VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the relationship between disease activity and disease damage in childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus

'Background'. Disease activity measured by the Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) estimates the degree of inflammation in cSLE patients. The Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics/American College of Rheumatology Damage Index (SDI) measures damage in adult SLE, but has not been tested in children. 'Objectives'. (1) To test that accumulated disease activity measured by the area under the curve of the SLEDAI (AUCS) is related to the damage scored by the SDI. (2) To identify additional damage predictors in cSLE. 'Methods'. Sixty-six patients were assessed for disease activity (SLEDAI) and damage (SDI). Linear and multivariable modeling were done to predict SDI scores using the AUCS and/or other possible damage predictors. 'Results'. The AUCS predicts damage. Multivariable modeling suggests that corticosteroids and antiphospholipid antibodies increase damage and that second-line agents may be protective. 'Conclusions'. The AUCS is a good predictor of damage in cSLE. Damage is influenced by medications.
Diastereoselective ring closing metathesis as an approach to cycloalkenes and symmetrical bicyclodienes and their functionalization through desymmetrization reactions

Cycloalkenes bearing a quaternary carbon center were synthesized using a diastereoselective ring closing metathesis approach. Diastereoselectivities observed in cycloalkene formation were modest (<4.5:1) and thus extension to the synthesis of the analogous bicyclodienes was not pursued. Application of the intramolecular asymmetric Heck reaction in the desymmetrization of symmetrical bicyclodienes was achieved with good yields and excellent enantioselectivities. In the desymmetrization of bicyclo-[3.3.0]octadienes, polycycles were synthesized in yields as high as 80% and enantioselectivities as high as 99%. Polycycles derived from bicyclo-[4.4.0]decadienes were obtained in modest yields (<60%), and good enantioselectivities (<=82%).
Finite element modeling of adhesive failure with adherend yielding

In this thesis, both stress-analysis and cohesive zone modeling (CZM) approaches were used to develop peel finite element models, aimed at predicting the strengths of steady-state peel tests with top adherend ranging from 1 mm to 3 mm and peel angles ranging from 30 to 90 degrees. For the stress-analysis approach, a critical Von-Miles strain failure criterion was investigated and found to be independent of the peel angle but dependent on the peel arm thickness. For the CZM, an energy-based failure criterion was used. It was observed that once the parameters of the traction-separation curves characterizing the CZM were calibrated using a 1 mm, 90° peel test, it could be used to give reasonable predictions of peel strengths for the 1 mm and 2 mm peel tests. However, the predicted peel strengths of the 3 mm peel tests were significantly lower than the experimental results.
Variation in the local structure and properties of paper

The rupture of paper is controlled not by the mean strength, but by the minimum strength regions in the sheet. In order to fully understand which aspect of structure controls these weak regions and their effect on the local strength of paper, an effort was made to correlate variations in two microstructural features (fibre orientation and bonded area) of the sheet with the variability of local properties. The objective of this study was to identify if the structure varied significantly from point to point and to attempt to correlate the structural features of paper with properties in a deterministic way. By using a new analytical method for the estimation of fibre orientation, a relatively strong correlation was observed between local variation in mean fibre orientation and the local strength of paper. By considering fibre orientation and bonding simultaneously, a relative strength model was developed in this study in order to improve the correlation between local tensile strength and local structure.
Keeping the faith, the Jewish response to compulsory religious education in Ontario's public schools, 1944-1990

In 1944 Ontario Premier George Drew's minority Conservative government introduced compulsory religious education into the Province's public schools. The enabling legislation, the "Drew Regulation," prescribed two one-half hour periods of religious instruction per week. A response to world-wide godlessness symbolized by Nazi Germany's crimes, remarkably, the Drew Regulation remained in place in Ontario for forty-six years. The wholesale implementation of the Drew Regulation throughout Ontario's public school system went beyond the need to balance the evil of war with the goodness of faith. Over time it became clear that the Regulation's benign terms which prescribed no specific religious preference was being used for decidedly doctrinal Protestant purposes. When predominantly Protestant Ontario issued little protest, by default, the task of opposing the Drew Regulation fell to the Jewish community. There was no realistic alternative. Other minority faith groups were small in number. Human rights organizations were only just beginning to appear. Moreover, after some initial anxiety, the general community's concern about the discriminatory aspects of the Drew Regulation rapidly dissipated. Emerging from an erstwhile immigrant persona, only a vigilant Jewish community was sensitive to the abuses visited on Jewish and other minority children by this Regulation. At times, hamstrung by its reticence to assume a high public profile, especially when this meant clashing with deeply-felt convictions of the general community, the Jewish community stayed the course. Finally, unable to balance its opposition to the Drew Regulation with increasing internal demands for Provincial funding of Jewish Day Schools, the Jewish community gratefully relinquished responsibility for determining the place of religious education in the public schools to the judicial system.
The concept of jaw¢anmard¢i (manliness) in Persian literature and society

This thesis explores the concept of 'jawa¢nmardi¢ ' as it is depicted in representative texts of Persian literature dating from the 11th century to the present and analyzes the different models of it that were developed. Through these models, the thesis will determine the ideals of 'jawa¢nmardi¢' and illustrate how those ideals have persisted in modern Iranian societies. The three models of 'jawa¢nmardi¢' analyzed are: the heroic warrior, the spiritual champion, and the professional wrestler. The discussion about the heroic warrior is based on the Iranian national epic, the 'Sha¢hna¢ma', and the medieval popular romance, ' Samak-i `Ayya¢r'. This chapter demonstrates how the acquisition of a good reputation is the driving force for the heroic warrior as he plays out his role in society. Even though he must win, his quest for good reputation draws him into situations that challenge his heroism. The discussion about the spiritual champion is based on medieval Persian treatises on religious 'jawa¢nmardi¢' and it focuses specifically on the early 16th century treatise, 'Futuwwat Na¢ma-yi Sult¤&dotbelow;a¢ni¢' by the Persian writer and preacher, H&dotbelow;usain Wa¢`iz&dotbelow; al-Ka¢shifi¢ (d. 910/1504-5). The chapter demonstrates how proper conduct, which is rooted in the Sufi ethic of self-denial, was regarded as all-important for spiritual 'jawa¢nmardi¢'. The initiation rites of religious 'jawa¢nmardi¢' and the professions in society reflected the dialectical relationship between outward conduct and inner spirituality. The third model, that of the wrestler, is a fusion of the first two models. In what may appear paradoxical, the wrestler seeks to be both a physical and spiritual champion. This is illustrated through the culture of courtesy in the wrestling arena and specifically through the wrestler's stratagem of deferring to his opponent. The final chapter demonstrates how 20th century Persian prose writers have treated the concept of 'jawa¢nmardi¢' through their protagonists who struggle to emulate the traditional ideals of 'jawa¢nmardi¢' in the context of modern-day complexities involving family life and individual identity.
Distributed video production, application, system requirements, architecture and resource mangement

In this thesis, we will introduce the concept of a Distributed Video Production (DVP) environment and identify possible production tasks that can be performed in it. We study service requirements of these tasks and categorize DVP services based on their requirement characteristics. We then examine two representative multimedia applications, Video-on-Demand and videoconferencing in terms of both their services and management & control mechanisms. We also study implementation issues in a multimedia end-system. Finally, we propose an architecture for the DVP system based on its application and system requirements, and we also develop a common management structure for both network and system resources based on Virtual Network resource management concepts.
Experimental study of paint removal due to particle impact

The objective of this research was to study the mechanics of coating removal due to particle impact. The effects of different parameters such as velocity, incident angle, the projectile diameter and projectile material were investigated for different thicknesses of an automotive topcoat (urethane paint) on steel. The impact sites were studied using image analysis techniques to quantify the damage to the coating as well as to the underlying substrate. The Young's modulus and the critical strain energy release rate for delamination were determined for the coating. The results of these experiments can be used to predict the velocity and incident angle to achieve optimal paint removal in blast cleaning. Conversely, they also serve to identify the paint properties that should be improved if chipping resistance is to be increased.
Children, families, and institutions in late 19th and early 20th century Ontario

The changes in childhood in 19th and 20th century English-speaking Ontario took place within a context of economic and social developments that included industrialization, urbanization, new immigrant groups, change in family occupations, scientific advances and economic liberalization. The change was exhilarating, but caused profound unease. This generated a search for order that appeared in existing institutions, such as churches and schools and in new institutions, such as kindergartens and settlement houses, that reformers initiated to fix the perceived flaws of the new environment. Childhood became the subject of intense scrutiny. While some young children attended school from the early 19th century, new ideas of childhood meant that, by 1900, kindergarten for the youngest pupils was entrenched in public schools. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, supervision during school hours had expanded to the rest of the day in settings such as settlement houses.

Keywords: Children
Social conditions
Children
Social conditions
Family
History
Family
History
Enfants
Conditions sociales
Enfants
Conditions sociales
Famille
Histoire
Famille
Histoire
Tolerating network errors in system area networks

Recently there has been a lot of progress in providing low-latency, high-bandwidth access in commodity clusters by using system area networks. As these systems are finding commercial applications, besides performance, fault tolerance and availability are also becoming important issues. However, due to cost and complexity reasons, system area networks do not necessarily provide reliability at the hardware level for transient or permanent network failures. This dissertation investigates how system area networks can deal with failures in the interconnect without compromising performance. We use a firmware-level retransmission scheme to tolerate transient failures and an on-demand mapping scheme to tolerate permanent network failures. We find that both schemes provide good performance, are transparent to applications, and are conceptually simple and suitable for low-level implementations. We analyze and evaluate system performance by using both micro-benchmarks and parallel applications with a real implementation on a state-of-the-art cluster.
Extensive chaos and complexity of two-dimensional turbulence

This thesis concerns how the dynamics of 2D fluid systems may become complex due to various physical parameters such as the forcing intensity and scale, the dissipation mechanism, and the system size. These complexity-determining factors are found to act collectively to give rise to the dynamical complexities. The fluid models in this study are shallow layers of viscous incompressible fluids on rectangular domains governed by the familiar 2D Navier-Stokes equations with and without a hypoviscosity term (linear Ekman drag is added to model large-scale dissipation). Three main analyses are carried out. One is the asymptotic analysis of the 2D Navier-Stokes equations driven by a monoscale forcing. The results obtained include a dynamical constraint and possible scaling laws for the energy spectrum. These are then generalized to systems with a general viscosity and extended to systems with Ekman drag. The second analysis concerns the estimation of the attractor dimension of the systems under consideration. We employ the technique developed by Constantin-Foias-Temam for the calculation of attractor dimension of dissipative dynamical systems. The present investigation focuses on the optimal estimation of the dimensionality and its extensivity. It is found, in general, that the estimates do not depend on the physical parameters in a fixed functional form, but rather take different expressions in different regions of parameter space. In particular, the attractor dimension of the Navier-Stokes equations (with or without Ekman drag) is shown to grow linearly with the domain area (for a sufficiently large domain) if the kinematic viscosity and the forcing density and its scale are held fixed. We also show that slightly super-extensive behaviour prevails for a wide range of the parameters. The third investigation concerns the stability problem (both linear and nonlinear) of simple laminar stationary flows. The analysis examines how the flows may become unstable and explores the properties of some unstable eigenmodes. The familiar Fourier expansion method is used for this study. It is found that (in)stabilities depend on the forcing scale in a peculiar and nontrivial way.
Efficacy of clinical tests in the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome

Clinical examination is an important component in the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The primary objective of this study was to determine the efficacy of clinical tests in the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. A sample of 92 patients (173 hands) including 65 females ('x¢ ' age 48 ± 15 y) and 27 males ('x¢' age 53 ± 13 y) referred for examination of possible carpal tunnel syndrome formed the subject base. The attending surgeon administered Phalen's test, the pressure provocative test, the Ten test and Tinel's sign. Patients returned for an independent and blinded electrodiagnostic evaluation by the attending physiatrist. A positive electrodiagnosis combined with a "classic" or "probable" rating from Stirrat's symptom reporting questionnaire was the gold standard. Overall, hand prevalence of carpal tunnel syndrome was 0.62 ± 0.07 (108 +CTS and 65 -CTS hands). Diagnostic efficacy was evaluated using measures of sensitivity (Sens), specificity (Spec), and likelihood ratio (LR) with corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) as well as Cohen's Kappa statistic. Tinel's sign ({Sens = 79%; CI, 71-87} {Spec = 65%; CI, 55-75}, {LR = 2.22; CI, 2.08-2.36}), the Ten test ({Sens = 87%; CI, 79-95}, {Spec = 52%; CI, 441-63}, {LR = 1.8; CI, 1.66-1.94}), and Phalen's test ({Sens = 80%; CI, 72-88}, {Spec = 48%; CI, 37-59}, {LR = 1.52; CI, 1.38-1.66}) demonstrated significant Kappa agreement (p < 0.001) with the confirmed diagnosis for carpal tunnel syndrome. The pressure provocative test ({Sens = 76%; CI, 68-84), {Spec = 34%; CI, 23-45), {LR = 1.15; CI, 1.01-1.29}), did not indicate significant Kappa agreement (p > 0.05). Finally, the serial combination of Tinel's sign with either the Ten test ({Sens = 73%; CI 65-81}, {Spec = 50%; CI, 39-61}, {LR = 1.46; CI, 1.32-1.61) or Phalen's test ({Sens = 73%; CI, 65-81}, {Spec = 46%; CI, 34-58}, {LR = 1.36; CI, 1.21-1.52}), demonstrated significant Kappa agreement (p < 0.01). A secondary objective of the current study was to establish positivity criterion for the Ten test using ROC curve analysis. Positivity criterion for CTS was identified as subject hand sensibility values <10 in at least three of the thumb, index, middle and ring fingers. The Ten test proved to be a valid clinical test with a sensitivity, specificity and likelihood ratio that rival those obtained by traditional clinical tests, including Tinel's sign and Phalen's test. This study concluded that Tinel's sign; Phalen's test and the Ten test are efficacious clinical tests in the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Virus inactivation by ozone

Ozone is a triatomic allotrope of oxygen. It is a desirable disinfectant because of its high oxidation potential. Its utilization has been primarily in water purification and sewage treatment industries to inactivate particular organic chemical pollutants and contaminating microorganisms. In this study, the parameters of inactivation of representative viruses by ozone were investigated. Ozone was produced in the 2-4 wt% range from oxygen, by corona discharge, using LifeTECH Corporation's Sterinetics&trade; generator. Ozone decay kinetics in aqueous solution were established at different pH, temperature and starting ozone concentrations. The inactivation of the enveloped virus, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus strain LA (IBRV) and the non-enveloped virus bovine adenovirus type 3 (BAd3) by defined ozone concentrations under defined conditions was explored. Virus infectivity was assessed by endpoint dilution [TCID50]. At ozone concentrations of 5 [mu]g/ml, BAd3 and IBRV titres were reduced by 3.0-3.1 and 3.3-4.3 logs, respectively. At lower ozone concentrations (0.25-0.5 [mu]g/ml), BAd3 titres were reduced 0.9-2.0 logs whereas IBRV titres were reduced 1.3-2.9 logs. These studies provide a detailed description of virus inactivation by ozone under defined conditions and can serve as a reference for applications of this technology to virus inactivation.
Effects of classroom factors on teachers' self-efficacy and their beliefs about integration.

This study examined the effect of teachers' attitudes and beliefs, class size, class heterogeneity, past experiences and teacher training on teacher self-efficacy. Thirty-three teachers and 818 students from twelve schools in two metropolitan school boards participated in the study. Teachers completed three measures of attitudes and beliefs and one measure of training and experience. Teachers also completed the Pathognomonic/Interventionist interview. This interview was used as a measure of teachers' beliefs about their roles and responsibilities for delivering services to at-risk and exceptional students. Students who participated in the study completed the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. The results of this test were used as a measure of classroom heterogeneity. The strongest correlate of teacher self-efficacy was university based teacher training in special education and integration. The measures of attitudes (The REITS and the ATMS) were also significant predictors of self-efficacy. The Pathognomonic/Interventionist Interview, measuring teachers' beliefs about meeting the needs of exceptional students, was not a predictor of self-efficacy. Class size, academic heterogeneity, past experiences and number of years teaching were also not predictors of self-efficacy.
The neurophysiological effect of aging on AM processing in the rat auditory cortex

Difficulty in speech discrimination is a common complaint among the elderly population. In recent years, it has been proposed that part of this difficulty in speech perception may be the result of age-related changes in the central auditory system, specifically a decline in temporal processing speed. The goal of the present study was to investigate the neurophysiological effects of aging on temporal processing speed within the auditory cortex. Sinusoidal amplitude modulations (SAM) was the stimulus of choice as it is a complex sound found in animal vocalizations including human speech. Extracellular single unit recordings were made from cells of young and old male Long Evans Hooded rats in the auditory cortex. Tone bursts were presented to assess characteristic frequency followed by SAM stimuli to assess best modulation frequency (BMF) of the cells. Results indicate no significant differences between age groups for BMFs. Thus no neural basis for aging was found using SAM stimuli.
Stereoselective approaches to the hexahydronaphthalene portions of the HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (+)-compactin and (+)-mevinolin

The first objective was to develop an efficient approach to the hexahydronaphthalene portion of (+)-compactin. The approach was to feature the use of a catalytic enantioselective reductive ring opening of a [2.2.1]oxabicycle, a diastereoselective crotylation reaction, and a ring closing metathesis reaction of a conjugated diene. The second objective was to develop an approach to the hexahydronaphthalene portion of (+)-mevinolin. This strategy would use a diastereo selective double ring closing metathesis reaction follow by a sigmatropic rearrangement. The third objective was to use a palladium catalyzed formate reduction to allow 1,4-dichlorobutene to be used as a surrogate for 4-bromo-1-butene. This strategy would be employed for the butenylation of a variety of different Ducleophiles. The fourth objective was to investigate the use of ã-carboxy-Ã,ß-unsaturated aldehydes as replacements for ß,ã-unsaturated aldehydes. This strategy would also make use of palladium catalyzed formate reductions, with particular interest being placed on the development of a diastereoselective transformation.
New self-assembling polyferrocenylsilane architectures, organization over multiple length scales

Anionic poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS) and cationic polyferrocenylsilane (PFS) are shown to self-assemble in a layer-by-layer fashion on planar substrates and spherical colloidal particles to form organic-organometallic multilayered nanostructures and core-shell particles, respectively. The ferrocene centre within the planar multilayer thin films could be chemically oxidized by exposure to iodine vapour and subsequently reduced by treatment with aqueous hydrazine. The formation of core-shell particles comprised of a colloidal silica core with [PFS-PSS]n multilayer shells, followed by silica particle chemical decomposition, resulted in hollow [PSS-PFS]n shells. Three dimensionally (3D) ordered macroporous PFS has been prepared by a colloidal crystal templating technique. Characterization of the diffractive optical properties verified the periodic nature of the porous material. Pyrolysis of the polymeric network at 900°C resulted in the formation of a 3D ordered ferromagnetic macroporous ceramic composed of ã-Fe2O 3 nanoclusters. Furthermore, a modified templating strategy has been employed for the fabrication of 3D ordered close-packed arrays of PFS and ceramic microspheres.