VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Immigrants' integration seen through the prism of multiculturalism: a comparative analysis of policies and educational provisions to facilitate integration, based on the case studies of Canada and Italy

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of policies and programs supporting newcomers' integration, based on case studies of Canada and Italy. Immigrants' integration is defined as a two-way process composed of different phases, which in its final phase brings into equal membership those groups recently arrived in the host country and those belonging to the receiving society. Because immigrants mainly settle in large urban centres, the scope of the research concentrates on the cities of Toronto in Ontario and Rome in Lazio. The study is multidisciplinary as it draws from literature in the fields of comparative and international education, and comparative policy analysis as well as from migration, multiculturalism and citizenship theories. The research approach adopted is grounded theory and the methodology is qualitative. The comparative analysis involved a juxtaposition of the policy and institutional framework existing in both countries to support the integration process. A comparison of formal and informal educational provisions, which facilitate newcomers' integration, was also carried out. The opinions of 23 key informants working in different government and non-government agencies provided insightful information on such issues as implementation problems, policy directions, and hindrances encountered by immigrants. The study focuses on the role of education in the integration process. Education, in the broad sense, has the dual role of facilitating the adaptation of newcomers in the new society as well as helping the adaptation of the host society towards diversity. Many similarities have emerged from the research, such as the policy language on integration and some ‘types’ of educational provisions implemented. Several problems have been identified in both systems in terms of the challenges encountered by immigrants in the integration process. There is, however, a fundamental difference in the ‘approach’ towards immigrants undertaken by the governments of the two countries at study. In Italy, an immigrant is still regarded as the ‘other’, as a ‘stranger’. In Canada, immigrants and refugees are considered future citizens. Diversity policies such as the official Canadian Multiculturalism Policy allow a country to embrace a pluralistic vision of national identity, which is inclusive of all groups, regardless of ethnicity, culture, language, and religion.

Keywords: Emigration and immigration
Immigrants, Education
Immigrants, Government policy
Assimilation (Sociology)
Social work with immigrants
Cultural pluralism, Canada
Cultural pluralism, Italy
Rearrangements of secondary methylenecyclopropyl amides

The mechanisms of both ring-expansion reactions were investigated extensively, employing deuterium labelled methylenecyclopropyl amide substrates. The magnesium iodide-mediated ring expansions of secondary methylenecyclopropyl amides have been examined in detail. The scope of the previously reported rearrangement reaction has been successfully extended, permitting the synthesis of a library of heteroaryl-substituted 4-methyl-1,5-dihydro-pyrrol-2-ones. Development of a novel, complimentary synthetic procedure enabled access to the isomeric 4-methylene-pyrrolidin-2-one products.
Secessia's song books: the history of confederate songsters

Songsters are one type of street literature published in the English-speaking world since the seventeenth century. Essentially, songsters are inexpensive collections of secular song lyrics sold to a broad audience of literate consumers. British publishers probably exported songsters to North America during the eighteenth century, but, in the first half of that century, Americans began to publish a few of their own. By 1860, songsters had become much more common in the United States. Improvements in printing technology and in the transportation system, as well as changing attitudes towards public education and a continued interest in music-making by amateurs provided a supportive climate for these text-only music publications. During the antebellum period Northerners dominated American songster publishing. Apart from a few publishers in the Upper South, Southerners brought out songsters only occasionally. However, after eleven Southern states formed the Confederacy in 1861, Southern publishers in those states began to take over the niche which Northern firms had held. Despite shortages in supplies, equipment, and manpower, and in spite of transportation difficulties and an ever-growing inflation rate, publishers in the Confederacy were able to produce more songsters during the Civil War than their predecessors had in the four decades before the war. This increase in songster production came about not only because Northern publishers could not sell their goods in the Confederacy, but also because consumers, many of them Confederate soldiers, accepted the songsters, purchasing enough of them to motivate further production. Two factors, patriotism and economics, influenced the types of pieces compilers selected for their songsters. In order to determine how those factors and the relationship among compilers, publishers, and consumers affected the compilation of songsters, the contents of thirty-eight songsters were examined, as were contemporary advertisements, publication notices, sheet music, letters, diaries, and memoirs. An analysis of these documents reveals that most compilers chose songs which satisfied consumers' tastes, because compilers and publishers wanted their songsters to sell well. Compilers, publishers, and consumers have all had an impact on the contents of the songsters.
Suppression of premature ignition in the pre-mixed inlet flow of a shcramjet

This thesis addresses premature ignition in the inlet of a shock-induced combustion ramjet (shcramjet). A cantilevered ramp injector maintains a buffer region between the hydrogen fuel and the boundary layer only until the final 15% of the inlet where substantial premature ignition occurs. Both gaseous nitrogen and additional hydrogen are then injected using various geometries and inflow conditions in an attempt to suppress the flame. Premature ignition is suppressed most feasibly by the injection of additional hydrogen through a backwards-facing step located just before the second inlet shock, such that the global equivalence ration of the pre-mixed flow exiting the inlet is one. The mixture is further subjected to shock-induced combustion where the combustion region required for maximum heat release is less than 20% of the inlet length. Numerical simulation predicts a fuel specific impulse of 700 seconds for this preliminary shcramjet engine.

Keywords: Pipe, Fluid dynamics
Internal combustion engines, Ignition
Airplanes, Ramjet engines
Factoring genetic determinism: an analysis of sociogbiological discourse and debate and their presentations in biology textbooks

This thesis is about sociobiology, especially human sociobiological discourse, and its emergence as a paradigm especially through the formulations of E. O. Wilson. It asks two distinct and related questions. The first question asks why and how has the general project of Wilsonian or determinist human sociobiology has maintained its appeal and continued to garner popularity and support despite the many cogent and detailed critiques. The second question, covered in part two of this thesis, asks how the sociobiological controversy is presented in three biology textbooks. Part one of this work examines the development of human sociobiology and its related disciplines and the debates that have arisen around this paradigm. It chronicles how this Wilsonian human sociobiological discourse constructs its legitimacy, the major issues critics have raised and recent developments in human sociobiology and related fields. It also suggests modified epistemological positions and avenues of critique. As such, this work utilizes theory developed within utilizes theory developed within science studies, hegemony studies, discourse theory, textual analysis, and science education. Part Two examines three textbooks used in Ontario Academic Courses (OACs) in biology in high school in grade thirteen in Ontario. These texts are similar if not identical to textbooks used in introductory biology courses in universities in North America. This textual analysis, examines how the textbooks portray sociobiology and the related fields of genetics, evolutionary theory and the nature of science itself. This analysis provides a way both to gauge the influence of Wilsonian human and nonhuman sociobiological discourse and to gauge the ways in which this controversial issue is handled by the texts. This analysis finds that all three textbooks fail to use sociobiology as an example of a scientific controversy to engage students in a discussion of this topic. They also fail to engage students in any of the collateral controversial issues in genetics, evolutionary theory and the nature of science itself. This work also borrows from the constructivist, Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STS-E), and nature of science movements within science education and begins to make recommendations for teachers and textbook authors regarding the teaching and presentations of sociobiology and the nature of science debates.

Keywords: Sociobiology
Biopolitics
Social evolution
Genetic psychology
Discourse analysis
Textbook bias
Biology, Textbooks
Ancient Northwest Semitic inscriptions: A syntactic and literary analysis

Northwest Semitic syntax has been explored extensively on a phrasal and clausal level. This has contributed much to our understanding of the languages in this linguistic family. There have also been numerous studies on micro level, and isolated occurrences of literary devices within the corpus of texts. This dissertation will examine Northwest Semitic inscriptional material from the 10 th -5 th centuries B.C., and include writings from the Phoenician, Moabite and Hebrew languages The inscriptions will be analyzed based on a text level approach, and it will be demonstrated how clauses and sentences work together to form larger syntactic units. Additionally, the literary structure of the texts will be defined, and macro level literary devices will be demonstrated as operative within the inscriptions. As these larger levels of literary devices can only be detected when viewed in combination with the syntax of the compositions as a whole, the two approaches will be examined independently, yet cooperatively. Thus the syntax and literary structure of the texts will complement each other, as the syntax is the vehicle that conveys the literary devices within the inscriptions.

Keywords: Semitic languages
Linguistics
Bringing IT back: an analysis and explanation of the cause of IT outsourcing contract terminations

Bringing IT Back examined early termination to develop an explanation as to why companies cancel outsourcing contracts, how they approach the repatriation of outsourced services and associated personnel and how insourcing impacts the organization. Based on qualitative exploratory research methods, Bringing IT Back utilized a case study approach to investigate the outsourcing experiences of three early termination examples. A grounded theory approach was applied to analyze the data and develop conclusions. The research demonstrated that the reasons for early termination are complex and inter-related and are grouped into two core categories. The first was that the outsourcing client's business and associated technical support requirements and expectations had changed over time such that eventually the need for outsourcing no longer met the company's objectives. The second core category was the failure of the client and outsourcer to manage appropriately their business relationship to accommodate the evolving goals of both organizations.
The missing voice: parents' understanding of bullying

Peer victimization is a common experience for many school-aged children. While there is a considerable body of research on bullying, very little research has been devoted to studying the experiences and perspectives of the parents of children involved in bullying. This thesis provides one of the first qualitative assessments of bullying based solely on the perceptions of parents of self-identified victimized children. Data for the present thesis were drawn from a larger study entitled " Victims in the Schoolyard: Listening to the Voices of Children." The aforementioned study used qualitative methods to examine the perspectives of children who reported being victims of bullying, and to examine the views of the selected children's parents and teachers. For the purpose of the current thesis, the 20 parent interviews were analyzed to determine parents' views and understanding of bullying. Specific topics that were discussed in the interviews included parents' definition of bullying, their attitudes and beliefs regarding disclosure of bullying, and their own experience with bullying. Data were analyzed through constant comparison to develop groupings of similar concepts of participants' perspectives. Themes that emerged throughout the analysis included: parents' difficulty trying to differentiate bullying behaviours; recognition that boys and girls bully differently; stereotypes that parent's make; and the realization that only half of the parents interviewed were aware their child identified as bullied. The results of this exploratory research highlight the need for further investigation. Understanding parents' perceptions and conceptualizations is crucial to bullying research, as parents' definitions will impact their recognition of bullying incidents and subsequent interventions.
Long-term survival after intensive care

This thesis uses the methods of clinical epidemiology to explore whether administrative datasets are a feasible methodology to evaluate the long-term survival of patients following the use of intensive care unit (ICU) technology. I conducted three main studies. First, I validated the Ontario administrative health data for identifying ICU patients using a prospective ICU registry as the criterion standard. The main finding was that administrative databases were able to identify ICU patients but no single strategy simultaneously provided ideal sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value. The main implication was that researchers should consider the study purpose when choosing the optimal strategy for ICU research involving these databases. Second, I examined the long-term survival following ICU care for a specific subgroup of patients, bone marrow transplant recipients. The main finding was that patients receiving any ICU procedure had increased one-year mortality (87% versus 44%, p
Strange ambiguity: ethics and embodiment in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

This dissertation counters the interpretation of Simone de Beauvoir as a ‘masculinist’ thinker and The Second Sex as a text that reveals her ambivalence toward the female body. I claim that The Second Sex, read in the light of Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity, challenges the masculine absolute subject by revealing that the lived body undermines that subject's illusions of mastery and self-containment. We are, Beauvoir argues, transcendent beings who live our transcendence ambiguously, as embodied creatures. The lucid acceptance of this ambiguity is a moral conversion, or coming of age, and is the precondition of ethical relations with others. The Second Sex suggests not only that men have closed off women's concrete opportunities for freedom in defining them as Other, but that this definition of women as Other rests on a denial of the ambiguity of the human condition. The dynamic of masculine Absolute Subject and feminine Inessential Other is one in which men are able to avoid the tension of living their ambiguity by identifying their embodied existence with transcendence and projecting onto women the body-as-flesh. It is not the body itself that is a problem for women, but what the female body has come to mean in a culture which refuses ambiguity and defines subjectivity as pure transcendence. If the Subject/Other dynamic is maintained by the denial of ambiguity, and true human subjectivity is not the illusion of pure transcendence but is realized through a conversion which recognises the freedom of the other and the otherness of the self, then the meaning of risk in Beauvoir's text changes dramatically. I argue that the risk which founds subjectivity will not only be the Hegelian risk of self-assertion, but must also be the risk of assuming otherness within the self—a bodily risk-taking and an assumption of the self as freedom and flesh at once. In The Second Sex, this bodily risk-taking is revealed in the erotic encounter, where each partner risks the self in a generous abandon to the other. The final chapter considers pregnancy as a site of bodily risk and a new model of embodied subjectivity.
Use of compartmental models to predict physiological properties of hippocampal inhibitory neurons

Inhibitory neurons, or interneurons, which make up only 10-15% of the neuronal population in the hippocampus are thought to control and sculpt field rhythms through their contact with hundreds of excitatory cells, or pyramidal neurons. Interneurons are heterogeneous in terms of their morphologies, biophysical properties, and their presynaptic or postsynaptic targets. These heterogeneities are thought to have functional significance. We hypothesize that biophysical parameters of neurons can be determined by a variety of simulations using morphologically realistic multi-compartment neuron models. Virtual experiments, which would be difficult or impossible to perform in real experiments, can be used to place constraints on such parameters as the ion channel content of distal dendrites or the location of electrical synapses between neurons. The basket cell models were used in two-cell networks to explore how location and strength of electrical coupling affects network spiking patterns. Proximal gap junctions resulted in pure synchrony patterns for all gap junctional strengths and all intrinsic frequencies explored. Middle and distal dendritic gap junctional locations produced a variety of network patterns including pure synchrony, phase-locked and anti-phase. Both interneuron types have been shown experimentally to contribute to the theta/gamma field rhythms that have been measured in vivo during exploration and learning. Speculations on the possible role of the parameters explored here are discussed within the context of the theta/gamma field rhythms and the hippocampal circuitry. Kinetic model parameters were determined for the muscarinic potassium current, IM, by using multi-compartment models of O-LM interneurons with various IM somato-dendritic distributions. The simulations predicted conductance densities for each distribution to match experiments. Using a reverse engineering approach, the steady-state activation curves of IM were predicted in simulations to match whole cell recordings from experiments. Using sinusoidal current inputs, the O-LM interneuron models displayed a resonance at theta frequencies which could be expanded with block of IM, particularly for suprathreshold sinusoidal inputs. The aim of this dissertation was to use compartmental models to predict physiological parameters of hippocampal inhibitory neurons. The oriens-lacunosum/moleculare (O-LM) and basket cell interneurons were the focus of this work due to the availability of biophysical data for these interneuron subtypes.
Peptide-derived sensors with tuned affinity for heparin

A new fluorescent Fmoc-SPPS compatible amino acid that incorporates the halide-sensitive 6-methoxyquinolinium group was synthesized and incorporated in two peptides with known affinity for heparin. Sensor number one, AGf73, showed a 320% increase in fluorescence intensity upon heparin association, with an apparent dissociation constant of 2.6 muM at 100 mM NaCl. AGf73 selectivity was illustrated by the absence of changes in fluorescence intensity in the presence of chondroitin sulfate A. Furthermore, the proposed chloride-dependent sensing mechanism was supported by the fact that fluoride ions did not elicit a significant fluorescence change in the presence or in the absence of heparin. Sensor number two, MK2f-69d-61, was based on the second domain of human midkine, under the same working principle as AGf73, adding an internal fluorescent moiety that would render it ratiometric. Although adequate folding of the second sensor was not achieved, the ratiometric nature of the probe was corroborated experimentally. 11This work has been submitted to ChemBioChem and is being revised for publication.
Cell cycle regulation in epithelial cell senescence and in response to TGF-[beta]

Cellular proliferation is tightly controlled by a family of cell cycle regulators that function to ensure the orderly completion of each phase of the cell cycle. The cell cycle regulators consist of a repertoire of kinases, the cyclin dependent kinases (cdks), their partner cyclins and two families of cdk inhibitors. In the course of this thesis, I investigated the manner by which these cell cycle regulators function to mediate an arrest of cellular proliferation in response to anti-proliferative signals. The signals that I investigated were those elicited by TGF-β, an anti-mitogenic cytokine, and by cellular senescence. My studies utilizing a human mammary epithelial cell model demonstrated an increase in both the steady state level and stability of a cdk inhibitor, p15INK4B, in response to TGF-β. The increase in the steady state level of p15 was mirrored by an increase in its association with cdk4 and cdk6 complexes. The increase in p15 binding to these complexes was accompanied by a loss of cyclin D1 association to both cdk4 and cdk6 complexes, which resulted in their subsequent loss of kinase activity. An absence of kinase activity from these cell cycle complexes served to arrest cellular proliferation at the G1/S phase of the cell cycle in response to TGF-β. The proliferative capacity of normal cells is limited to a finite capacity due to the constraints imposed by cellular senescence. My investigations into the manner by which cell cycle regulators mediate the senescence arrest yielded different results in two model systems: human mammary epithelial cells (HMEC) and human prostatic epithelial cells (HPEC). In HMEC, a loss of expression of Cdc25A, a cell cycle phosphatase, at senescence served to contribute towards a loss of cyclin E/cdk2 activity. However, in HPEC, p16INK4A steady state levels increased and correlated with an increase in its binding to both cdk4 and cdk6 complexes. The subsequent loss of cyclin D1 association that accompanied the increased p16 binding served to suggest a role for p16 in the inhibition of these complexes. In contrast to studies in senescent fibroblasts, no increase in the steady state level or association of p21 to target cdk complexes was observed.
The relationship of the lateral pterygoid muscle and articular disc to the retrodiscal tissue: A three dimensional analysis

Hypothesis. An increased volume of the retrodiscal tissue will be found in specimens with anteriorly positioned articular discs. Purpose. To construct a 3-D computer model using macro-anatomical techniques to visualize and document the architecture of the lateral pterygoid (LP), articular disc and retrodiscal fibres and to quantify the retrodiscal apparatus. Methods. Ten human cadaveric specimens were dissected for optimal visualization of the LP, disc and retrodiscal tissue. Digitization was completed and the data was then reconstituted and modeled in 3-D using MAYA(TM). Results. The retrodiscal volumes ranged from 0.555 to 2.072 cm3 with a mean of 1.072 cm3. Retrodiscal volumes were significantly larger in specimens with discs that were anteriorly positioned (p