VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Seeding particle impact on Laser Doppler Velocimetry in-cylinder flow measurement

This project studies the influence of seeding particle on the Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) measurement of engine flow. A CFR engine with underhead valve construction was used for the measurement. A quartz window located in the cylinder head allow the use of LDV in the backscatter arrangement. The flow velocities were measured at three positions in the combustion chamber: at the combustion chamber center, by the intake valve and by the exhaust valve. Three different seeding particles (0.2 $\mu$m TiO$\sb2,$ 1 $\mu$m TiO$\sb2,$ 3 $\mu$m $\rm Al\sb2O\sb3)$ were used to seed the flow. Experimental results provide the Ensemble mean velocities, Ensemble mean turbulence, autocorrelation and Power Spectrum Density (PSD) of the flow at all measured positions. For the Ensemble mean velocities, significant differences could be found between different seeding particles, the differences are associated with the accelerations and decelerations of the measured velocity components during intake and exhaust strokes. Less significant differences between different seeding particles were found in the turbulence, autocorrelation and PSD of the flow. From Basset's equation (1888), the motion of a suspended particle in the fluid can be described. By applying the condition of LDV in-cylinder flow measurement, particle density/fluid density $\gg$ 1, Basset's equation can be simplified and the velocity difference between seeding particles and fluid can be calculated by knowing the particle acceleration, particle diameter, particle density and fluid viscosity. The differences are related to the particle acceleration, particle diameter, particle density and fluid viscosity. Experimental data were used to verify this model and there is reasonably good agreement. By applying this model, the slip velocity between seeding particle and fluid in LDV in-cylinder flow measurement can be calculated. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Gap junctions in early human placental development

Gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) is known to mediate cell proliferation, differentiation, and invasion. We hypothesize that GJIC plays a role in early human placental development. By RTPCR, we identified transcripts for Cx32, Cx37, Cx40, Cx43, and Cx45 in the first trimester human placenta. Of these, Cx40 mRNA and protein were prominent in anchoring extra-villous trophoblast (EVT) columns. Inhibition of GJIC in first trimester placental villous explant cultures by treatment with carbenoxolone and heptanol induced a switch from a proliferative EVT phenotype to an early invasive phenotype, as evident from: (a) a loss of the proliferation marker Ki67, and (b) a decrease in matrix-metalloproteinase-2 activity (which is normally present in proliferative EVT columns). Furthermore, the morphology of EVT outgrowths changed dramatically upon GJIC-blockade from compact, organized outgrowths to a scattered group of individual EVT cells, reminiscent of an early invasive phenotype. Since Cx40 is predominant in anchoring columns 'in vivo ', we treated placental villous explants with antisense oligonucleotides to Cx40. This resulted in identical changes in EVT outgrowth morphology as the non-specific GJIC inhibitors. Together, our data suggest that the presence of functional GJIC, particularly through Cx40 channels, is necessary for the establishment of proliferative EVT cell columns in the early human placenta, and that a loss of GJIC may contribute to the switch to the invasive trophoblast phenotype.
Lateralization of speech perception and knowledge of number concepts in adolescents with Down syndrome

Individuals with Down syndrome demonstrate significant language delays as compared to individuals with intellectual disabilities and children of similar mental age. The lateralization of speech perception and speech production in individuals with Down syndrome has been investigated to determine possible links between cerebral asymmetry and speech difficulties. The present study investigated the performance of individuals with Down syndrome, individuals with intellectual disabilities, and nondisabled children matched on mental age on dichotic listening tasks using digits and consonant vowel syllables as stimuli in both Free Report and Directed Attention conditions. Performance on the dichotic listening tasks was further examined in terms of the participants' knowledge or understanding of number concepts and the novelty of the task and stimulus conditions. Knowledge of number concepts was assessed using nine experimental tests developed by the author for this study. Ten adolescents with Down syndrome, ten non-Down syndrome adolescents with intellectual disabilities of unknown aetiologies, and nine nondisabled preschoolers participated in the present study. On the dichotic listening tasks, the three groups showed comparable patterns of responding to dichotically-presented pairs of stimuli. All groups showed a right hemisphere - left ear superiority for digits and a left hemisphere - right ear advantage for CVs. In terms of knowledge of number concepts, all three groups were equally skillful at counting. The adolescents with Down syndrome were significantly better than either of the other groups on numeral reading. All groups performed uniformly poorly on all tests of number word reading. The results of the correlation analyses of the relationships between the number concept tests and the lateralization indices provided tentative support for the hypotheses of a relationship between well developed knowledge of number concepts and left-hemisphere processing of digits and CVs. Goldberg and Costa's (1981) model of cerebral asymmetry accounts for the differential processing of the dichotic stimuli based on the difficulty of the dichotic task when digits are the stimuli. Furthermore, the findings are discussed in terms of Dehaene and Cohen's (1998) 'triple code' model for the representation of numbers. Task complexity, multiple dichotic trials, different dichotic listening procedures (i.e., stimulus detection), and more detailed analysis of cognitive and linguistic abilities are recommended as the focus of future research.
Disclosure of novel mechanisms in which nicotine triggers structural and functional alterations of arterial smooth muscle cells, implications to pathogenesis of the occlusive arterial diseases

Results of the 'in vitro' studies indicated that nicotine and cotinine (tested in concentrations 10-3 to 10 -9 M) inhibit migration and proliferation of cultured arterial SMCs and substantially decrease intracellular transport and secretion of fibronectin and elastin. Moreover, within hours, nicotine and cotinine induce the occlusive collapse of the arterial segments and lungs, maintained in organ cultures, which was due to a rapid shrinkage of individual cells and their detachment from the adjacent matrix. Immunohistochemical and functional evaluation of cultured arterial SMCs exposed to nicotine indicated that nicotine induced the disappearance of microtubules and actin microfilaments and disintegration of the vinculin-rich focal attachment points. Most importantly, we established that all nicotine-dependent impairment of cellular structure and functions was inhibited by a specific inhibitor of Sarcoplasmic Endoplasmic Reticulum Calcium ATPase (SERCA), thapsigargin, but not by antagonists of classic nicotinic receptors, mecamylamine or d-tubocurarine.
Effect of SO¦2 on dust sintering in kraft recovery boilers

High concentrations of SO2 in the stack have been suggested to contribute in recovery boilers fouling via sintering by accelerating of dust particles that accumulate on the heat transfer tubes. In this thesis, the effect of SO2 on dust sintering and how it may contribute to deposit hardening and tube fouling in recovery boilers were examined. Results of this work suggest that SO2 have some effect on dust sintering rates, in the temperature range between 350-500°C. In this temperature range, however, thermal sintering becomes a more dominant mechanism by which dust particles bind together and become hard. It can therefore be concluded that while SO2 may contribute to dust hardening as a result of sulphation, the effect is minor (or secondary) compared to thermal sintering, and insignificant on deposit sintering and recovery boiler fouling.
Discovering Self and Other, representations of Ottoman Turks in English drama (1656-1792)

Throughout history, cultural encounters between the East and the West have led to attempts to struggle with the relations between Self and Other. It is a commonplace that dramatic events such as the fall of Constantinople (renamed Istanbul), the first siege of Vienna in 1529 and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 generated a widespread and an ongoing interest in the Ottomans as the West's Other. The presence of the Ottomans in the Mediterranean and the extension of Ottoman rule over large parts of South-Eastern Europe and North Africa deeply affected Westerners politically and culturally. Renaissance curiosity and anxiety about the Ottoman Turks led to an outpouring of texts conveying ideas and knowledge about the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) whose power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries extended even as far as the English channel. In the sixteenth century, English dramatists joined most continental artists (literary and visual) in representing the Ottoman Turks on stage through a fascination that oscillated between fear and emulation. My purpose in this thesis is to shed some light on the politics and strategies of European representations by contextualizing and analyzing the practices of representing the Ottoman/Muslim on stage as the West's Other. My premise is that without a historical perspective, the meaning of texts written about the Ottomans remains obscure, and their contemporary allusions lost. The thesis focuses on the representations of the Ottoman Turks in seventeenth and eighteenth-century drama, mainly English. It addresses the relationship between text/history, knowledge/power, Other/Self in order to develop a methodology specific to representations of the Ottoman Turks, a nation usually ignored by such theoretical constructs as Orientalism. And it analyzes the plays historically and ideologically, to reopen/reexamine English understandings of and attitudes towards the Turks.
Closing time, man, identity, vocation and the end of work; a stage play as a representation of lives

In this research I explore the careers of 11 men, chosen from among five different vocations, as they near retirement. Each of the 11 has pursued that vocation for most of his adult life. Two are bankers, two police officers, two university professors, three surgeons, and two trade union executives. By most measures, each would be considered successful and psychologically and financially secure. Through the lens of this life-history, arts-informed inquiry, each man regards his career and its impending conclusion within the context of his unique personal and vocational experience. Each acknowledges and has a particular view of his vocational culture. Each has a sense of his own accomplishments and takes considerable pride in them. Equally, each recites the late-life litany of goals un-met, paths not taken, options un-explored, opportunities squandered, and possibilities un-realized. Notwithstanding, and as retirement looms, each is satisfied with his career. The assertions that work defines men, and that men in turn define themselves by their vocation more than by their other roles, are supported by all 11 research participants. As well, their individual personalities seem to accord with the stereotypes for their individual occupations, but it is not clear whether this is by coincidence or design. Only one man has deliberately chosen his vocation. All tend to attribute their success more to inherent ability and hard work than to vocational learning. The participants seem un-preoccupied by and seldom raise issues of aging, health, or even their other, personal, clearly secondary, lives and roles. The expectation that men at the end of successful, life-long careers might have begun seriously to reflect on their careers and what they might want to do in retirement, is not borne out. Only one of them has done any retirement planning, and there are no programs within any of their vocational institutions to prepare them for this life-stage. In its representational form, this text is an arts-informed inquiry in that the research findings are presented as the script for a stage play, with the life-stories of five of the participants--one from each of the five vocational groups--intersecting. In real life, the five participants in this representation--interviewed separately and in confidence--never meet. But, across a table, in an imagined restaurant, through the fictive device of a play constructed largely from their own words, they and the researcher meet and talk and debate. The play, a lively conversation about career and the end of career, is called, "Closing Time." Included as part of this thesis is a 45-minute compact disc comprising seven audio-recorded excerpts from the play as performed by five professional actors and the researcher.
Investigation into steady-state auditory brainstem response detection, weighted time averaging and autoregressive spectral estimation

Steady-State Auditory Brainstem Responses (SSABRs) are auditory evoked potentials which provide objective, non-invasive, audiometric information. Unfortunately, test time is too long to warrant clinical use. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to reduce test time. We determined that the long test time is due to high EEG background noise, idiosyncratic physiological artifacts, the use of Artifact Rejection under noisy recording conditions and periodogram based spectral estimation which suffers from poor resolution. To improve detection, we compared Weighted Time Averaging with Artifact Rejection and a detector using Autoregressive spectral estimation with the Magnitude Squared Coherence (MSC) method (currently the best SSABR detector). Both comparisons used data recorded under quiet and noisy conditions. We found that Weighted Time Averaging performed as well as Artifact Rejection meanwhile reducing recording time by 36% for noisy conditions. Furthermore, the MSC method had 5% greater ROC Area (on average) compared to the Autoregressive based detector.
Alternative paradigms of educational development, indigenous models of schooling for developing countries

Recent trends in qualitative research emphasize the importance of local and contextual factors. Crossley & Vulliamy (1996) and Watson (1994) for example, imply that educational systems of developing countries ought to be evaluated using appropriate analytical and methodological criteria, determined within a local context. This study attempts to challenge the dominant paradigm that links education to "Western" ideas of development. In doing so it analyses the relationship between endogenous development and indigenous models of schooling. It attempts a comparative case-study analysis of two indigenous models of schooling in former colonies: 'Fe y Alegría ' of Venezuela and 'Servol' of Trinidad and Tobago. These models are studied because they reflect local, cultural, social, and economic conditions. Attention is paid to community involvement, indigenous ideas about curriculum and programming, the link between education and work, and the link between local epistemologies and education outcomes. The study involves qualitative methods of analysis with particular emphasis on ethnographic methods. Documentary analysis is used to complement field research and participatory observation. The data reveal that while both communities are conscious of the need to provide genuine alternatives to traditional models of schooling, these communities are also cognizant of tensions between the local and the national, and between the local and the global. The need to provide access to educational opportunities that satisfy individual, communal, and societal needs often means that local educational practices constantly seek validation from both the national and international community. In Ciudad Bolivar, 'Fe y Alegría' has become an alternative model of public schooling, and in Trinidad, 'Servol' has canvassed vigorously to have its programs accredited.
Neural netowrk algorithms for robot control

A neural network module was developed with the purpose of improving a commercial robot's (namely the CRS Robotics A460) trajectory tracking performance. The A460 is equipped with a factory supplied Proportional, Integral and Derivative (PID) controller. The neural network is trained on-line to minimize the trajectory tracking error of the robot joint actuators and improve trajectory tracking performance. The Error Back-Propagation neural network (Rumelhart et. al. (1986)), Mixture of Experts neural network (Jacobs and Jordan, 1992) and MOVE neural network (Graham and D'Eleuterio (1990)), are implemented into the neural network module. Experiment results are given illustrating a 66% reduction of joint error norm. A state-space model of the robot control system was developed and implemented in a numerical simulation. Sensitivity function calculation capabilities were included in the simulation. Sensitivity calculations from the simulation are verified with results from robot experiments.
Three types of internal adaptation to parental divorce in latency-age boys, a case study

Divorce is known to have adverse effects on children. This study was designed to investigate how parental divorce impacts on the subjective internal reality of boys. In keeping with the goal of developing new theory, the study uses a qualitative methodology. Open-ended interviews were conducted with seven latency-age boys. These interviews were then analysed with a modified grounded theory approach. Object relation theory, in particular the concept of internal reality inhabited by internal images, formed the conceptual underpinnings of the data analysis. Three distinct types of internal adaptation to parental divorce were found. Each type is distinguished by the identity of the internal victim image. The adaptation to divorce thus depends on how the boys internalise the parental conflict, and more specifically, who they see as victimised before and after the separation.
Hard times, the experiences of homelessness and pregnancy

This qualitative study explored the intersection of pregnancy and homelessness as it affected the everyday lives of women. A series of in-depth interviews with eight women comprised the data for the study, guided by a feminist, social constructionist framework. Key findings include: the temporary nature of homelessness for many women as they move from a situation that is unsafe or unstable in search of a better future; the backgrounds of tremendous hardship, often including childhood violence, that homeless women come from; that fragile support networks were exhausted before women became homeless; that women had a contradictory relationship with the shelter and social services system as they relied on them for help but feared their judgement and intervention; their expected children allowed women to have a sense of optimism and hope for the future that enabled them to dream and to make plans for a more stable future.
Rearrangement of a stable secondary structure during tertiary folding of the Neurospora VS ribozyme

The discovery of catalytic RNAs, or ribozymes, indicated that biological catalysis is not exclusively performed by protein enzymes. Ribozymes are excellent model systems for RNA structure function analysis, since their function can be used to report on the integrity of the structure. VS RNA is an 881 nucleotide (nt) ribozyme isolated from the mitochondria of certain isolates of 'Neurospora' that performs self-cleavage and ligation reactions 'in vitro'. I developed an 'in vitro' selection system to generate functional sequence variants of a VS ribozyme for comparative sequence analysis since informative, homologous VS RNA sequences were unavailable in other isolates or other organisms. I constructed a deleted circular permutation of VS RNA that is active for ligation. RNA sequences that are active for ligation can be selectively amplified from a pool of randomized sequences. Previous observations suggested that wild-type stem-loop I undergoes a Mg2+-dependent conformational change; however, the nature of the change was unclear. To obtain information about the structure of wild-type stem-loop I required for activity, I performed 'in vitro' selection. "Active" stem-loop I sequence variants were selected from a partially-randomized pool by ligation to a VS ribozyme. A combination of comparative sequence analysis, mutational analysis, computer-based predictions, and chemical structure probing experiments were used to identify the "active" secondary structure of wild-type stem-loop I. Four of the five original base pairs in wild type stem-loop I are changed due to tertiary folding. Most RNA secondary structures are stable during tertiary or quaternary folding. This research revealed that the paradigm that RNA folding is hierarchical is not always true. Through mutational and biochemical analysis I showed that the kissing interaction in the VS ribozyme is necessary and sufficient to rearrange wild-type stem-loop I. In contrast to kissing interactions in other RNAs, which are either confined to the loops or culminate in an extended intermolecular duplex, the VS kissing interaction causes changes in intramolecular base pairs within the target stem-loop. This work revealed a new structural consequence for a common RNA tertiary motif.
Proteins which interact with and regulate the chloride channel, ClC-2

ClC-2, a member of the ClC family of chloride channels, has been suggested to be able to functionally compensate for CFTR. However, mechanisms underlying the regulation of ClC-2 activity remain unclear. Purified, reconstituted ClC-2 exhibits constitutive channel activity, suggesting that purification may remove regulatory proteins. It is our hypothesis that ClC-2 interacts with and is regulated by cytoskeletal proteins. Interacting proteins were eluted from a purified ClC-2 column, and western blotting and MALDI-T of analysis confirmed the presence of actin and dynein, respectively. Functional studies in 'Xenopus' oocytes indicate that these interactions are functionally important. Following treatment with cytochalasin D or EHNA, a dynein inhibitor, there was an increase in ClC-2 mediated currents. Our studies indicate that ClC-2 interacts with actin via its N-terminus and that the interaction is sensitive to ionic strength. Cellular fractionation studies suggest that dynein may play a role in the movement of ClC-2 between cellular compartments.
A compiler infrastructure for research on high-performance Java

This thesis describes the zJava High Level Intermediate Representation (HLIR), which provides a framework for the analysis and restructuring of Java programs at the source code level. The system is designed to minimize the time taken to proto type new compiler analyses, guaranteeing under transformations both the consistency of its internal structure and the syntactic correctness of the represented code. We address several challenges unique to Java, which have not been addressed by earlier frameworks. These include automatic maintenance of complex symbol scope information under transformations, insertion of implicit code to accurately model the source program, incorporation of compiled code into the representation, and representation of the complex control flow of exception handling constructs. We include support for the sharing of information between compiler passes, and mechanisms to support interprocedural analysis. We believe that the features we introduce in the zJava HLIR will result in a means of rapidly prototyping new Java compiler analyses. We give a number of examples illustrating the use and utility of the infrastructure.