 3 dB of the Shannon limit at a BER of 10-5. With more than 60% power saving gained by early termination, the decoder consumes 10.4 pJ/bit/iteration at Eb=N0=4dB. Coupling early termination with supply voltage scaling results in an even lower energy consumption of 2.7 pJ/bit/iteration with 648 Mbps decoding throughput. The proposed techniques demonstrate that the bit-serial fully-parallel architecture is preferred to memory-based partially-parallel architectures, both in terms of throughput and energy efficiency, for applications such as 10GBase-T which use medium-size LDPC code (e.g., 2048 bit) and require multi-Gbps decoding throughput.
High multi-vitamin intake during pregnancy in Wistar rats alters food intake regulation in the offspring

The hypothesis that high multi-vitamin intake during pregnancy alters food intake regulation in the offspring was investigated. Pregnant Wistar rats were provided the AIN-93G diet containing either the recommended (RV) or 10x higher vitamin (HV) content. Intake regulation was assessed using two approaches: first, food intake was measured for 1 h in fasted pups, beginning 30 min after preloads were given at 1, 4, 8 and 12 wks post-weaning; second, hormones were measured in plasma of fasted pups collected at weaning and 12 wks post-weaning. HV offspring were hyperphagic beginning at weaning which was exacerbated with increasing age and associated with greater weight gain. Hyperphagia was associated with increased ghrelin and GLP-1 concentrations at weaning suggesting that the effects of the HV maternal diet were established in early life of the offspring. We conclude that high multi-vitamin intakes during pregnancy altered the physiological mechanisms regulating food intake in the offspring.
Telling, knowing, and being understood: Negotiating lesbian in/visibility within the spaces of psychiatric and mental health services

This study utilizes a constructivist grounded theory methodology to explore through in-depth interviews the experiences of lesbian women living with a diagnosis of serious mental illness within the context of psychiatric and mental health support services. The purpose of the current study is to increase understanding of the subjective psychiatric and mental health service experiences of lesbian women in relation to lesbian sexuality. There is a dearth of research on the subjective experiences of lesbian women who have received a diagnosis of serious mental illness (e.g., schizophrenia, mood disorder, severe anxiety, panic or obsessive-compulsive disorder). While some studies show significant elevation in prevalence of disorders in lesbian women, others do not. A meta-analysis of relevant studies suggests that lesbian women suffer from more stress-sensitive mental health problems including affective disorders, substance abuse, and suicide when compared to similar heterosexual women. Of those lesbian women who do suffer with serious mental illness little is known of their subjective experiences of psychiatric and mental health support services. The study consisted of two phases. In Phase 1, ten in-depth face-to-face individual interviews and one focus group with mental health service providers (MHPs) were conducted. In Phase 2, twenty-two in-depth face-to-face individual interviews and one focus group with women whom self-identified as lesbian and as having been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (WSMI) were conducted. Focus groups were conducted for the primary goals of member checking and refining codes and categories that emerged from individual interviews during Phase 1 and 2 of the study. Overall, the analysis of participant interview data indicates that notwithstanding the integral role of self-disclosure to well-being and recovery that lesbian women living with a diagnosis of serious mental illness are required to negotiate the uneven terrain of recognition/non-recognition, acceptance/non-acceptance, and affirmation/non-affirmation that characterizes the diverse range of psychiatric and mental health services with whom they interact. Negotiating their in/visibility is not a simple linear process (i.e., overt and explicit self-disclosure) but rather a complex and layered sequence of subtle and tentative strategies that require the simultaneous awareness, evaluation, and negotiation of several significant factors including personal (individual) factors based on lived experiences and multiple subjectivities; service provider practices and persona attributes; and agency, organizational, and systemic philosophies of models of care.
Local-spin group mutual exclusion algorithms

The group mutual exclusion (GME) problem is a variant of the mutual exclusion problem in which multiple processes that request the same session (and thus belong to the same "group") may be admitted to the critical section concurrently. We examine N-process group mutual exclusion under two different shared-memory models: the distributed shared-memory (DSM) model and the cache-coherent (CC) model. We prove that the remote memory reference (RMR) complexity of any GME algorithm in the DSM model is O(N), and we present and prove correct several local-spin GME algorithms whose RMR complexity matches this lower bound. We also present a 2-session local-spin GME algorithm for the CC model that beats the lower bound of the DSM model, and use it to construct an M-session GME algorithm. Each algorithm we present is in the form of a reduction to a FCFS abortable mutual exclusion algorithm.
Understanding the fate of persistent organic pollutants in temperate and tropical mountains

Mountains are ideal settings to study contaminant transport and behavior along gradients of climate and surface cover. In both the mountains of Western Canada and Central America, surface soil samples were collected along several elevational gradients and air was sampled for an entire year using XAD-based passive air samplers. The soil and XAD extracts were analyzed for PAHs and organochlorine pesticides in past and present use. Field results and computer modeling point to windows of enhanced contaminant accumulation at high altitudes for compounds with an equilibrium air-water partition cooefficient at 25°C between 10-3 and 10-6 and an octanol-air partition coefficient between 10+9 and 10+11, in both temperate and tropical locations. Chemicals with partitioning properties in these ranges are not efficiently scavenged at the temperature prevalent in the lowlands. They travel upslope with prevailing winds and, at the low temperatures of high elevations, scavenging efficiency increases, and the chemicals are deposited onto soil. Modeling results show maximum mountain accumulation for mountains with a large temperature range and greatest increase in precipitation with altitude. Lower precipitation rates increase air/soil concentration ratios of organochlorine pesticides on the eastern side of the continental divide in western Canada. Snow plays an important role in contaminant accumulation in temperate mountains, by efficiently scavenging organic contaminants at low temperatures. The snow pack functions as a temporary storage reservoir that releases contaminants accumulating over the winter, which may result in temporarily elevated concentrations in air, water and soil. Contaminant signatures differ in tropical mountains due to different source contribution. Tropical soils have a higher relative abundance of lighter PAHs compared to temperate locations, a result of greater source contribution from biomass burning in the tropics, as well as preferential loss of lighter PAHs from temperate soils that experienced high deposition in the past.
Fine structure spectrography, with applications in human and machine speech processing

An audition-inspired algorithm for time-varying spectral analysis is proposed. It consists of many highly overlapping wideband Filter/Detectors, followed by a peak detector. Analysis with synthetic modulated signals illustrates how the proposed method demodulates signals. The resulting display, referred to as a 'Fine Structure Spectrogram' or FSS, shows the fine structure of modulations in substantially higher detail than in conventional spectrograms. In the Fourier domain, a less generalized form of the FSS can be implemented using ridge extraction on a highly 'oversampled' STFT. Evaluation of estimation errors with test signals indicates that for single component signals, better estimation requires relatively wide filters, small filter separations, and small probing intervals. In contrast, with multi-component signals, larger filter bandwidths increase the estimation error if two components are close in frequency. In speech, the FSS can detect small frequency and amplitude modulations in the formants of speech. It also identifies significant 'extra' time-frequency components not detected by other methods. In the case of one extra component, detailed analysis confirms that it is not an artifact. Three applications of the FSS are investigated. First, the FSS is compared to standard Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) as a front end in an automatic speaker identification system. When the MFCC is augmented with FSS-based features, there is a small (0.86%) but statistically significant improvement (P
Vapor compression air conditioning system modelling and control

Air conditioning systems are widely used and relied upon to allow humans and machinery to operate in adverse conditions. Advances in component technologies make it possible for advanced control development to improve air conditioning system performance. Air conditioning system modelling and simulation is required to conduct such work. This thesis presents research work in model development using commercial and scientific software; EASY5 and MATLAB respectively. Tuning and testing of air conditioning system control configurations is also conducted. The results show that the new control configurations tested can improve system performance in a number of setpoint tracking and disturbance rejection tasks. Heat exchanger air flow controls are also shown to be viable means of regulating superheat. They have the potential to augment conventional controls for further performance gains.

Keywords: Air conditioning, Mathematical models
Endoscopic fluorescence diagnosis of early gastrointestinal neoplasias using endogenous and exogenous contrast agents

Early identification of dysplasia in Barrett's esophagus (BE) and the colon remains a critical issue for clinical diagnostic endoscopy, since early discovery directly improves patient survival. Clinical studies have successfully used tissue autofluorescence (AF) with conventional white light endoscopy (WLE) and biopsy for detecting preneoplastic colonic adenomatous polyps, differentiating benign from preneoplastic polyps and identifying BE mucosa in the esophagus. Despite this, in vivo autofluorescence endoscopic detection of early dysplasia continues to be problematic due to suboptimal fluorescence contrast. The goal of this PhD thesis was to extend previous AF mechanistic studies and explore means of improving in vivo fluorescence endoscopic contrast. First, the AF of isolated living colonic crypts and primary cell cultures of normal colon, hyperplastic and adenomatous polyps was studied at the cellular level in vitro. For BE, fluorescence microscopy was performed on archived ex vivo frozen human tissues of normal esophagus, BE without and with dysplasia, and stomach to characterize the biological origins and possible differences in mucosal AF. Both studies improved our understanding of the biological origins of colon and BE tissue AF. To address suboptimal detection of dysplasia in AF imaging of BE, aminolevulinic acid (ALA) was evaluated in vivo and ex vivo as a diagnostic pro-drug to enhance the fluorescence contrast of dysplasia in BE. The results of these studies were inconsistent. The limited utility of AF and ALA-induced fluorescence for detecting dysplasia in vivo prompted a new approach, using monoclonal antibody-based fluorescent contrast bioconjugate targeting of a tumor-associated mucin antigen overexpressed in human colorectal adenocarcinomas. This agent was developed and evaluated in vitro and in vivo in a xenograft mouse tumor model, yielding significant enhancement of tumor-to-normal contrast. A novel class of fluorescent semiconductor nanoparticles (quantum dots) were evaluated as alternative immunotargeted fluorescence contrast agents in preliminary in vitro and in vivo animal studies. In conclusion, this thesis has advanced our basic understanding of tissue AF in the GI tract, which may translate into improved AF endoscopic imaging technology for enhancing early detection of GI cancers, and offers the distinct possibility of providing real-time non-invasive "molecular endoscopy" for tumor detection in vivo.
Acute vasoregulation and chronic tissue reorganization in arterial remodeling

Mechanically induced arterial remodeling responses have physiological and pathological significance, thus the mechanisms associated with these remodeling responses are imperative to understand. First, this thesis examined inward remodeling response following blood flow reduction in a rabbit model with a specific focus on identifying the potential mediator of the response. Since expression of potent vasoconstrictor endothelin-1 (ET-1) increases when shear stress is reduced in vitro, it was hypothesized that the persistent constriction due to this agonist participates in inward arterial remodeling after blood flow reduction. Accordingly, chronic blockade of ET-1 receptors suppressed both early vasoconstriction and late remodeling of the rabbit carotid artery after 70% blood flow reduction. The role of vasodilator nitric oxide (NO) was also tested and intriguingly, NO influenced only structural remodeling. This thesis demonstrates that ET-1 participates in acute inward remodeling of arteries and integrated influences of NO and ET-1 production initiate inward remodeling after chronic blood flow reduction. To explore role of ET-1 and NO in inward remodeling further, a mouse model was employed. This approach revealed that mice respond to external carotid ligation completely differently than rabbits preventing from testing the initial objective. Nonetheless, the mouse model provided novel insight into its suitability for studying peripheral flow distribution and cerebrovascular remodeling response associated with blood flow changes. In addition, as arteries display highly directional growth and remodeling that is specific to increases in the mechanical loads imposed upon them by blood pressure, blood flow and lengthwise tensile forces, this thesis also examined the effect of mechanical forces on the direction in which mitosis delivers daughter cells. In vitro imposition of lateral force on surface integrins of cultured endothelial cells and in vivo imposition of lengthwise force on smooth muscle cells in rabbit carotid arteries altered direction of mitosis indicating that influences of mechanical force can modulate the manner in which mitosis of vascular cells contributes to reorganization of arterial wall tissue. Altogether, studies in this thesis provide novel and intriguing findings, furthering knowledge of mechanically-induced vascular remodeling responses.

Keywords: Physiology