VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Friendship patterns of children and adolescents with learning disabilities and attention problems

The friendship patterns of children with learning disabilities and attention deficits were examined within the context of a prediction arising from the psychiatric comorbidity hypothesis; namely, that the low social functioning of children with LD may be largely attributed to the presence of comorbid attention deficits. Two studies were conducted. The first study was a comparison of 3 groups of school children: 71 children with learning disabilities (LD), 36 children with learning disabilities and attention problems (LD+AP) and 115 children without learning disabilities (NLD). The second study compared 2 clinically defined groups: 13 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 10 children with ADHD+LD. Both the views of the participants and those of their parents, teachers and friends were examined. Friendships were analyzed both unilaterally and dyadically. Overall, friendship patterns engaged in by children with LD were found to be often similar to that of children with LD+AP and dissimilar to children with NLD. Both children with LD and children with LD+AP more often chose younger friends, experienced decreased friendship stability, reported higher levels of conflict and lower levels of relationship repair and validation in their relationships and were generally less liked than children without LD. Children with comorbid conditions were, however, more likely than children with either LD or ADHD to have friends with learning problems and more likely than children with ADHD to have friends with behavioural problems. Findings are discussed in light of mediating developmental and gender effects and suggestions for clinical practice and future research are offered.
Some graded Lie algebra structures associated with Lie algebras and Lie algebroids

The main objects of this thesis are graded Lie algebras associated with a Lie algebra or a Lie algebroid such as the Frölicher-Nijenhuis algebra, the Kodaira-Spencer algebra and the newly constructed Gelfand-Dorfman algebra and generalized Nijenhuis-Richardson algebra. Main results are summarized as follows: We introduce a derived bracket which contains the Frölicher-Nijenhuis bracket as a special case and prove an interesting formula for this derived bracket. We develop a rigorous mechanism for the Kodaira-Spencer algebra, reveal its relation with 'R'-matrices in the sense of M. A. Semenov-Tian-Shansky and construct from it a new example of the knit product structures of graded Lie algebras. For a given Lie algebra, we construct a new graded Lie algebra called the Gelfand-Dorfman algebra which provides for ' r'-matrices a graded Lie algebra background and includes the well-known Schouten-Nijenhuis algebra of the Lie algebra as a subalgebra. We establish an anti-homomorphism from this graded Lie algebra to the Nijenhuis-Richardson algebra of the dual space of the Lie algebra, which sheds new light on our understanding of Drinfeld's construction of Lie algebra structures on the dual space with 'r'-matrices. In addition, we generalize the Nijenhuis-Richardson algebra from the vector space case to the vector bundle case so that Lie algebroids on a vector bundle are defined by this generalized Nijenhuis-Richardson algebra. We prove that this generalized Nijenhuis-Richardson algebra is isomorphic to both the linear Schouten-Nijenhuis algebra on the dual bundle of the vector bundle and the derivation algebra associated with the exterior algebra bundle of this dual bundle. A concept of a 2' n'-ary Lie algebroid is proposed as an application of these isomorphisms.
Plant cell responses to infection by rust fungi

The cowpea rust fungus ('Uromyces vignae' Barclay)-cowpea ('Vigna unguiculata' [L.] Walp.) interaction was examined by cytological and molecular techniques to determine cellular responses during the monokaryotic stage of infection and changes in gene expression during the dikaryotic stage. Chapter one describes callose deposition around intracellular fungal structures, the main resistance response in cultivar Queen Anne. Ultrastructural examination revealed that the callose encasement was developed from the site where the fungus encountered the inside of the plant cell wall and was separated from the fungus by the extrahyphal membrane and an extension of plant plasma membrane. Treatment of plants with chemical inhibitors indicated that, similar to what is observed during the dikaryotic stage of infection, callose deposition in response to the monokaryotic stage is dependent on transcription, protein synthesis and glycosylation and microfilament polymerization. Experiments in which the fungus was killed by heat treatment indicated that callose deposition is normally suppressed in susceptible plants and that, unlike the extrahaustorial membrane surrounding the dikaryotic haustoria of this fungus, the extrahyphal membrane is capable of generating callose. In chapter two, the role of the plant cytoskeleton in infection-induced nuclear movements and resistance-associated cell death, the hypersensitive response (HR) was investigated by fluorescent microscopy and treatments with anticytoskeletal drugs. The nuclear movements, which differ between the susceptible cultivar California Blackeye (CB) and the resistant cultivars Dixie Cream and Calico Crowder, were dependent on actin microfilaments. Observations of microtubule organization during the HR revealed that the sequence of events leading to protoplast collapse differed between the two resistant cultivars, suggesting a possibility of multiple pathways for cellular degradation during the HR. The microfilament network remained visible even at later stages of the HR and was necessary for this process to occur. Chapter three describes the use of mRNA differential display to identify two genes that are upregulated by infection in the susceptible cultivar CB. Both genes may code for proteins that were previously uncharacterized in plants. One is induced during early stages of infection and may encode a reverse transcriptase and the other is turned on only during haustorium formation and may encode a lipase-like protein.
The personal/professional lives of women educators

In this narrative inquiry into the integration of the personal/professional lives of women educators, I use story to investigate the experience of five women educators who live the life of family and career. I present my account of this inquiry through autobiographical field texts, restoried narratives of participants' lives, and a narrative account of the research process. The interweaving of these three strands illuminates the "split/dilemma/conflict" encountered in the integration of personal and professional life. Throughout this thesis narrative is presented as both phenomenon and methodology. I base my interpretation of field texts in my experience and that of the participants. It is supported by literature from the disciplines of education and women's studies. The interpretation of these stories of our lives involves exploration of the societal, historical, and cultural contexts in which we live and shows the reciprocal relationship which exists between us and these contexts. My interpretation of this study suggests that the split/dilemma/conflict experienced by participants is gender specific and inherent in our society. The interpretations of readers will be based in their experience. For me, this narrative inquiry has been a catalyst to a life of awakenings and transformations for we live and tell our lives through story and, in the telling, learn new ways of living. The narrative process led me, from what I consider personal/professional isolation, into community with others where I discovered the commonalities and differences of experience. In community I came to know others' stories of living the life of family and career and to realize that change is necessary and possible. Therefore, this inquiry has significance for: curriculum development at all levels of the education system; policy-making within society's organizations; and the living and telling of our personal and professional stories. My thesis contributes to conversation, research, and literature by illuminating the split/dilemma/conflict in the lives of women who live the life of family and career. Its objective is to bring about change in the understanding and living of our stories as women educators and in the stories which we live with our students.
Representing and reasoning about quality using enterprise models

There are few enterprise models that (1) explicitly describe the generic concepts of enterprise quality; (2) are constructed using formally defined terminology such that the model can be interpreted precisely; (3) are constructed using generic and re-useable terminology, and (4) prescribe improvements to enterprise quality by automating the task of evaluating ISO 9000 compliance of enterprises. These characteristics are very important in order to represent and reason about quality. Therefore, the following thesis is stated: There exist generic, formal, and re-useable representations of quality that describe concepts that underlie most quality applications, such that an enterprise model can be constructed from these representations; and ISO 9000 compliance of enterprises can be prescribed by reasoning about quality using this enterprise model. To support the thesis, generic quality concepts are represented as formally-defined terminology and axioms in the Ontologies for Quality Modelling. Then, the ISO 9000 Micro-Theory is constructed by building upon these representations. The micro-theory and the ontologies are encapsulated into the ISO 9000 Quality Advisor, a software tool for evaluating ISO 9000 compliance of organizations. The design, analysis, and prototypical implementations of Ontologies for Quality Modelling, ISO 9000 Micro-Theory, and the ISO 9000 Quality Advisor provide strong support of the thesis. It is concluded then that the ontologies, micro-theory, and advisor, collectively, comprise a unique model--with substantial practical application potential--that is formal re-useable, and describes and prescribes enterprise quality.
The popliteal lymph node assay in mice, possible use for the screening of drugs for their potential to cause idiosyncratic drug reactions

Idiosyncratic drug reactions, sometimes termed drug hypersensitivity reactions, pose a difficult problem for the development of new drugs because they are not detected in standard toxicology assays. The popliteal lymph node assay (PLNA) has been proposed as an objective 'in vivo' test for recognizing immunosensitizing chemicals. Compounds with low molecular weight are not directly recognized by the immune system, but must bind to self-proteins to create haptens recognized by T cells. Carbamazepine, dapsone, felbamate, sulfamethoxazole and procainamide, like most drugs, are not reactive enough to bind to proteins, but 'in vitro' experiments have established that these drugs can be metabolized to reactive products that could form haptens and initiate an immune response 'in vivo'. We found that all of the reactive metabolites of the drugs that we tested induced a greater PLNA response than either the parent drug or other non-reactive metabolic products. These findings suggest that reactive metabolites cause proliferation in the PLNA. However, since the mechanisms leading to a positive PLNA response are not clearly understood, we cannot conclude that these metabolites cause proliferation by sensitizing T-cells via covalent binding to self-proteins, rather than irritation or other cytotoxic events.
Educating engineers for environmentally sensitive practice

This thesis addresses the question: "How can we educate undergraduate engineering students for environmentally sensitive practice?" In particular, the thesis explores possibilities for affective (attitude-related) learning goals for environmental education in engineering education. The thesis includes a case study in which an engineering hydrology course was altered to include more information about fish, and an assessment was done to determine whether the students who had used the altered curriculum showed greater awareness of the life-context of hydrology than those who had used the original curriculum. The case study is supported by preparatory research into (a) the expectations articulated by professional engineering associations about environmentally sensitive engineering practice; (b) the factors and players influencing environmental education in engineering education; (c) the literature regarding affective learning goals in environmental education, as it relates to engineering education; and (d) acceptable scholarly standards for evaluation of engineering courses and programs. The thesis findings reveal that expectations of environmentally sensitive engineering practice are high, but the response of the engineering education community is still in the early stages of development. Engineering education research has little overlap with environmental education research; because of the focus in engineering education on "knowledge" goals, the role of affective learning has thus far been neglected as a research area in environmental education in engineering education. The contribution of this civil engineering doctoral thesis on the subject of engineering education is its attempt to bring together ideas and practices from engineering education and the field of educational research in general. Because the doctoral work was based in an engineering school, supervised by engineering professors, and framed as an action research project, it stimulated discussion and learning about environmental education in engineering education, and catalysed movement by engineering professors toward better understanding of the impact of their environmental teaching.
"We work to have life": Ju/'hoan women, work and survival in the Omaheke Region, Namibia

In this thesis I provide an ethnographic account of the lives of the Ju/'hoansi by examining three broad topics: (1) the historical and ideological dynamics of rural class formation and sexual division of labour on the farms; (2) the living and working conditions and farm class politics; and, (3) Ju/'hoan kinship and community dynamics. The first section offers a 'top-down' perspective of white settlement, frontier conflict and the encapsulation of the Ju/'hoansi into the political economy and cultural world view of the European settlers. Ideological attitudes toward gender and sexuality are fore-grounded in this examination of the construction of a 'Bushman' underclass. I argue that the process of rural class formation and encapsulation was shaped as much by gender attitudes as by racial ones. The second section provides a 'bottom-up' perspective of farm work and class politics. I focus on how the Ju/'hoansi cope with their material conditions, how they understand the value of their own labour, and how they understand their relationships with their employers. I then examine how the paternalism inherent to farm politics is shaped by patriarchal models of family government, and how the farmers' paternalism is accommodated by Ju/'hoan ideas of proper 'helping' and challenged by the Ju/'hoansi's commitments to their own families and community. I argue that paternalism is more particularly a feature of class relations between men: while racial attitudes justifying exploitation and paternalism are more easily challengeable, gender subordination, being a requisite of farm employment, is more deeply hegemonic. The third section examines Ju/'hoan kinship relations, marriage patterns and community dynamics. I focus on how women mobilize support from kin in their dealings with domestic conflicts and in their struggles to cope with their material conditions. I argue that Ju/'hoan kin networks provide a field of relative autonomy and that women's kin-based mutual assistance strategies provide the infrastructure for a broader Ju/'hoan community.
Spatial and temporal prediction schemes for object-based digital video

Object-based video compression schemes have recently gained tremendous interest, and are the driving force of the future MPEG 4 and 7 video coding standards. These object-based coders not only provide for a higher compression efficiency, but they can also support content-based functionalities for future multimedia applications. In this thesis, spatial and temporal prediction techniques are investigated for these newer object-based compression schemes. Structural and statistical models are first investigated for spatially interpolating digital images for editing/compositing purposes in object-based video or for frame-based compression systems. Nonlinear filter structures based on vector order statistics are selected for spatially interpolating color images due to their robustness, preservation of edge information and image details, and their ability to exploit the interchannel color correlations. Statistical methods based on Gibbs random field (GRF) models are also used to obtain an interpolated image. The iterative GRF methods are approximated by a non-iterative nonlinear filtering operation, thereby reducing the computational complexity of the process. The proposed methods are all compared to the conventional linear approaches. Temporal prediction of videophone-type sequences is subsequently investigated in view of the problems associated with conventional block-based methods. Segmentation-based motion compensated prediction is carried out by partitioning an image into a facial region and a set of arbitrarily-shaped regions. A novel and useful approach is presented to automatically locate and track the facial area within image sequences using the visual cues of color and shape. The scheme is robust in scenes with head-and-shoulders type images found in videophone sequences or facial image databases, and can be easily tuned for more general cases where many faces may be present in the scene. A general color segmentation technique is then proposed to partition the remainder of the image and form a triangular mesh model. This is subsequently followed by a suitable mesh tracking scheme. Motion compensated prediction is finally performed by utilizing the estimated nodal point motion vectors and an affine warping transformation. Experimental results provide a comparison between the proposed scheme and the conventional block-based methods.
Applications of modern NMR methods to structural studies of natural and synthetic organic compounds

The study of natural and synthetic organic compounds has been investigated. The use of one-dimensional and two-dimensional NMR methods as a method for rapidly assigning structures was demonstrated. Structural elucidation was performed on unknown side-products in synthetic sequences to conclusively determine what reactions had taken place. Steps toward a biomimetic synthesis of the alkaloid, dihydrocadambine, were carried out. The isolation of the natural product precursor to this alkaloid, secologanin, was first performed. In the course of isolating secologanin, two other natural products, loganin and sweroside were also isolated and structurally elucidated. The intermediates in the attempted synthesis of dihydrocadambine were also examined. Finally, NMR methods were applied to characterization of diterpene and sesquiterpene natural products isolated in the Caribbean. Eleven of the natural products investigated were determined to be novel.
Holy ambition, the rhetoric of courtship in the sermons of John Donne

This thesis develops a common theme in seventeenth-century remembrances of John Dome-the-preacher as God's courtier in the pulpit. Donne, who so thoroughly played the courtier for much of his life, finally turned his energies and skills to drawing his congregations into a courtship of the Divine. In the sermons, Donne visits various cultural discourses (patronage, law, economics, wooing) to derive rhetorical matter for defining and then redirecting his audience's motives toward increased devotion to God. I begin by outlining Kenneth Burke's notion of rhetoric as courtship--the stylistic use of identification strategies for overcoming conditions of estrangement--and by illustrating these ideas with an extensive reading of the cultural context from which Donne derived his sermons' courtship-strategies. In my second chapter, I argue that the goad of hierarchy is central to Dome's configuring of his congregations motives and demonstrate his strategic use of cultural courtship-structures as similitudes for inducing analogous desire in his congregants' devotional experience. In the third chapter I then relate these methods of 'inventio ' (the finding and selecting of material) to the 'dispositio ' (arrangement) of Dome's sermons, where the symbolic purification and ritual cure of his audience's motives are achieved; here I also introduce Burke's related notions of form and "temporizing of essence" and argue that these are fundamental to the operation of courtship as theorized by Burke and employed by Donne. The remaining chapters consist of close examinations of three sermons in which (on the surface at least) courtship references are not readily apparent. Here I direct attention to the operations of 'inventio' and ' dispositio' at work in the several strategies that I have collected under the topic of courtship. I thereby demonstrate that to read Donne's sermons simply for style, imagery patterns, or topical references is to miss a great deal of their suasive, and literary value which can only be found in the deeper structure of the sermons.