VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Corrosion monitoring of reinforced concrete in dry storage containers for used nuclear fuel

The aim of this project is to support OPG in developing suitable monitoring instrumentation for electrochemical measurements such as corrosion rate, corrosion current, and oxygen content in the Dry Storage Container concrete. Electrochemical measurements were done to find a suitable electrode as the anode material when coupled with a more noble metal electrode in an oxygen sensor. Zinc and molybdenum were tested and molybdenum was found to be appropriate for this purpose. The behavior of silver in concrete was studied to find out whether it could be used as a reference electrode for corrosion monitoring. It was found that the presence of silver in the system shifted the equilibrium potential. Lastly, the unique ingredient used in the dry storage containers, the iron oxide aggregate was found to decrease the concrete resistivity. However, blast-furnace slag, as a candidate material to replace cement proposed by OPG, increased the concrete resistivity.
Inhibition of intrinsic and extrinsic pathway-mediated apoptosis by cadmium

Cadmium (Cd) is a toxic metal that has been shown to induce apoptosis in some cells and inhibit apoptosis in others. In the present study using human mesangial cells, 10 μM Cd2+ inhibited DNA laddering and caspase-9 activity induced by serum withdrawal. DNA laddering, caspase activation, and nuclear fragmentation induced by 50 ng/ml TNF-α plus the p38 MAP kinase inhibitor SB203580 (2 μM) was also inhibited by 10 μM Cd2+ as was DNA laddering and caspase activation induced by 25 μM camptothecin, a topoisomerase I inhibitor. The inhibition of DNA laddering was specific to Cd2+ compared with other metal cations including Zn2+ and Hg2+. Furthermore, 10 μM Cd2+ prevented cytochrome c release. We conclude that Cd 2+ inhibits apoptosis in mesangial cells by inhibiting the caspases at multiple levels. In addition, procaspase-9 was activated in both the intrinsic (camptothecin) and extrinsic (TNF-α/SB203580) apoptotic pathways signifying its importance in mesangial cell apoptosis.
A novel head-free point-of-gaze estimation system

A novel real-time head-free point-of-gaze (POG) estimation system was developed. The system uses a video camera that captures images of one eye, and two IR light sources that illuminate the eye and produce two corneal reflections (glints). A geometrical-optical model is used to compute the POG on a computer monitor from the estimated image coordinates of pupil and glints centers. The sensitivity of the novel POG estimation method to errors in model parameters, noise in pupil and glints centers estimation, and fixation errors during calibration, is discussed. A non-spherical corneal model was developed to evaluate sub-optimal algorithms that improve the accuracy of the method. Experiments showed that the r.m.s. estimation error of the POG on a computer monitor is less than 1°. The POG estimation system was used in a pilot study to develop a visual aid for subjects with macular degeneration.
Pilot study of FRP-to-tubular steel behaviour

This thesis presents an extensive literature review of the use of Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP) in civil infrastructure, followed by an experimental investigation into the means of application---and the resulting structural behaviour---of FRP bonded to steel tubular members using a wet-layup method. The main focus was on the static flexural performance of steel-FRP composite beams, with principal experimental parameters being the fibre/epoxy manufacturer and the matrix curing conditions. Curing of test specimens was undertaken both in air and in (simulated) seawater, with the latter representing the conditions for offshore tubular structures. It was found that adequate bonding could be achieved with underwater application, with composite action being achieved between the steel and most of the FRP layers. However, composite members produced using underwater application did not attain the same flexural capacity as those cured "in air". Another aspect of the experimental research investigated the potential of repairing a plate-to-tube fillet-welded connection which had failed due to the propagation of fatigue cracks. The FRP repair procedure attempted was unsuccessful at extending the fatigue life of the cracked connection specimen. This was due to early debonding of the FRP repair material, since it was not loaded in the direction of the fibres. The inability of FRP epoxies to sustain any reasonable load out of the plane of the matrix was further confirmed by a series of secondary tests. Further research is thus still required to develop a repair procedure for such tube-to-baseplate connections.
The development of an IC engine model-based fuel injection controller with fuel film compensation

A set of transient experiments were performed on a gasoline test engine, with a focus on air to fuel ratio (AFR) tracking during throttle transients. The experiments were performed with two different fuel injection controllers. First, the GM Powertrain Control Module (PCM) was used, followed by the same transient experiments using a model-based controller developed in LabVIEW™. The excursions from a stoichiometric AFR were compared. The LabVIEW™ controller, including a fuel film compensator and a feedforward controller, decreased the duration of the AFR excursions during throttle transients, when compared to the GM PCM. The results indicate that further decreases in the duration and magnitude of AFR excursions would be achieved with a faster engine sensor sampling rate. Overall, the LabVIEW™ controller and fuel film compensator were calibrated quickly and easily, and were able to provide similar AFR tracking performance as the GM PCM.
Determinants of attrition from diabetes self-management education programs

The phenomenon of attrition from diabetes self-management education (DSME) has received little attention in the literature. Findings about factors associated with patient attrition from diabetes health services have been often contradictory and largely inconclusive. A series of four studies were conducted to investigate determinants of attrition from DSME. We recruited patients attending their first visit at diabetes education centres who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. We defined attrition as three or fewer patient-provider contacts at a diabetes education centre over a one-year period and classified patients as users or nonusers of ongoing DSME. Logistic regression was used to analyze potential predictors of program attrition. Conventional content analysis was used to code and generate themes from text gathered from an open-ended question. Psychometric analyses were conducted to assess the new scales we developed. We observed an attrition rate between 43% and 50% across studies. Being over 65 or younger than 50 years of age, primarily speaking English, working full or part-time, having a regular primary care physician, fewer diabetes symptoms, low self-efficacy in overcoming barriers to use services, low intentions to use services, and the centre patients attended were important predictors of program attrition. The most common reasons cited by patients for attrition were conflict between patients' work schedule and the centre's hours of operation, patients' confidence with the amount of diabetes knowledge obtained, confidence in managing their diabetes, apathy towards diabetes education, distance to the centre, forgetfulness, seeing a physician regularly, low perceived seriousness of the disease, and lack of familiarity with the centre and its services. The new scales have good comprehension and psychometric properties. Individuals with diabetes need the necessary information and support to become an effective self-manager of their diabetes. This would entail primary care providers to inform patients of DSME and to encourage full participation of these services. We need to improve delivery of DSME that facilitate the ongoing monitoring, support and routine care that a chronic illness such as diabetes requires. Restructuring the delivery of DSME should lead to programs offering a broader range of intervention approaches with greater access, convenience and choice.
Routing in ad hoc networks using location information

Geographic location information can be used to design efficient distributed routing algorithms for wireless ad hoc networks, such as face traversal algorithms. However, the face traversal algorithms in the literature do not guarantee message delivery in general mobile ad hoc networks. We study the usefulness of location information in routing for mobile ad hoc networks. We consider the link delay to be significant so that the routing graph may change during packet transmission. We formulate and solve the shortest path problem when global location information of mobile nodes is available, which has not been studied before. We show that with global location information, the problem can be solved efficiently. Then, we develop two restricted models to study local routing algorithms. We present two new face traversal algorithms for each model that exploit the geometric relationship in the graph intelligently. They could lead into solutions for general mobile networks.
A highly macroporous biodegradable composite scaffold for bone tissue engineering applications

A new composite scaffold for bone tissue engineering applications has been prepared by combining biodegradable poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) with bioresorbable calcium phosphate cement particles (CaP) through the processes of particle fusion, particle leaching and phase separation. The scaffold is characterized by a high level of interconnected macroporosity, macropores of 0.8∼1.8 mm, porosities ranging from 81 to 91%, improved mechanical properties with respect to the polymer alone, controllable degradation rate and excellent dimensional stability during culture—with or without fibroblast-like cells. Scaffold properties were controlled by adjusting PLGA molar mass and concentration, CaP/PLGA ratio and porogen size. Testing mechanical properties in wet conditions at 37°C is more stringent than in dry conditions, but more relevant for materials to be employed in a biological milieu; the new scaffold was found to exhibit adequate mechanical properties in wet/37°C conditions and withstand the forces of cell contraction. The new composite was also osteoconductive in vivo. It was found that small (<20 μm) CaP particles favored bone ingrowth into, and remodeling of, the scaffold.
The effect of temperature on biodegradation, sorption and transport of toluene in soil

Using inoculum from an aerobic aquifer, microcosm tests revealed that aerobic toluene biodegradation rates increased with increasing temperatures over the temperature range 22°C to 60°C. However, in column tests, biodegradation occurred faster at lower temperatures due to oxygen limitations. In subsequent column tests with a methanogenic consortium at 22°C, 35°C and 50°C, toluene biodegradation was only slightly greater at 35°C than at 22°C, while reduced activity was observed at 50°C. The results of the study indicate that for toluene and the silty soil tested, there is little benefit to be gained by raising soil temperatures through subsurface heating. The effect of temperature on biodegradation, sorption and transport of toluene was studied in batch and column tests under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. A silty soil tested for sorption isotherms exhibited little change in distribution coefficients with the temperature increased from 22°C to 60°C.
The symposium as architext: a study in Ernst Jünger's (1895-1998) approach to narrative

“The Symposium as Architext. A Study in Ernst Ringer's (1895–1998) Approach to Narrative”, developed out of an interest in a number of different areas of research, among them 20th century German literature, literary theory, European intellectual history, and political philosophy. Its object of inquiry is Ernst Ringer's novel Eumeswil (1977), which it examines from the perspective of genre. In addressing this particular aspect of the novel, the intent has been to clarify certain inconsistencies in the existing secondary literature, as well as to assess the role that genre analysis can play in helping to make a text such as Eumeswil comprehensible as a literary model. The choice of Eumeswil is not arbitrary; it provides suitable material for interdisciplinary interests, and the emphasis which this study places on genre analysis is necessary when taking into consideration the novel's unconventional narrative form and its critical reception. In fact, an indiscriminate list of the definitions that have been applied to Eumeswil would include terms such as essay, myth, philosophy, post-history, postmodern, and utopia. In some cases, these have been used concurrently, so that as a novel, Eumeswil is considered a type of “open text”, one which allows for multiple genre interpretations and definitions. Critics who have engaged with Ainger's novel from this perspective have tended to overlook an important element of its diegesis, however, and have thereby failed to recognize that Eumeswil is not principally a novel of the end of history, or even of postmodernity, but that it is above all the novel of a dialogue. Recognizing this dialogue and positioning it both within the novel's fictional world and inter-textually—i.e. with respect to Ringer's broader oeuvre—is crucial when it comes to recovering the relationship between Eumeswil 's primary narrative, and its seemingly arbitrary essayistic, reflective, and descriptive passages. This distinctive dialogue form (which is based upon Plato's Symposium), constitutes a central aspect of Jünger's novel. Its broader significance vis-à-vis an assessment of Jünger's approach to writing narrative fiction has been largely ignored by critics looking at his oeuvre.
GNB attitude determination control system and CanX-4 CanX-5 propulsion system contributions

The Space Flight Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace studies is currently developing a Generic Nanosatellite Bus (GNB) following the requirements of two projects under the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) program. These projects are the CanX-3 or BRITE photometric variability observations mission and the CanX-4 CanX-5 formation flight demonstration mission. This thesis provides an in depth study of the overall performance of the Attitude Determination and Control. Systems (ADCS) for these missions including the effects of the CanX-4 CanX-5 propulsion system on the attitude control system and various mitigation strategies to reduce these effects. In addition, this thesis provides the detailed design, re-design and implementation of various components, simulation models and ground support equipment and procedures for the ADCS, mane of which were manufactured and qualified for flight on these missions by the author.

Keywords: Aerospace engineering
The recent boom period in venture capital finance: impact on staging

Entrepreneurial firms in their young stage are lacking the cash flow and profitability that would enable them to pay interest or dividends. The venture capitalist's return is therefore in capital gains. Venture capital investments, to 90% in high technology companies, experienced a boom from 1995 to 2000. At the same time, Internet shares soared. IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) are the preferential exit means for venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and investment banks in times of overheated markets. The common goal of those players was to sell as much shares as possible, as quick as possible. Venture capitalists had more money to invest, since the number of entrepreneurial ventures was limited, entrepreneurs had more cash on hand. The number of financing rounds declined sharply. Consequentially, the positive effects of staged capital commitments were highly alleviated and entrepreneurs had more freedom to invest in projects with negative NPV (Net Present Value).

Keywords: Venture capital, Finance
The contest of verse-making in Old Norse-Icelandic skaldic poetry

This thesis examines the competitive function of Old Norse-Icelandic skaldic poetry of the late ninth to thirteenth centuries, arguing that verse-making was an instrument of social rivalry for its practitioners, who competed with one another to demonstrate their proficiency as verbal artists, and secure public status and lasting reputation. The agonistic quality of skaldic poetics is detectable throughout the verse corpus, and fundamental to the stereotyped representations of poets in saga narrative. Individual poets attempted not only to surpass their contemporaries, but also to outdo those preceding skalds whose work was transmitted to them in the memorial tradition. From the late twelfth century, when prose writers began to use skaldic poetry in the creation of their new textual communities, they memorialized this agonistic tradition as they translated it into the medium of writing, recreating the social and performative contests of the skalds in their narrative arrangements. Chapter 1 sets out two case studies exemplifying the importance of competition between rival skalds in the sagas. Chapter 2 examines the conceptualization of skaldic verse-making in poetry and prose as a competitive performance skill, an ithrott in which named poets strove to display their mastery of tradition in the pursuit of material and social advantage. Chapter 3 explores the creative tension between tradition and individual agency, showing how conventional mythologizing notions of poetry and poetic performance served the self-interest of skalds working in a highly conservative tradition. Chapters 4 and 5 offer a treatment of episodes in the Kings' Sagas and Sagas of Icelanders that exemplify the consistent preoccupation with the dramatization of poetry as a form of agonistic display, representing the assimilation of skaldic performative conventions in literary, narrative. Chapter 6 sets out some representative evidence for synchronic diachronic poetic rivalry in the corpus of court poetry, focussing on representative examples from the ho ogon;futhskald of the tenth to twelfth centuries. Finally, in Chapter 7, I discuss the expression competitiveness in the Contemporary Sagas, focussing on Islendinga saga and an extended poetic involving Snorri Sturluson, that arose from the political rivalries that divided Iceland in the 1220s.
Intra- and inter-rater reliability and discriminative abilities of a five-item measure of upper extremity bradykinesia in adults with and without Parkinson's disease

The ability to reliably and validly measure client status in Parkinson's disease is essential in the clinical and research settings. Many of the existing measures for PD are not based on a conceptual framework that defines what is being measured, and are not well standardized. This study determined aspects of the reliability and validity of the Bradykinesia Scale (BS) for PD. On two occasions, raters scored videotapes of subjects with and without PD performing the BS. Intra- and inter-rater reliability were high (ICC ge; .91, p
The diffusion of homicide across neighbourhoods: A social ecological case study of Buffalo, New York, 1950--1999

Recent scholarly attention has been directed at examining how violence spreads across the urban landscape through a process of diffusion. Couched within an in-depth, historical, case-study approach, this dissertation shows that homicide exhibits a process of 'relocation diffusion' across neighbourhoods in Buffalo between 1950 and the end of the twentieth century. The findings illustrate that this gradual diffusion process is observable only when the scope of the research extends over three or more decades. Spatial analytic and traditional multivariate methodologies provide evidence that both supports and refutes a racial invariance hypothesis. This hypothesis stipulates that differences in neighbourhood crime rates are attributable to differences in social structural characteristics and, moreover, that these effects are not race-specific. In support of this hypothesis, this study shows that neighbourhood homicide rates in Buffalo are driven by poverty and related disadvantages, rather than racial composition; however, this is true only during the later decades of the twentieth century. By contrast, in employing a novel methodology that combines Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis and multinomial logit regression, the results show that racial composition is important in increasing a neighbourhood's vulnerability to the diffusion of homicide from adjoining areas. In effect, African American neighbourhoods in Buffalo are in a precarious position as a function of their spatial proximity to a smaller cluster of highly violent neighbourhoods. Additional analyses are aimed at investigating the degree of historical contingency in the types of characteristics that cluster in neighbourhoods, and the effects of these characteristics on both within-neighbourhood homicide rates and the diffusion of homicide over time. These issues are examined through the lens of the distinctive urban context and social history of Buffalo---a mid-sized, north-eastern, industrial centre that has undergone dramatic social, economic, and demographic transitions during the post-industrial era. To investigate the central questions driving this research, tract-level census data are linked to data on homicide incidents in Buffalo between 1950 and 1999. This dissertation extends the extant literature by providing a nuanced quantitative account of the relationship between neighbourhoods and homicide, embedded within an historical case-study approach that integrates the social ecology of violence in Buffalo.
Should the law of privacy draw inspiration from the law of defamation, and introduce a defence of qualified privilege for when the media wishes to publish private information about public figures?

This thesis explores the complex and often conflicting relationship between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression, focusing in the main on the legal situation as it currently stands in the United Kingdom. I will argue that, in order to solve problems of uncertainty in the law of privacy regarding how the media may act when it wishes to publish personal details of those in the public eye, the Courts ought to draw inspiration from the defence of qualified privilege that is available to media defendants under the law of defamation. The thesis will examine how this concept functions in the defamation context, and how, with certain modifications, it could potentially be imported into the law of privacy in order to ensure that greater legal certainty prevails and that issues of genuine public interest are not buried by the media for fear of subsequent privacy litigation.

Keywords: Privacy, Right of, Great Britain
Libel and slander, Great Britain
Freedom of information, Great Britain
Press law, Great Britain