VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
White, intentionally childless women: Privileges and penalties

This thesis locates the meanings of intentional childlessness for professional and/or middle-class, white, European-American women within the framework of stratified reproduction. It also provides an example of the importance of moving beyond a notion of gender essentialism into the theory of interlocking, systems of oppression. Using qualitative research and the narratives of five intentionally childless, white women, I complicate the picture of gender and illustrate how white women, who exercise reproductive choice, locate themselves in positions of both accommodation and resistance. I argue that various systems of domination position women simultaneously as powerful and powerless, and that it is from this contradictory place that women shape their strategies. This thesis contributes to feminist theory by articulating the feminist worlds of white, intentionally childless women, and locating their experiences within the existing power/knowledge relationships, in an effort to transform women's highly regulated relationship to reproduction.
An investigation of the CDF-based method of moments

A strategy often employed in establishing a design value for runoff management is to estimate the parameters for some probability distribution which is thought to approximate the parent population of the runoff flow rates. This thesis presents a new procedure for parameter estimation, based on the fact that the moments of a distribution can be calculated using the empirical Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF). A brief review of probability and statistics is given, followed by a discussion of Monte Carlo simulation and a description of the simulation language and processing engine which were designed for this study. The CDF-Based Method of Moments is derived, along with an expression for its bias. Finally, selected results are presented for comparative tests performed on nine of the distributions commonly used in hydrology, calculating the parameters using the proposed method and several of the traditional methods. It was found that the proposed method is not competitive with the traditional estimation methods tested. The Method of L-Moments was found to give the most accurate results with greater efficiency.
Direct measurements of line mixing, line broadening, and translational line shape in the v¦1 +v¦2 Q-branch of pure CO¦2

An infrared difference frequency spectrometer was improved such that the baseline spectra were constant to within 1 part in 1000 over a 1.3cm -1 scan. Over a 0.5 second integration time, transmission through the gas cell could be measured with a frequency resolution of 1.5MHz and a signal-to-noise ratio in excess of 2000:1. Using this spectrometer, line mixing and high resolution line shape effects have been directly measured for the [nu] 1 + [nu]2 band of CO2. At pressures lower than 11kPa, the spectra were analysed within the Rosenkranz line mixing approximation. Translational effects were encompassed using the hard collision model of Nelkin and Ghatak (1964), modified to include an asymmetry component due to line mixing. For each line between 'Q'(2) and 'Q'(30), the Rosenkranz first order fine mixing coefficients, broadening coefficients, and narrowing parameters were measured. The fine mixing coefficients were found to be qualitatively consistent with, but significantly different from, the mixing coefficients calculated by Strow 'et al '. (1994) using an Exponential Power Gap (EPG) law. The broadening coefficients, estimated to be accurate to within 0.5% on average, were found to be consistent with the 'P'- and 'R'-branch broadening measurements made by other groups. The narrowing parameters were found to be strongly non-linear with pressure, a symptom of speed-dependent fine shape effects unaccounted for by the line shape model used. In addition to the line parameters, the band shift and band strength were measured to 5% and 0.5% accuracy respectively. No other shift measurements of this band have been reported for comparison. However, the band strength was found to be 3% lower than the currently used value of Hitran96 and 2% higher than other recent measurements of this band. To analyse spectra at pressures greater than 11kPa, an empirical speed-dependent profile was formed from the sum of two hard collision profiles. Only with this profile could spectra up to 72kPa be fitted within error. The spectra displayed strong non-linear line mixing effects. In particular, intensity transfer between fines was directly measured and found to agree qualitatively with that predicted by an EPG scaling law calculation.
Likelihood asymptotics and location-scale-shape analysis

Regularity conditions are presented and a rigorous proof is given showing that the posterior distribution or normalized likelihood function, based on observations from a stochastic process, of a vector parameter with respect to either a proper or improper prior converges, almost surely, in distribution to the normal distribution. These conditions bear a strong resemblance to Wald's conditions under which the maximum likelihood estimator is consistent (Wald 1949). A method is presented for generating error distributions with a shape parameter that, for example, can be used in location-scale-shape models. An error distribution that does not depend on a shape parameter can be transformed via a one-parameter continuous group of transformations, constructed using an infinitesimal transformation, into a family of error distributions indexed by a shape parameter. A third order approximation to the significance level in testing either the location or scale parameter without any prior information concerning the remaining parameters in a location-scale-shape model is included. The third order approximation is developed via the asymptotic method, based on exponential models and the saddlepoint approximation, presented in Fraser and Reid (1995). Techniques are presented in the thesis for numerical computation of all quantities required for the third order approximation. To compare the accuracy of various asymptotic methods numerical examples and simulations are included when the error distribution is the 'Student' ([lambda]) family. Finally possible extensions are suggested.
Professional knowledge landscapes, three Chinese women teachers' enculturation and acculturation processes in China and Canada

This is a study of the identity formation and cultural transformation of three Chinese women teachers as they moved back and forth between Chinese and Canadian cultures. The three participants--Shiao, Wei, and I--were born in the late 1950s, experienced the Cultural Revolution, returned to university in the post-revolutionary period, emigrated to Canada, and studied for advanced degrees. During the collaborative research process we shared our intense feelings about what it means to be Chinese, and what it means to be Canadian. We worried most of all about what it means to be in-between and, therefore, neither Chinese nor Canadian. Part of the challenge in writing this thesis was to develop composite auto/biographical narrative methods to fictionalize characters, to switch backgrounds and voices, and to create a comprehensive interpretation of our experiences while maintaining narrative truth. Using these methods, I disrupted boundaries of temporality, space, voice, signature, and narrative unity. I used a fluid inquiry to develop a fluid language to represent fluid storied experiences. The most important finding of the thesis is how the various participants were awakened and began to question their identities as a result of undergoing dramatic upheavals, displacements, and societal changes. Consideration of identity dilemmas led me to rethink the notion of culture and, specifically, first and second culture, enculturation (learning a first culture), acculturation (learning a second culture), and cultural transformation. In order to represent the fragmented sense of bilingual and bicultural identity described in the thesis, I explored the metaphor of landscape to give a sense of shifting and changing perspectives over time and space. Though my study focused on Chinese women, it has significance for understanding identity formation and cultural transformation in general, as well as for offering insights into the interface between different cultures and ethnic groups. The study also opens up possibilities to understand the implicit and complicated acculturation and enculturation experiences of immigrants with school age children, and to make theoretical contributions to, and implications for, teacher education, immigrant education and policy making.
Synthesis and characterization of bone analogue materials

Synthetic analogues of bone are being actively pursued as materials for biomedical applications in the field of bone replacement, augmentation and repair. Numerous stringent criteria have to be met for a biomaterial to be considered as an acceptable bone implant, including the ability to integrate into bone and not cause any deleterious side effects. Different approaches to a bone implant materials are introduced. A materials chemistry approach to synthesizing a new type of bone analogue material is described. The strategy involves the spontaneous growth, under aqueous physiological pH conditions, of an oriented hydroxyapatite film with micron dimension porosity, on the surface of a layer of TiO$\sb2$ that has been sputter deposited on Ti metal. This procedure creates desirable co-crystallized phases of hydroxyapatite (OHAp) and octacalcium phosphate (OCP) with preferred orientation respectively along the (001) and (101) directions. In an attempt to mimic the hierarchical organic-inorganic composite construction of bone, a calcium dodecylphosphate ester mesolamellar phase has been integrated into these oriented porous films to create a CaDDP-OHAp-OCP-TiO$\sb2$-Ti multilayer architecture. The nucleation and growth processes, together with the characterization of these films, are investigated using a multi-analytical approach based upon PXRD, SEM, TEM, SAED, XPS, FT-IR microscopy and profilometry. The relationship of the synthetic calcium phosphate composite materials to bone as well as other bone analogue materials is discussed.
Impact of Bythotrephes cederstroemi on zooplankton assemblages of Harp Lake, Ontario

The impact of the predator Bythotrephes cederstroemi on zooplankton communities of Harp Lake, Muskoka, Ontario was evaluated for 1995. Total seasonal production for the zooplankton prey taxa identified from the feeding experiments was calculated to be 783.3 dry mg m$\sp{-2}$ yr$\sp{-1}$. Total seasonal production for Bythotrephes' was 53.8 dry mg m$\sp{-2}$ yr$\sp{-1}$. Based on a 27% growth efficiency, the amount of zooplankton required to sustain the predator population was 199.3 dry mg m$\sp{-2}$ yr$\sp{-1}$. Although this estimate of energy demand represents 25% of the total seasonal production of zooplankton prey, during midsummer energy demand by the predator exceeded prey production by 20%. The current model suggests that the predator has a significant impact on the zooplankton assemblages of Harp Lake, diminishing resource flow to the other planktivores.
Essential workers, British foreign labour recruitment, 1945-1951

This dissertation deals with the Attlee Labour government's foreign labour recruitment policy. The main issues that arise from this recruitment are threefold: the conception of British national identity in the aftermath of the second World War; the British relationship to Europe and to the Empire/Commonwealth in the context of the Cold War; and the economic strategy of the government for postwar reconstruction. The decision to recruit foreign workers to redress labour shortages was taken in the spring of 1947. Prior to that time, Italian, German and east European prisoners of war were put to work by the agriculture and service departments. The findings of the thesis are: (a) While British nationality was defined formally by the 1948 Nationality Act, Britishness as an identity was defined by a number of assumptions that were no less strong for being informally held. The informal definition of Britishness comprised both racial (physical) and socio-cultural assumptions. Assimilability was judged first and foremost by skin colour, but secondarily by perceptions of the propensity of various nationalities to be good citizens of the welfare state. (b) While the recruitment of foreign workers was in large part the government's response to an imbalance in the marketplace, the Marxist paradigm of foreign labour as a reserve army of workers brought in to prop up capitalist economies in crisis does not fit entirely well in the British case. Long term settlement of most foreign recruits raises more complex issues. (c) Aside from the domestic implications of settling foreign workers in Britain, there were important foreign policy implications in the conduct of foreign labour recruitment, particularly in Europe. The British desire to stabilize the European refugee problem, to contribute to European cooperation (without sacrificing British exceptionalism) and to help states such as Italy maintain a western orientation, were important factors in the development and implementation of foreign labour recruitment policy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Old-age style and the resistance of practice in Cinquecentro art theory and criticism

Since the emergence of art history as a discipline, the concept of old-age style has been linked to stylistic change in the later years of an artist's life. My thesis attempts to historicize the problem of old-age style by returning to the Early Modern criticism of artists's final works. The problem of stylistic change in the later life of the artist first emerges in Cinquecento art theory and criticism within the burgeoning discourse on the qualities and nature of artistic styles. In this discourse, 'old-age style' is like a fault line where significant themes of the art theory of the period are tested and submitted to criticism. These themes include the parallel between art and literature, the status of the visual arts, the identity of the artist, the relationship between theory and practice, the 'paragone', and the historiography of the 'terza etá'. I have organised the chapters thematically to establish the relation between the problem of old-age style and the larger discourse on disorderly style in Cinquecento art theory and criticism. In the first chapter I argue that old-age style in sixteenth-century art criticism and theory problematizes claims made for the social and intellectual aspirations of the arts by drawing attention to the manual basis of art. In the second chapter I maintain that old-age style must be considered in light of Early Modern epistemological debates on the relation between theory and practice. Borrowing Paul de Man's definition of literary practice as the resistance to literary theory, I define disorderly practice, including old-age style, as the resistance to art theory. In the third and fourth chapters I demonstrate how the problem of disorderly style is manifested at the level of rhetoric by comparing Vasari's description of Michelangelo's Last Judgement to the striking change in the rhetoric of Vasari's descriptions of the final works of Pontormo and Titian. Finally, I illustrate the homologous relation between the discourses of old age and the female gender in Cinquecento art criticism through an analysis of Francesco Bocchi's 'Eccellenza del S. Giorgio' in the fifth chapter.
Psychiatric nurses' thoughts and feelings about restraint use, a decision dilemma

This ethnographic qualitative study concerned nurses' thoughts and feelings regarding restraint use in the psychiatric setting. The theoretical approach which guided this study was the work of Etzioni (1992) which focuses on the role of normative-affective factors in decision making. The analysis of the thoughts and feelings of the six nurses interviewed revealed that the restraint situation represented a decision dilemma. The decision dilemma was captured by four supporting themes: the framing of the situation: the potential for imminent harm, the unsuccessful search for alternatives to physical restraints, the conflicted nurse, and the conditions of restraint. The findings contribute insights about why restraints continue to be used. Also, there are implications for restraint use in the psychiatric setting, future research, and understanding restraint use in light of decision making theory.
A reassessment of the early fiction of Henry Fielding

Explicitly or implicitly, twentieth-century assessments of Henry Fielding's fiction tend to read the early fictions as lesser prototypes of 'Tom Jones', or as inconsistent, incomplete works to be excused through biographical speculations. In both cases, a homogeneous "Fielding" often suppresses significant differences within and among the works. After assessing this critical landscape, this thesis evaluates Fielding's drama (mainly 1728-1737), which models more equal, less controllable relationships between "author" and audience than does ' Tom Jones'. Usually lighthearted, ephemeral, and uncomplicated, these relationships blur the roles of spectator, character, and author. Viewed in terms of these interactive dynamics, the early fictions become independent, significant structures. In each, prefatory materials proliferate, mediating complex but different relationships between narrator-figure(s) and a constructed reader, and creating divergent models of truth and authority. This thesis then examines the fictions, written in uncertain order from 1741-2, not in a linear continuum but in stand-alone chapters focusing closely on textual details and ordered by the works' dates of publication: (1) 'Joseph Andrews' constructs and then instructs a "mere English Reader" in its first half. In the second half, this reader must independently, consciously, and responsibly account for unexplained echoes which risk severely qualifying the happiness of the cover-story's conclusion. Readers learn that truth is the product of their responsible, deliberate decisionmaking. (2) 'A Journey from this World to the Next' stresses its physical mutilation and failure to achieve closure. A different "truth"--local, ephemeral, independent of intention--arises at the encounter of reader and incomplete text. Its production is often a function of arbitrary but knowable physical constraints, from gender to textual shape or appearance. Textual gaps are both evidence of something missing and the actual limited thing that we can know. (3) 'Jonathan Wild', like universal solvent, corrodes the possibility of meaning: an economy of constant, endless displacement underlies each verbal and physical transaction in its unfolding plot. It suggests that all narrative requires our willingness to seem deceived, and that language houses local, delusionary, and only temporary meaning. Though this is not a progressive argument, the Conclusion treats briefly some implications for 'Tom Jones' and 'Amelia'.
Tobacco smoking, p53 tumour suppressor gene alterations, and clinicopathologic features and prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer

p53 tumour suppressor gene mutations and associated nuclear accumulation of altered p53 protein are frequently observed in lung cancers. A study was carried out to investigate the relationship between smoking and p53, and their association with clinicopathologic features and prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Meta-analyses were performed and found associations between p53 alterations (gene and/or protein) and squamous cell histology, tumour size and extension (T), nodal status (N), stage, differentiation and smoking history. In the Mount Sinai Hospital Study (MSH Study) (Toronto), 119 stage I-III NSCLC patients were followed prospectively. For 111 patients, tumour p53 protein accumulation was measured immunohistochernically (IHC). Staining was evaluated as a score (p53IHCS) combining intensity and percent distribution. Smoking data were abstracted from hospital records and the reliability of pack-years smoked (PY), estimated by intraclass correlation coefficient, was found to be high. Forty-eight of 111 (43%) tumours had p53IHCS >1. p53 protein accumulation was associated with increasing T (p = 0.035), N (p = 0.091), and stage (p = 0.054), lack of differentiation (p = 0.055) and histology: squamous cell carcinoma (69%), adenocarcinoma (27%), bronchiolo-alveolar carcinoma (17%) (p = 0.001). In multivariate logistic regression, p53 protein accumulation was the most significant predictor of squamous cell histology (vs. other histotypes) (OR = 5.90, p = 0.0002). In univariate and multivariate analyses, p53 protein accumulation was not associated with PY, smoking quit-time, or smoking status (never-, ex-, current-smoker). In adjusted proportional hazards models, for p53IHcs = 5 (75th percentile) versus p53IHCS = 0, the adjusted hazard ratio (BR) was 2.5 (p = 0.027) for 'recurrence' and 4.5 (p = 0.003) for ' death due to recurrent disease' ('DRD'). For 55 PY (75th percentile) versus 0 PY, the HR was 5.1 (p = 0.0003) for 'recurrence ' and 5.1 (p = 0.0002) for 'DRD'. In conclusion, meta-analyses and the MSH Study found p53 to be associated with several potential prognostic factors in NSCLC. Nevertheless, in multivariate analyses, PY and p53IHCS were both found to be important, significant and independent predictors of recurrence and death due to recurrent lung cancer.
A randomized trial of the use on N-acetylocysteine for the prevention of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole hypersensitivity reactions when used for the prevention of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia in patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection

Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole is the drug of choice for the prevention of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia complicating human immunodeficiency virus infection. Use of this antibiotic combination is limited by the 20-30% incidence of hypersensitivity reactions. One hypothesis for this high rate of reactions in HIV-infected patients is their decreased levels of plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells glutathione, a substance required for the detoxification of reactive drug metabolites. N-acetylcysteine is converted enzymatically to glutathione. Two hundred and thirty-eight HIV infected patients were randomized into this controlled clinical trial. The primary objective was to compare the incidence of discontinuation of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole because of a hypersensitivity reaction in those randomized to receive trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole alone (one single strength tablet twice daily) to that in those who received in addition N-acetylcysteine (15 cc of a 20% oral solution, 3 grams) twice daily, one hour prior to each dose of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. In this study, 23% of patients had to discontinue the drug because of a hypersensitivity reaction. The difference in incidence between the treatment groups was 4% (95% CI $-$16%, +9%). This study was unable to demonstrate statistically that N-acetylcysteine could prevent, delay, or modify the features of the trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole hypersensitivity reaction in this population.