title: Epistemological Negativism and Scientific Knowledge.

contributor:
Griffin, Nicholas J.
Philosophy

subject:
Ernst Mach
metaphysical elements
scientific knowledge
scientific theories
verificationism
Karl Popper
falsificationism
fallibilism

abstract:
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Ernst Mach expressed his worries about obscurities and metaphysical elements in scientific knowledge, and consequently
contributed to the development of a Viennese tradition. Later on, Vienna Circle further extended Mach's ideas and led to the development of the logical positivist movement.
Among the main tenets of this movement is the view that scientific theories are to be reduced to an empirical base capable of conclusive verification. But scientific theories
are usually based on unverified and occasionally unverifiable hypotheses and principles. Thus, once this is realized, positivism in spite of itself will contribute to
the development of scepticism about scientific knowledge.

In reaction to the verificationism, however, Karl Popper developed his thesis of falsificationism or fallibilism; but this principle also leads to scepticism at least about certainty claims, with far reaching consequences. This chain of events leads to the development of Paul Feyerabend's epistemological anarchisma a rejection
of all rules and methods in science in an attempt to reduce science to the level of irrationality and mythology.

Against the negativist conclusions of these positions about science, the integrity of scientific knowledge is defended in this thesis. It is shown how scientific knowledge can be defended against scepticism of the type to which verificationism tends: this is done by examining one recent and rigorous sceptical position which undermines not only certainty and rationality of knowledge claims, but the very possibility of knowledge. By examining Popper's fallibilism, it is shown that science can also be defended against the negativist conclusions of fallibilism. Similarly, it is shown that
Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism cannot either undermine scientific knowledge.

These negativist positions, though they have received strong criticisms in some quarters, yet have not been examined all together, from the standpoint of their impact on the integrity of scientific knowledge. This task is undertaken in this thesis; we thus arrive at a positive and correct evaluation of scientific knowledge in the context of contemporary negativist epistemological trends. It has been shown that in spite of all the negativist arguments of the above positions, we can obtain certainty, justification, and truth in science, and thus we can obtain knowledge. But my rejection of negativism in science does not entail, and should not be construed as an advocacy of a return to, positivism.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Understanding knowledge sharing in Web 2.0 online communities: A socio-technical study

contributor:
Head, Milena
Business Administration

rights: An error occurred getting the license - uri.

subject:
knowledge management
knowledge sharing
online communities
Web 2.0
social bookmarking
commenting
social capital theory

abstract: Knowledge sharing–the dissemination of knowledge from an individual/group to another–has been an interesting topic for knowledge management scholars. Previous studies on knowledge sharing in online communities have primarily focused on communities of practice (organizational/business communities) and the social factors of knowledge sharing behaviour. However, non-business-oriented online communities have not been rigorously examined in the academic literature as venues for facilitating knowledge sharing. In addition, the burst of new age Internet tools (artifacts) such as social bookmarking has changed the face of online social networking. Within the context of Web 2.0, this socio-technical research investigation introduces both social and technical factors affecting attitude towards knowledge sharing in communities of relationship and communities of interest, and proposes a relational model of knowledge sharing attitude in Web 2.0 online communities. Social Capital Theory provides the main theoretical backbone for the proposed model.  Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and social constructionsim have also been used. Following the description of the proposed hypotheses and research methodology using a survey about three Web 2.0 websites (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Cnet), data analysis through Partial Least Squared (PLS) method is applied to examine the effect of social and technical antecedent of knowledge sharing attitude. The R2 value of 0.78 indicates the strong explanatory power of the research model.

abstract: Dissertation

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: A Corpus Linguistic Verb Analysis of the Pauline Letters: The Contribution of Verb Patterns to Pauline Letter Structure

subject:
Linguistic Verb
Verb Patterns

abstract: This dissertation addresses the question of whether the empirical data gathered from an analysis of verb categories within the primary clauses of the Pauline corpus reveals letter structure. It begins with a discussion of the classification and structuring of the ancient Greek letter, with focus on the New Testament Jetter tradition. It shows that no real consensus has been reached concerning the classification and structure of ancient letters, especially the New Testament letters. This lack of consensus serves as the impetus for attempting a different approach for the description of Pauline letter structure. After providing a brief description and history of corpus linguistics and its application to New Testament studies, a corpus linguistic application similar to one presented by Douglas Biber is suggested to analyze the verb patterns within the Pauline letter corpus. This is accomplished by analyzing and describing the patterns revealed in each of the letters of the Pauline corpus and then comparing them with attempts made within Greek texts, Bible translations, and commentaries at structuring the letters. This analysis not only reveals verbal patterns but also discovers other key features found within the primary clauses that seem to contribute to the structure of the letters, such as conjunctions, formulaic verbs, and vocatives/nominatives of address. The combination of the verb patterns and the occurrence of these features leads to the presentation of structural outlines for each of the letters within the Pauline corpus according to a five-part (letter opening; thanksgiving; body; parenesis; and letter closing) letter structure. With these structural parts established, the verb occurrences within each part are counted to test whether the verbal categories of mood, person-number, and aspect contribute to the structuring of the Pauline letter. The tracking of these occurrences reveals a statistically significant shift between the body and parenetic section of the letters. This further validates the assumption that verb patterns contribute to the structuring of Paul's letters.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Developing Sustainable Communities: Community Development and Modernity in Shimshal

contributor:
Eyles, John
Geography

subject: Sustainability Community

abstract:
Conventional approaches to evaluating international development programmes undervalue
the local contexts within which development initiatives occur. Programmes are most often assessed
according to economic criteria, which do not fully represent the aspirations and concerns of
community members. Consequently, formal development evaluations are poor reflections of a
programme's total influence on the social organisation of communities and the daily lives of
community members.
Two objectives guided my research. The first was to develop an approach to evaluating
rural development programmes, at the level of individual communities, which was more sensitive
to indigenous social contexts and priorities than are conventional approaches. My second objective
was to demonstrate the utility of this new approach by using it to evaluate the influence of Aga
Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) initiatives on Shimshal community, Pakistan. The first
objective was theoretical; the second, empirical.
The study begins by addressing the initial objective with two major theoretical points. First,
draw from the critical social theory of Habermas to develop the concept of community
sustainability, which I offer as a universally acceptable standard against which to evaluate the
results of development programmes. Community sustainability is defined as follows: (a) a
universally desirable, ideal state; (b) in which community members' shared norms and supporting
institutions are established consensually; (c) where decisions are validated according to those
shared norms within accepted institutions; and (d) where those norms and institutions, and changes
to them, are supported through time by the material resources available to the community.
According to this conception programmes should be evaluated in tenns of their influence on
community decision making processes, and not on specific technical innovations.
Second, I employ Matthews' sociological work to suggest that we can evaluate the
contribution of development programmes to community sustainability by examining their influence on decision making in four areas of organisation: social, political, economic, and ecological. These,
when integrated with the larger concept of community sustainability, facilitate the identification and
definition of four categories according to which community sustainability can be empirically
evaluated: social vitality, political validity, economic viability, and ecological volition.
I applied this framework to interpreting the nature of sustainability in Shimshal community,
in northern Pakistan, and to evaluating the influence of an initiative by the Aga Khan Rural Support
Programme to create village organisations in Shimshal. Two main research strategies were
employed. First, I analysed historical and contemporary texts to provide the following contextual
understandings: (a} Shimshalis' formal interpretation of their community; (b) outsiders' historical and
contemporary perspectives on Shimshal; (c) the history of community sustainability in Hunza (of
which Shimshal is a part) over the past two centuries; and (d) the objectives and achievements of
the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in the villages of northern Pakistan.
Second, I engaged in seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in the community of
Shimshal. Field notes collected during my two visits were coded along two dimensions: (a} into four
theoretically-derived categories (social, political, economic or ecological); and (b} into inductive
categories, each of which represented some theme or narrative of Shimshali lived experience {eg.
formal education} relating to the creation of AKRSP village organisations. These two dimensions
of analysis integrate in an interpretation that utilises small case studies to assess the influence of
AKRSP initiatives on the sustainability of Shimshal's four areas of social organisation.
This process of evaluation reveals that Shimshal has become more sustainable in the past
half decade because village organisations created by the AKRSP have facilitated an increasingly
consensual form of decision making within an increasingly rationalised culture and society. That
AKRSP village organisations have facilitated this change is due mainly to the social and cultural
context of Shimshal, particularly an indigenous tendency toward community autonomy and
collective decision making. The study's significance relates to its initial objectives. First, the approach to evaluating
agency development I advanced improves on conventional approaches to programme evaluation,
and also contributes to the evaluation of social change more generally. Second, the application of
this evaluation approach to AKRSP development in Shimshal contributes to AKRSP's practical
understanding of the influence of its endeavours in Shimshal, and provides guidance for improving
development efforts in Shimshal and elsewhere within its programme area.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Three Studies in Roman Public Bathing: Origins, Growth and Social Aspects

contributor:
Talbert, R.J.A.
History

subject:
Roman Public Bathing
Origins

abstract:
For ancient Romans, a trip to the public baths was one of the central events of daily life. The copious physical remains of these buildings have been studied in detail by archaeologists and art historians, but many facets of their history and functioning remain unclear or disputed. This dissertation attempts to fill some of the gaps in our knowledge of this core institution in Roman community life. Three aspects are selected for close study: the origins of the baths; the growth of their popularity; and some social aspects of their daily operation. To date these questions have been respectively not satisfactorily addressed, glossed over, or treated only in the most general terms.
The approach taken in the first section, unlike previous studies, is to emphasize the human side of the baths' origins: what drove the Romans (or, more precisely, the Carnpanians) to create their distinctive bathing facilities? Previous theories, mostly based on archaeological evidence, are examined in detail and found to be unsatisfactory. The admittedly sparse literary and epigraphic evidence is subjected to close critical scrutiny. All three types of primary source are then combined to form a new hypothesis which better fits all the evidence than the often fanciful proposals which still carry currency among Roman balneologists.
Section two is concerned with tracing and explaining the growth in the baths' popularity in the 1st centuries BC and AD. Again, archaeological and written evidence is combined to determine the main periods of growth. In searching for an explanation for the phenomenon, it is suggested that the medical teachings of the famous doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia may have played an important, if not precisely quantifiable, role in the spread of the bathing habit in the city. The main basis for section three is the tabulated epigraphic evidence, a largely untapped source for the study of the baths. Using these data (as well as material drawn from other sources) an investigation is conducted into the identities, motives, and social statuses of bathbuilders and rnaintainers. In addition, an attempt is made to reconstruct from available evidence the social environment to be found at the baths. In the course of the inquiry, some consequences for broader topics in Roman social history are highlighted.

abstract: Dissertation

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: A Safe Place: Jane Austen and the Richardsonian Inheritance

contributor:
Blewett, David L.
English

subject:
Jane Austen
A Safe Place

abstract:
Jane Austen's novels have often been viewed as realistic portrayals of the time in which she lived. This paper attempts to modify this view by examining her work in the context of the novels of Samuel Richardson, the writer whom she reportedly admired above all others. There are many differences between the two authors, but their subject matter is essentially the same: the hearts and minds of marriageable young women. Richardson's heroines, however, are threatened and harassed while Austen's are free to experience without fear, and to learn without danger. In "Sir Charles Grandison or The Happy Man", a parody she wrote of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Austen satirizes Richardson's timorous heroines and aggressive heroes; in her novels, women are self-assured and men are not frightening.
An examination of the social history of the eighteenth ce ntu ry and the letters of Jane Austen, however, demonstrates that the world of her novels is not the one she knew. Her much misunderstood letters, in particular, show that her attitudes towards sexual relationships have much in common with those of Samuel Richardson. In addition, her letters illustrate the source and significance of her celebrated irony.
Finally, this study concentrates on Mansfield Park, the novel that appears to contradict Austen's other novels. Mansfield Park is didactic and unironic; it has an oppressed heroine, powerful male characters, and a society that neither appreciates nor defends women. In Mansfield Park the Richardsonian inheritance and Austen's social and sexual views come together and provide insights into her work. Jane Austen's heroines, with the exception of Fanny Price, inhabit a safe place she creates for them. Her rejection of the dangers of women's lives, which Richardson depicts so well, is proof, not of her realism, but of her artistry.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: A Sensitive Independence: The Personnel of the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada, 1881 -1925

contributor:
Turner, H.E.
History

subject: Methodist Church

subject: 1881-1925

abstract:
From its inception in 1881 until its activities were subsumed under the missionary mandate of the United Church of Canada in 1925, the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada energetically promoted the Church's gospel of social reform and individual salvation in its far-flung mission fields in West China, in Japan, in Canada's western frontier settlements and its inner-city immigrant ghettos. The Society's agents were 300 single women caretully chosen on the basis of age, educational background, related work experience and spiritual commitment.
The thesis argues that these women missionaries, broadly representative of small-town, middle-class, Protestant Canada in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, found in tne
W. M. S. an appealing alternative to both domesticity and the limited opportunities for women in secular careers. Nurtured by the structural and political autonomy of the w. M. S within the Methodist Church of Canada, by an aggressive Board of Managers, by the developing sense of sisterhood among the Society's recruits, and by the freedom to act independently according to the circumstances of remote mission fields, missionaries became more than mere proselytizers, social workers and teach9rs. They became professional career women with vested interests in the management, funding, success and
rewards of their activities who were ultimately judged as much on the basis of their professional development as on the evidence of their spiritual commitment or their record of conversions.
Within this context, career commitment on the part of individual missionaries was dependent on several factors, including educational background, administrative skill and, not least of all, field location. Japan in the throes of industrialization and modernization was the Society's showcase. Its most skilled recruits were sent there; and it is not surprising that the Japanese mission field produced the largest number of life-long employees. The Horne mission field, in contrast, enjoyed the lowest priority for funding and personnel, most of whom were drawn from a group of less skilled recruits for whom mission work was an interlude between school-leaving and marriage. West China, with its litany of political, social and physical hardships, arguably demanded, and produced, a degree of dedication and resoluteness unmatched in the recruits who served elsewhere.
At a time when Canadian society was widely debating the related questions of women's proper sphere and the social role of organized Christianity,the w. M. S. created for its women missionaries a separate sphere in which, freed from the sexual politics of both the home and the workplace, they could pursue Christian activism as a fulfilling and rewarding
career.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Rural Schoolchildren's Growth and Nutrition: A Study of Obesity, Diet and School Environment in Grey and Bruce Counties, Ontario, Canada

contributor:
Moffat, Dr. Tina
Anthropology

subject:
Schoolchildren
Growth and Nutrition

abstract:
This thesis reports findings of a biocultural study of the growth and nutrition of children attending schools in rural Ontario, Canada. The objectives of the research were fourfold: (I) to evaluate the growth and nutrition status of a sample of rural Canadian schoolchildren; (2) to explore the school context of children· s nutrition; (3) to build knowledge useful for the development and implementation of nutrition policy and programs; and ( 4) to conduct nutrition workshops with children and parents in school and community settings.
Methods:
Measures of height and weight were obtained for 504 children ages 7-13 years. Height for age and body mass index scores were calculated and compared with 2000 data from the Centers for Disease Control (Kuczmarski et al. 2002). Weekday 24-hour dietary recall was conducted on a subsample of 352 children and the results compared with Canada's Food Guide (Health Canada
1997) and dietary reference data from the US Institute of Medicine (2000). Focus groups were conducted with 144 schoolchildren ages 8-13 years. Open-ended questions were used to encourage students to describe the physical and social environments in which they consume school snacks and lunches. Results: Prevalence of overweight and obesity were high in this sample, with 17.7% of children classified as overweight and 10.9% of children classified as obese. Fifteen percent of boys were classified as obese, compared to 6.8% of girls. Boys consumed significantly more servings from the grain and meat food groups than girls. While mean daily intake of fiber and micronutrients was significantly low for both boys and girls, there were significant gender differences in nutrient intake. with boys consuming greater energy. protein. carbohydrate, calcium, iron, phosphorus,
and sodium than girls. The results of focus group analysis suggest that a wide range ofrules and restrictions are imposed on children's activities during school meals. The majority of these rules govern the physical location. movement. and social interaction of students, suggesting a significant degree of institutionalized control over children's bodies and interactions. Few ofthe rules and restrictions were perceived by children to relate to their nutrition or health. And the imposition of these rules and restrictions occurs in a gendered fashion, creating a gendered climate in which school and societal stereotypes about boys· and girls' behaviour are normalized. In addition, food rewards constitute an important avenue for the communication of values and norms around food and children· s behaviour.
Discussion:
The results of the present study describe high prevalence ofoverweight in both boys and girls. This finding is consistent with data on childhood obesity in other rural North American settings, where socioeconomic factors such as income, employment and education contribute to elevated obesity risk in both adults and children. In addition, children in this sample are generally consuming less than optimal servings from the four food groups outlined in Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating (Health Canada l 997). resulting in widespread nutritional inadequacies. Interventions for this population ofrural children should target overall dietary inadequacies and replacement of existing caloric intake with nutrient-rich foods from across all four food groups. Boys have higher obesity prevalence and consume significantly greater levels ofdietary energy and nutrients than girls. This finding is less common in the literature on child nutrition and may be evidence of gendered dietary patterns in this rural population. In addition, the results of focus group analysis indicate that educators and health workers need to be cognizant that school-based programs and policies aimed at decreasing childhood obesity prevalence occur in a wider context
ofinstitutional rules and practices that communicate powerful messages about food and children· s bodies. Based on a biocultural analysis that examines biological outcomes in the context ofsocial processes, the present study sheds light on factors in the school environment that impact child nutrition. It also offers new directions for investigation into the tractability of schoolchildren· s eating behaviours, which constrain public health approaches to obesity prevention programs in schools.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Poetry of Maledictions: A Commentary on the Ibis of Ovid

contributor:
Kingston, P.
Classics

subject: Ibis Ovid

abstract: The Ibis of Ovid, an enigmatic poem written during the poet's exile at Tomis, contains a series of violent and allusive imprecations drawn from history and mythology. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a detailed study of the poem, to aid readers in their understanding and appreciation of the historiae caecae and ambages in which Ovid takes such delight; accordingly, an introductory chapter attempts to outline the historical and literary background to the poem, with particular attention devoted to placing the poem more firmly within the sphere of imprecatory writing in the ancient world. Following this is an explanatory commentary which covers models, parallels for topoi, and explanations of references, meanings, and allusions in the Ibis. Inevitably, this commentary is indebted to the efforts of previous commentators; however, I have endeavor throughout to suggest additional lines of inquiry and to provide a fresh perspective on a challenging work.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Politics of Survival and Change in Dominica, 17631973: An Interpretation of the Political Life Experience of Dominicans in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Situation

contributor:
Aster, H.
Political Science

subject:
Politics
Post- Colonial

abstract:
This thesis on Dominica is the only study in the social sciences which deals extensively and exclusively with the life experience of Dominicans. The study has three interrelated purposes. It analyses and interprets the life experience of Dominicans as subjects of their own experiences rather than as objects or victims of colonial forces. It seeks to reveal to Dominicans that, despite their colonization, they have a positive identity of which they can be proud and which can be useful to them in the realization of their future aspirations. Finally, it argues consistently against more common metropolitan perspectives used in the analysis of Caribbean experience. The thesis attempts to accomplish these interrelated purposes by an examination of those significant activities in the Dominican life experience which have been directed towards human survival and change in the colonial situation.
Specifically, the study shows how Dominicans themselves, beginning with the slave period, through the emancipation era, the creation of political organizations, right up to the Castle Bruce Cooperative Movement, have acted constantly on their own behalf in order to achieve the dual objectives of survival and change.
Finally, given the emphasis of the thesis and because Dominica is probably the least studied Island in the British Caribbean, the study is considered a contribution not only to the understanding of Dominican political and social life, but also to Caribbean and general social science literature.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Seating and Spectacle in the Graeco-Roman World

contributor:
Haley, Evan W.
Classics

subject: Seating Graeco-Roman

abstract:
This dissertation examines the organization of audiences in spectacular venues (theatres, amphitheatres, stadia, and odea) throughout the Graeco-Roman world. The arrangements in Rome are discussed but the main focus is the organization of spectators in Italian and provincial venues, revealed through inscriptions found on the seats themselves indicating for which individual or group the seat or area was reserved. Included with this dissertation is a catalogue of seating inscriptions from venues throughout the empire, the first to be compiled. This study compares provincial communities within the same region, across regions, and also with Rome. Topics discussed include to what extent legislation passed in Rome influenced seating outside of the city, the contrast between the display in the theatre of the egalitarian ideology of classical Athens and the display of the hierarchically-based Roman ideology, the different uses of venues as they are revealed by seating inscriptions, and the relationship of spectacular venues to the power of the Roman emperor and the ways in which this power was negotiated in the East.
Spectacular venues, in which members of the local population as well as visitors were present, were ideal locations for the display of the local social hierarchy. This display was one that was, at least in the western regions of the empire, influenced to a certain degree by legislation passed in Rome but it was also influenced by the desires of the local elite throughout the empire who were responsible for the grant of reserved seats. The organization of spectacular audiences thus not only reflected the disparate social and civic structures of individual communities, but also projected an idealized vision created by those in charge of seating arrangements. Local inhabitants could, through their attendance at spectacles, determine their place within the ideal community on display.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Occupational Performance and Mild Cognitive Impairment in a Primary Care Memory Clinic

contributor:
Law, Mary
Letts, Lori
Lee, Linda
Rehabilitation Science

subject:
occupational therapy
mild cognitive impairment

abstract: As Ontario faces a major shift in demographics, it is anticipated that the number of community-dwelling people living with cognitive impairment will increase significantly. Occupational therapists (OTs) may play a key role in ensuring timely diagnosis and/or informing a comprehensive plan of care for this population by assessing and reporting on functional abilities. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of an OT home assessment on diagnosis and plan of care for persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) in a primary care Memory Clinic setting using a before and after design. A toolkit of clinical measures was developed to assess self-perception of occupational performance, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), falls risk and home safety. Thirty-one participants who had been assessed by a Memory Clinic team completed a one-hour OT home assessment focused on these attributes.  A change in the plan of care was proposed for 24 of 31 participants (i.e., 77%) after the assessment findings were reviewed by the lead physicians of three Memory Clinic teams. Clinical information from an OT home assessment was used by the Memory Clinic teams to change follow-up visit times, plan diagnosis and/or medication review and initiate additional community supports for persons with MCI. Women in this sample were more likely than men to experience changes to their plan of care and were also at a higher falls risk as indicated by scores on a screening tool of this attribute. Several time sensitive issues were identified during the OT home assessment including falls risk, home safety issues and participant concern with driving ability. The addition of an OT home visit to an existing Memory Clinic Model has the potential to change the overall plan of care and to identify issues that may impact overall health and wellness, and the ability to live well at home. While the context for this study was an existing Memory Clinic Model in primary care, the findings have implications for older adults in any health setting who are experiencing cognitive changes.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Science Rehabilitation Science (MSc)


title: The Concept of Enthusiasm in Some Major Poems of John Dryden

contributor:
Hammond, Dr. Antony D.
English

subject:
Poems
John Dryden

abstract:
This study endeavours to offer a coherent explanation of the unity of Dryden's works from a thematic perspective. It attempts to show the way in which John Dryden (1631-1700) made use of the concept of enthusiasm in some of those poems which have established him as a major poet in the English language. Chapter I defines the term enthusiasm within the context of Restoration and eighteenth century philosophical, political and artistic thought, and the remaining chapters concentrate upon Dryden's response to enthusiasm. I have not discussed Dryden's translations for I have limited my study to his "original" verse, which, with the exception of his plays, has received the bulk of critical attention. Because the political, religious and artistic aspects of enthusiasm are the most important ones in Restoration thought as well as in Dryden's poems, I have examined those of his poems which emphasize one of these three facets in adjoining or separate chapters. This arrangement allows for a treatment of Dryden's works in a roughly chronological order since those poems which are chiefly concerned with political enthusiasm preceded those which deal with religious and artistic enthusiasm.
Critics of Dryden's poems frequently mention the importance of enthusiasm in his works, particularly in Absalom and Achitophel in which divinely-appointed figures are besieged by a mob of frenzied republicans and religious fanatics. As I have tried to show, however, the concept of enthusiasm can be suitably applied to a number of poems which may at first appear to have no connection with the topic. Alexander's Feast, Religio Laici and particularly The Hind and the Panther express a concern with epthusiasm. It has sometimes been assumed that Dryden expresses only a negative opinion about enthusiasm, and, perhaps, this accounts for the critical assessment of Absalom and Achitophel from the perspective of enthusiasm by at least three critics: Ruth Wallerstein, Bruce King and Bernard Schilling. As a child of the Renaissance, as an artist and as a follower of rather anachronistic ideas, Dryden knew that enthusiasm did not have exclusively pejorative connotations, and his poems celebrate inspired figures, while, at the same time, they deprecate enthusiastic enemies of stable gover:r1ment, ecclesiastical authority and artistic prudence. Althouch there are few critical studies directly on this topic, I have noted the contribution of the critics who have been suggestive in this matter.
This study attempts to modify the idea that Dryden's poems are defensive efforts written to condemn the destructive forces of enthusiasm which he saw in his society. It argues that in those poems in which Dryden made some of his strongest denunciations of enthusiasm, he still voiced his unqualified approval of truly-inspired figures including Charles II, the Catholic Church as represented by the Hind, the Christian artist, St. Cecilia and the poet himself. Even though Dryden's convictions changed during the last twenty-five years of his life, this struggle of an inspired figure against imprudent enthusiasts continued to dominate his verse. Close textual analysis of the poems establishes the pervasiveness of the topic in Dryden's work and joins the aesthetic aspects of his poems with the thematic.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: By and For the Large Propertied Interests: The Dynamics of Local Government in Six Upper Canadian Towns During the Era of Commercial Capitalism, 1832-1860

contributor:
Weaver, Dr. John
History

subject: Upper Canada

subject: 1832-1860

abstract: This dissertation analyzes the dynamics of local government in six communities Brockville, Hamilton, Kingston, Ottawa, St. Catharines and Toronto. Traditional politico-constitutional histories were obsessed with tracing the steady growth of participatory democracy at the local level. In contrast, this study adopts a more critical perspective, documenting the manner in which local elites utilized municipal government to shape the development of the province's urban communities. Among the relevant issues examined are the incorporation of towns and cities, the regulation of the public market, the expansion of municipal services, the subsidization of internal improvement projects, and the struggle to preserve public order and morality. By means of quantitative analysis, the author considers the essential characteristics of the men elected to civic office. Merchants and other businessmen who identified their interests with the community-at-large dominated the local councils. These individuals were committed to the growth of the towns and cities they represented, and they implemented measures designed to facilitate commercial expansion and urban development. At the same time, however, fearing the negative consequences of massive socio-economic change, they utilized municipal government as a means to ensure that order and stability prevailed in the changing urban environment.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: The Dionysiac Mosaics of Greece and the Coast of Asia Minor

contributor:
Dunbabin, K.M.D.
Classics

subject:
Dionysiac Mosaics
Asia Minor

abstract:
As one of the most popular gods in the Greek and Roman world, Dionysos inspired artists of virtually every medium. This resulted in a rich iconographic tradition that stretches over eleven centuries. Dionysos' continuous popularity in both public and private life, however, cannot be traced in all media. The mosaics of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor are at the present time the only medium in Greece and around the Mediterranean which allows us to trace Dionysiac imagery for over nine centuries. This thesis collects forty-three mosaics from Greece and the coast of Asia Minor, and analyzes their iconography, compositional schemata, and architectural context.
By following the long history of Dionysiac mosaics in the Greek world, by examining their iconographic and stylistic characteristics, and by comparing them to similar representations in other media and on mosaics from different regions, we are able to trace the development of the iconography of Dionysos and his followers. But we are also able to address questions which are central to the overall mosaic tradition in Greece, such as for example the role that Greece played in the development of mosaics in the ancient world; methods and problems of chronology; controversies relating to suggestions of an unbroken Hellenistic tradition that lasted well into the imperial period; influences from developments in the West; and outside cultural influences in the Roman imperial period. Furthermore, the Dionysiac mosaics of Greece and the coast of Asia Minor raise questions which are important for mosaics from all regions of the ancient world, such as the method of transmission of motifs and the tendency of modem scholarship to assign specific non-residential uses for buildings which contain more than one Dionysiac mosaic .

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Festivals and the Third Reich

contributor:
Thorpe, Wayne
History

subject:
Third Reich
Festivals

abstract:
Existing studies of festivity in the Third Reich have focused on its role as an effective instrument of social integration and control; that is, festivals are interpreted either as a form of propaganda or as an outward manifestation of a secular religion. Such approaches, while advancing our understanding of public celebration in Nazi Germany, fail to take into account the festival experience as a form of popular culture that mediated between the complex forces binding state, economy, and society. Fundamental to this process was the role played by modern technology. In its efforts to involve all Germans in the public celebration of the 'national community', the NSDAP exploited the technical resources of the highly industrialized German state to such an extent that the modern world of technology came to redefine the context of popular festivity in the Third Reich. As an expression of forwardlooking nationalist aspirations, however, the Nazi version of the modern festival experience ultimately clashed with the diverse festival cultures already embedded in German society.
The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the formalization of festivity as a dynamic expression of a formalization ethnically and culturally pure society organized according to the nationalist military ethos of Nazism. Drawing on various public opinion reports gathered by Nazi and state agencies as well as the underground network of the exiled SPD, Chapters 2 and 5 reconstruct the popular response to Nazi attempts to extend organizational control into
all areas of public celebration. Ranging from widespread enthusiasm to
open dissent, the diversity of popular attitudes vis-a-vis Nazi festivity
conforms to the image of a modern, pluralistic society, within whose public arena Germans selected or reJected aspects of festivity according to their individual political, social, economic and cultural needs.
Traditional folk festivals as a form of consumer-oriented popular culture, and Nazi attempts to transform this cultural sphere, is the focus of chapter 3. Chapter 4 examines the functional appeal of the festival industry to a Nazi state determined to alleviate Depression conditions and thereby reinforce its legitimacy.
The final chapter, extending many of these themes into the war period, argues that only in the context of a deteriorating war situation did the Nazi state attempt to institutionalize its 'totalitarian' form of social control with respect to the festival and ceremonial. At the same time, however, it suggests that the ultimate failure of an increasingly isolated Nazi administration to recast the culture of celebration and ceremony owed as much to the monumental success of the Nazi festival style before 1939 as it did to the severe restrictions on material and human resources and the declining public morale that accompanied the war.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Becoming Adoptive Parents: Shifts in Identity from Biological to Adoptive Parenthood Among Infertile Couples

contributor:
Matthews, Ralph
Sociology

subject:
Adoptive Parents
Infertile Couples

abstract: Missing pages 38 and 39

abstract:
This research is based on a sample of 76 couples
experiencing a fertility problem. Recruited through a
medical fertility clinic and several adoption agencies, the
response rate was 43%. Data were collected by weans of
written questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.
The focus of this research is on the way that parenthood identity changes for couples who are unable to have biological children and who therefore pursue adoption as an alternate route to parenthood. Conceptualized as a "transformation of identity", the analysis traces the process by which couples relinquish identification with biological parenthood and assume identification with adoptive parenthood.
Several key issues are explored in the study: the impact of infertility on the taken-for-granted weaning of parenthood; critical incidents that initiate the transition to adoptive parenthood; objective and subjective indicators of what it weans to be ready to take on adoptive parenthood; and finally, the resocialization process involved in shifting from biological to adoptive parenthood. Also examined is the relationship between infertility resolution and adoption readiness. The findings suggest that this is not always a sequential relationship as usually assumed, but rather, way be experienced as a concurrent commitment to both biological and adoptive parenthood.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: The Psychoanalytic Issue in the Short Stories of Donald Barthelme

contributor:
Rosenblood, Norman
English

subject:
Psychoanalytic
Donald Barthelme

abstract: Missing page 305

abstract:
As the title of this thesis indicates, this work is a study of key psychoanalytic issues deemed to be central to a proper appreciation of the work of the contemporary American writer, Donald Barthelme. Much has been written about Barthelme's fiction in recent years (he has, for example, been the subject of four full-length studies in the last five years), but the approach taken by criticism in general to his work misinterprets what seems to me to be one of the most interesting and relevant issues raised by his work. Conventional wisdom assumes that Barthelme's short stories represent a uniquely successful challenge to the notion that fiction need embody meanings which originate in the author. It is asserted, in other words, that Barthelme's fiction has for all intents and purposes utterly subverted potential criticism which might attempt to establish a relationship between text and author. In the effective absence of an "author," Barthelme's prose is taken to represent a radically innovative form of discourse, a form of discourse which has influenced an entire generation of experimental writing.
The context in which Barthelme's fiction is appreciated by criticism is informed by distinctively postmodern aesthetics. In particular, what critics identify as postmodernism's emphasis on "an aesthetic of process" (Hutcheon 1985, 2) has served to throw the entire concept of the artist or the author as the source of meaning in a text open to serious question. Postmodern fiction presents itself as a form of situation, a variety of experience in which author and reader are free to recreate meaning and recreate themselves in a dynamic gestalt through the process of text. What is most repugnant to postmodernism is the rule of definitions of the self that are anterior to the text, definitions that limit the existential freedom of the self to recreate itself in situation. Barthelme's fiction is widely proclaimed to be exemplary postmodern writing in the sense that it has created a form of discourse in which the author--a potentially limiting source of prefigured meanings--is effectively absent from the text, and can therefore be discounted as a factor in any interpretation of the meaning of the text.
This study will show that the voice of the author in Barthelme's short fiction is neither absent nor as irrelevant as criticism would have us believe. Indeed, this study will show that Barthelme's fiction says essentially the opposite of what has hitherto been assumed with regard to the relevance of the authorial voice to the meaning of the fiction.
This study is psychoanalytic in the sense that it will isolate the latent features of Barthelme's prose based on readings of patterns of association as they occur in the manifest content of the stories. To this point no criticism has considered the relevance of these patterns of association in Barthelme because it has been assumed that, in the absence of a legitimate authorial voice in his work, such patterns either do not exist, or if they do exist, they were deliberately woven into the fabric of the prose by an ironic author familiar with Freud.
With a careful and comparative analysis of his earliest stories to serve as a reference point, this study proposes to demonstrate basically two things: first, that Barthelme's fictions have from the beginning
implicitly affirmed the notion that an understanding of the psychoanalytic issues attached to the voice behind the fiction has been crucial to an appreciation of the full meaning of any given story; and second, that the psychoanalytic issues of concern to the authorial voice in Barthelme have not changed to any significant degree over the twenty years Barthelme has been publishing fiction. The implications of the latter point are especially worth noting: proof of the presence of a consistent authorial voice would require a radical readjustment to the popular view of the meaning of Barthelme's fiction.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: "Two Georges and the Dragon"--The Heroine's Journey in Selected Novels of George Sand and George Eliot

contributor:
Ferns, Dr. John
English

subject:
Heroine's Journey
George Sand and George Eliot

abstract: Missing page 53.

abstract:
A critical study which links George Eliot to George Sand is not a new idea. While considerations of social thought, art, feminism and the imagery used by the two novelists have formed much of the comparative criticism to date, this study examines another vital link between the French and the British novelist. "Two Georges and the Dragon" focuses on the psycho-spiritual evolution, the individuation process, experienced by four Sand-Eliot heroines. The nineteenth century's concern with "Soul-Making" (Keats, 334 ), its search for self and certitude in the face of social, religious and technological change, fostered a widespread artistic renovation of both pagan and Christian myth. Thus, while Carl Jung's terminology for the stages of individuation was not yet available to either Sand or Eliot, the mythic archetypes essential for a Jungian exploration of the psyche were. It is from this archetypal perspective that the sequence of "the -heroine's journey" is developed.
Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey (1990) depicts the twentieth century version of the feminine quest for individuation. Despite separation by a century-and-a-half, the Sand-Eliot protagonists' struggles to attain an "informed sympathy'' are strikingly similar to the contemporary "heroine's journey" toward an integrated consciousness. Murdock's archetypal sequence illustrates precisely how "history (becomes] incarnate" in these nineteenth-century heroines. A progression through a series of initiatory stages marks the individuation process. To be sure, some measure of ego deflation and subsequent renewed perspective do occur for many characters in both Sand's and Eliot's novels. In these cases, shadow aspects of the unconscious emerge and are assimilated. However, our concern is with the heroines who undergo a complete cycle of individuation. In Jungian terms, these heroines not only acknowledge personal shadow content, they also undergo an ultimate ego deflation in depth. The process involves an encounter with, and assimilation of, the collective historical values inherent in the imago Dei, central archetype of the psyche's unconscious aspect. As a result of her personal individuation, the heroine, in turn, effects an elevation of consciousness in those around her. George Sand's Consuela offers the nineteenth century's first depiction of a complete individuation process for the feminine. This study proposes that the same process marks the experiences of the heroines in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Romola and Middlemarch.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Spontaneous expansion and mobilization of a discontinuous gas phase due to mass transfer from dense non-aqueous phase liquid

title: SPONTANEOUS EXPANSION AND MOBILIZATION OF GAS ABOVE DNAPL

contributor:
Smith, James E.
Dickson, Sarah E.
Civil Engineering

subject:
groundwater contamination
environmental problem
gas phase expansion
DNAPL pools

abstract: Included in this file is a CD drive titled "Chapter Three: Supporting Information" with a 00:40 second long animation. For best quality, view in VLC, not Quicktime Player.

abstract:
Groundwater contamination by dense non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs ), such as chlorinated solvents, continues to be a significant environmental problem. When released to the subsurface, either due to improper disposal or accidental release, DNAPLs can form complex source zones whose geometry is largely controlled by the geological heterogeneity of the subsurface. These source zones are composed of disconnected, immobile blobs or ganglia trapped by capillary forces (referred to as DNAPL residual) between high-saturation regions located at permeability interfaces (referred to as DNAPL pools). The slow dissolution of DNAPL pools can result in the contamination of groundwater for time periods on the order of decades to centuries.

The common conceptual model used in the investigation of DNAPL-contaminated sites is based primarily on the mass transfer from DNAPL to the surrounding aqueous phase in the saturated zone. However, the presence of a discontinuous gas phase above a DNAPL pool can significantly affect the mass transfer from the pool through repeated, spontaneous expansion and mobilization of the gas phase. This mechanism has not been included in the common conceptual models.

The goal of this research was to develop a quantitative understanding of discontinuous gas phase expansion and mobilization above a DNAPL pool. This goal was addressed using a combination of small-scale and intermediate-scale laboratory experiments. Small-scale, no-flow vial experiments were used to measure the expansion of single gas bubbles above DNAPL pools, and provide the basis for the development of an analytical model to assess the effect of expansion by multi-component partitioning on the mass transfer from DNAPL pools. Small-scale flow cell experiments were used to measure spontaneous expansion rates in porous media, and provide visual data concerning the distribution of the gas phase. Small-scale air injection experiments were used to characterize the gas flow. Finally, an intermediate-scale flow cell experiment was used to provide larger-scale data concerning the transient distribution of the gas phase, and
measure the effect of spontaneous expansion and mobilization on the aqueous-phase
DNAPL constituent concentrations.

The combined results of these experiments established a detailed conceptual model for the spontaneous expansion and mobilization of a discontinuous gas phase above a DNAPL pool. In this conceptual model, spontaneous expansion of a discontinuous gas phase above a DNAPL pool occurs due to multi-component partitioning, and depends on the concentrations of both the volatile DNAPL and the other dissolved gases. This expansion is more likely to occur, and will be faster, in shallower systems (i.e. lower hydrostatic pressures) containing coarser media (i.e. lower capillary pressures), more volatile DNAPL, and higher concentrations of other dissolved gases (i.e. higher partial pressures). Mobilization of the expanding gas will occur as discontinuous gas flow in most sands, where the repeated trapping and coalescence of gas clusters can allow rapid, large-scale vertical transport of the gas phase. This discontinuous gas flow can produce macroscopic gas fingers composed of multiple, discrete gas clusters. These macroscopic fingers can reach substantial heights above the pool surface, but the growth occurs predominantly at the pool's leading edge due to the stripping of other dissolved gases. This expansion and mobilization can significantly affect the mass transfer from the DNAPL pool if the gas phase is in direct contact with the pool surface; or if the gas phase is close to the pool surface, covers a large fraction of the pool, and the groundwater flow is sufficiently slow. The partitioning of DNAPL constituent from the mobilized gas phase to the aqueous phase well above the pool surface can also change the spatial distribution of aqueous-phase DNAPL constituent concentrations, increasing them above those that are expected based on theoretical calculations for strictly DNAPL-water systems, even at elevations where the concentrations are expected to be zero. The increased concentrations well above the pool surface can appear as short-duration events in the presence of a sustained gas phase, due to the partitioning of DNAPL constituents from the gas to the aqueous phase during multi-component mass transfer. The results of this research provide the necessary basis to begin incorporating this fundamental mechanism into the conceptual and mathematical models used for DNAPL-related research, the investigation ofDNAPL-contaminated sites, and the design and application of DNAPL remediation technologies.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Global Activism and Collective Identities: A Comparative Analysis of their Evolution in the Grand Council of the Crees, the Saami Council, and Médecins Sans Frontieres Canada, 1990-2005

title: GLOBAL ACTIVISM AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

contributor:
Coleman, William D.
Political Science

subject:
global activism
small non-governmental organizations
globalization
power
leadership
citizens

abstract:
The dissertation examines the evolution of global activism and collective
identities for three small non-governmental organizations: the Grand Council of
the Crees, the Saami Council, and Medecins Sans Frontieres-Canada. The three
organizations are considered over a period of fifteen years, from 1990 to 2005.
Global activism is an aspect of globalization that can take many different forms,
as the three cases show. The study looks at the objectives pursued through global
activism and the arguments used by the organizations, the alliances they create
and the publics they target to achieve their objectives. From well-organized
campaigns to sporadic interventions in global forums, the diversity in the forms of
global activism demonstrates the creativity of the organizations and the different
issues for which global activism is considered useful. Small groups can participate
in the debates surrounding globalization, and sometimes create the spaces in
which these debates can take place.

The identity at the core of each organization has changed over the period
studied. By looking at the self-definition of the organization, its actual roles and
power, its leadership, and its relationships with its membership or the people it
represents, one can understand better this evolution and how it is related to the
global activism carried out by each organization. There are connections between
these changes in identities and activism, and the comparative analysis presented in
the dissertation illustrates how taking part in globalization can change an
organization and allow it to reach its objectives.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Scenes from a Marriage of Convenience: Social Relations During the American Occupation of Australia, 1941-1945

title: SOCIAL RELATIONS DURING THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF AUSTRALIA

contributor:
Weaver, John C.
History

subject:
American military occupation
Australia
Second World War
gender relations
race relations

abstract:
This thesis examines the presence of American military personnel in Australia
during the Second World War. Around one million US soldiers spent some time in the
country. This American occupation resulted in several areas of tension between US
military personnel and Australian civilians. Areas of conflict, that have hitherto received
little attention from historians, are examined in this dissertation. Jurisdictional and
policing disputes between the US military and Queensland officials, American criminal
behaviour, and problems between Australian labourers and American authorities are all
examined. Other "fault lines," such as race and gender relations, which have been looked at by other historians, are also examined; this thesis provides new insights into these areas. How senior authorities on both sides managed crises and coordinated efforts to manage relations between civilians and Gls are also studied. Sexual relations were directed towards certain associations (prostitution), whilst other associations (marriage) were discouraged. Authorities increased efforts to manage interracial sexual relations, as both countries had a history of discouraging and even outlawing miscegenation. Ultimately, this thesis argues that problems between American personnel and Australians during the occupation did not threaten to upset the war effort or the alliance between the United States and Australia, but there were everyday problems between allies and concurrent efforts to manage relations in the context of a global war.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Three Microeconometric Studies of Displaced Workers

title: Displaced Workers

contributor:
Kahn, Peter
Economics

subject:
wage structure
displaced workers
unemployment benefits

abstract:
This thesis comprises three essays. The first two essays examine what inferences can be drawn about the structure of wages from the experiences of displaced workers using the Ontario Ministry of Labour Plant Closure Survey. The third essay examines the effect of unemployment benefits on household consumption during spells of unemployment, with a particular emphasis on durables purchases. It employs data from a second and new data source, the Canadian Out of Employment Panel.

The first essay revisits the issue of what can be learned about wage tenure profiles from displaced worker data. The positive relationship between wages and tenure in cross section data is consistent with the accumulation of firm specific capital. Alternatively, it may be explained by unobserved heterogeniety across workers, or by endogenous mobility. Displaced worker data is quite helpful in correcting for the first possible bias, and less so for the second. The relationship between various estimation strategies in the literature is illustrated. Estimates that control for individual heterogeniety and endogenous mobility driven by systematic differences in the pay policies of firms are presented. In this data, 10 years of tenure appears to raise wages
by about 7%.

The second essay examines intra-industry wage differentials. Even after conditioning on a rich set of worker and job characteristics, firm of employment is a significant determinant of wages. Estimates that employ the longitudinal nature of data demonstrate that sorting of workers across firms by unobserved ability can explain about half of the observed differentials. Firm wage differentials are observed within narrow industries, consistent across broad occupational groups, and robust to conditioning on differences in the mix of skills or job characteristics. Further "high wage" firms exhibit high average tenures suggesting that positive wage premia are associated with reduced mobility. These observations imply that compensating wage
differentials are also a poor candidate explanation for the observed differentials. The results are more consistent with models based on rents or some firm monopsony power. The results also raise questions about the interpretation of wage regressions which ignore firm heterogeneity, and about the sources of wages losses among displaced workers.

 The final essay examines how households smooth consumption over the income losses due to an unemployment spell. A model of "internal capital markets" is proposed, which suggests that households adjust the timing of the replacement of small durables to income flows. The plausibility of this model is investigated empirically, using a series of program changes in the Canadian unemployment insurance scheme for exogenous variation in transitory income. The data are consistent with the predictions of the "internal capital markets model" while rejecting both a standard life cycle model and a "rule of thumb" model of household expenditure patterns.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Ethics in Empire: The Ethical Rhetoric of 9/11

contributor:
Szeman, Imre
English and Cultural Studies

subject:
ethical rhetoric
September 11, 2001
contemporary globalization
Jacques Derrida

abstract:
This dissertation interrogates the ways in which the ethical rhetoric following
September 11th, 2001 (particularly that of the administration of U.S. President George
Bush) and contemporary globalization (which Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have
called "Empire") implicate one other, as well as the ways in which these interlinked
discourses are currently shaping the post-9/11 global "ethical climate" and its
universalized human subject. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida's concept of "hauntology"
which he introduces in Specters of Marx (1994), the main argument of the thesis is that the dominant post-9/11 ethical rhetoric is a specter of Empire, such that it is both a symptom of and a particularly influential force-of-law shaping the "Spirit" of
contemporary globalization/Empire. The thesis claims that in their shared universalism, neo-Hegelian remainders of idealism, and theocratic impulses to contain and ethicopolitically manage the entire world, globalization/Empire and its most serious recent symptoms-Bush's post-9/11 ethical rhetoric and the global war on terror--contain suicidal auto-deconstructive tendencies that threaten to destroy themselves from within in spite of their utopic visions of themselves. Finally, the dissertation investigates some of the key spectral remainders of "9/11" and contemporary ethical thought which contradict and/or corroborate the dominant post-9/11 discourse of Empire and its universalized ethico-political human subject.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: Satre's Thinking of Marx

contributor:
Archibald, Peter W.
Philosophy

subject:
Jean-Paul Sartre
Karl Marx
circumstances
signs

abstract:
Jean-Paul Sartre's central purpose in writing the Critique of Dialectical Reason was to render intelligible Karl Marx's principle that circumstances make people just as much as people make circumstances. With the intent of complementing Marx's work, Sartre sought to theoretically connect the marxist outline of social process with its constituting parts--individuals. He sought to do this without ascribing to circumstances a superorganic existence, and in terms of the general structure of individual action per se. In place of a super organic being he attributed unintended consequences to all individual action (as well as intended consequences). The actual influence of circumstances upon people he explained by the fact that. products bear some trace of the intentions of those who made them. The product becomes a sign, and people construct about them a world of signs.

Within this world of signs people tend to become separated as mediations between constructed things. It is in this sense, that is, in explaining how social relations tend to occur indirectly through the products of praxis, that Sartre sought to justify a rejection of organicism by developing his interpretation of Marx's theory of fetishism.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Arts (MA)


title: Postglacial Seismicity in Ontario-Quebec Determined Through Analysis of Deformation Stuctures in Lake Sediments

contributor:
Eyles, Carolyn
Geography and Earth Sciences

subject: mid-plate seismicity, lake sediments, sub-bottom profiling, co-seismic deformation

abstract:
Eastern North America experiences large intracratonic earthquakes that are not well
understood but pose a risk to urban centers and other infrastructure. Compilation of
regional earthquake epicentres for south-central Ontario and western Quebec demonstrate
a close association with sutures and failed rifts (the St. Lawrence Rift) recording the formation and breakup respectively of successive supercontinents Rodinia and Pangea.
Where seismic potential could be underestimated through lack of historical seismicity or
where little is known about active faults, lake deposits can provide a valuable record of
past seismic shaking events in the form of sediment deformation structures (i.e.
‘seismites’). In central Canada, the lacustrine seismographic record began approximately
10,000 years before present with the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, older records having been removed by glacial erosion. Most bedrock lake basins are structurally-controlled
and underlain by the same Precambrian basement structures (shear zones, terrane boundaries and other lineaments) implicated as the source of ongoing mid-plate earthquake
activity.  High resolution seismo-stratigraphic data presented here supports the model that
ongoing mid-plate earthquake activity is a consequence of brittle deformation of the upper
crust of the North American plate. Such activity appears to have been greatest during
deglaciation but continues today. The detailed geophysical and sedimentary studies, as
shown here, have major societal relevance in areas of eastern North America affected by
intraplate earthquakes. The recognition and mapping of earthquake related features in
lakes for seismic risk analysis is a means of constraining seismic recurrence intervals and
more realistically assess seismic risk across the populated area of Ontario and Quebec
where events occur on time scales much longer than recorded history.

abstract: Dissertation

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: High Performance Granular Base and Subbase Materials Incorporating Reclaimed Asphalt Concrete Pavement

contributor:
Guo, Peijun
Civil Engineering

subject:
reclaimed asphalt pavement
granualr base and subbase
pavement engineering
resilient modulus
accumulative deformation
CBR

abstract:
This study focused on the material characterization of granular materials containing different percentages of “RAP”. A series of laboratory tests results were carried out to determine the physical and mechanical properties of natural aggregates and various aggregate-RAP blends. The results were used to evaluate methods to develop high-performance granular layer for pavement construction through proper compaction and control of RAP usage.
The resilient modulus and accumulative deformation characteristics were determined in relation to RAP content, relative density, compaction method, stress level, stress state and the number of load applications. The effects of RAP content and density on the CBR values of aggregate-RAP blends under various conditions were also investigated. In addition, the effect of small strain cyclic loading on shear strength of aggregate-RAP blends was observed in laboratory tests.
Results from this investigation demonstrated that: 1) adding RAP to natural aggregates may increase the resilient modulus of natural aggregates, and optimum content can be found to achieve the highest resilient modulus; 2) resilient modulus generally increases with density; higher density of aggregate-RAP blends can be achieved by using methods combining vibration and static loading. 3) deviatoric stress has more pronounced influence on accumulative deformation than confining pressure. 4) proper compaction method can reduce accumulative deformation of samples. 5) addition of RAP into aggregates results in little change in accumulative deformation when the RAP content is less than a threshold. 6) CBR value decreases with increasing RAP content and decreasing compaction effort or compacted dry density. 7) shear strength of an aggregate-RAP blend tends to increase after small strain cyclic loading.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Applied Science (MASc)


title: Challenges in Hemodialysis

contributor:
Thabane, Lehana
Health Research Methodology

subject: Hemodialysis

abstract:
Background
Chronic kidney disease prevalence is increasing globally. Those with end-stage kidney disease may require hemodialysis, a complex and costly treatment modality, which is associated with many challenges.
Objectives
This thesis focuses on four objectives, each addressing a different challenge in research among chronic kidney disease patients on hemodialysis: (1) examining dietary mobile app intervention feasibility and effectiveness in changing user behavior; (2) analyzing the impact of arteriovenous access type and risk of maturation failure on the total costs of attaining and maintaining patency of arteriovenous access over one, three, and five years post creation; (3) determining the feasibility of conducting a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of a novel catheter care protocol on the rate of catheter-related bacteremia; and (4) evaluating the completeness of reporting in pilot randomized controlled trials.
Methods
Study 1: A systematic review was conducted, which included a search of scholarly databases, as well as the gray literature, for all randomized controlled trials, observational studies, needs assessments, and pilot testing/studies/trials focused on the development or evaluation of chronic kidney disease dietary mobile app interventions. The characteristics, user satisfaction with, usability/feasibility, and effectiveness in changing dietary behavior of the mobile application were summarized using descriptive statistics and in a narrative manner.
Study 2: A cost analysis was conducted in which all first arteriovenous access creations (January 1, 2002 – January 1, 2018), revisions, removals, and interventions from a single academic institution were prospectively captured. The present value of total vascular access related costs from a third-party payer perspective was calculated and the potential associations of arteriovenous access type and risk of Failure to Mature stratum with arteriovenous access cost were examined using Loglinear models and generalized estimating equations.
Study 3: A pilot randomized trial was conducted in which adult hemodialysis patients using catheters were recruited from 11 hemodialysis units. Patients were randomized to receive Hemodialysis Infection Prevention Protocols Ontario—Shower Technique or standard care and were followed up for 6 months. Only catheter related bacteremia outcome assessors were blinded. For the study to be considered feasible, 4 of 5 feasibility outcomes, each with its own statistical threshold for success, must have been achieved.
Study 4: A methodological survey was conducted of Pubmed for all pilot trials conducted in HD patients. Reporting quality was assessed against the 40-item Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) Extension for Pilot Trials. Potential associations between study factors including year and country of publication, intervention, number of centers, type of funding, and journal endorsement of CONSORT with reporting quality were also examined.
Results and conclusions
Study 1: Thirteen full-text studies were included: of the 7 pilot studies that measured usability/feasibility, all found at least some aspects of the application feasible/useful and of the 5 pilot studies that reported an evaluation of changes in behavior/diet related to self-management, all reported some positive change. According to current studies, nutritional apps show promise in chronic kidney disease self-management.
Study 2: A total of 906 patients were included in the study, 696 fistulas and 210 grafts.
The costs of attaining and maintaining arteriovenous access were increased among patients with high/very high risk of Failure to Mature.
Study 3: A total of 68 patients were randomized (33 shower technique and 35 control) and were followed up to 6 months. Of 5 measures of feasibility, 4 were achieved. The pilot study demonstrated the feasibility of the larger study, especially given the high levels of education success with the shower technique arm and the low levels of contamination in the control arm.
Study 4: The mean number of items reported from the CONSORT extension for pilot trials across all included articles was 18.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 4.4). In the adjusted analysis, studies reported in later years (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 1.026, 95% confidence interval [CI] [1.018, 1.034], p < 0.001) and an increase of 20 persons in sample size (adjusted IRR = 1.021, 95% CI [1.010, 1.031], p < 0.001) were associated with a significantly higher number of CONSORT pilot items reported. Current reporting completeness of pilot trials in hemodialysis patients is suboptimal.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Candidate in Philosophy


title: A Design Thesis: Hemodialysis Infection Prevention using Polysporin Ointment with Shower Technique in Satellite Hemodialysis Centres

contributor:
Lok, Charmaine
Lehana, Thabane
Health Research Methodology

subject:
hemodialysis
randomized controlled trial

abstract:
Background: As part of this thesis work, we developed a Shower Technique protocol (‘STP’) for hemodialysis patients with healed central venous catheter (catheter) exit sites, designed to permit showering but not increase infection risk.
Research question: Is it feasible to conduct a randomized control trial called the Hemodialysis Infection Prevention using Polysporin Ointment with Shower Technique in Satellite Centres (HIPPO SAT) study comparing the rate of CRB in adult satellite hemodialysis patients using STP versus standard catheter care alone with 6 month follow up?
Study Design: The HIPPO SAT pilot study is a multi-centre randomized control trial. Eligible participants will be randomized to STP versus standard care after meeting predefined criteria to confirm healed tunneled catheter exit site.
Primary Outcome: Feasibility will be determined based on 5 outcome measures:  accuracy of the CRB rate documentation in the satellite setting, and percentage of patients screened, recruited, educated successfully in the STP (intervention arm), and using aspects of STP (% of contaminated patients in the control arm).
Study Setting: In satellite units affiliated with 2 academic and 3 community centres in south central Ontario, Canada.
Patient Population:  Adult satellite Hemodialysis patients dialyzing via catheter with healed catheter exit sites.
Intervention: STP and standard catheter care; or Control: standard catheter care;
Analysis: Each measure of feasibility has its statistical threshold for success. If the threshold is reached in 4 of the 5 measures, the full HIPPO SAT study will be deemed feasible.
Discussion: A pilot feasibility study of the larger study is critical due to the potential challenges associated with recruitment, compliance and contamination.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Science (MSc)


title: Hot Deformation Behavior of an Fe-Al Alloy Steel in Two Phase Region

contributor:
Zurob, Hatem
Materials Science and Engineering

subject:
Fe-Al alloy
Recrystallization
Recovery
Kinetics
Microstructure evolution
Stress relaxation
Two phase

abstract:
The Thin Slab Cast Direct Rolling (TSCDR) process offers several economic and environmental advantages. The elimination of slab reheating and roughing deformation, however, leave fewer opportunities for grain refinement and some large grains persist in the microstructure. To solve this problem, a new chemistry which leads to a two-phase mixture of ferrite and austenite over a wide temperature range was introduced by Zhou et al. The two phase mixture is highly resistant to grain coarsening leading to a small initial grain size compared with the grain size of conventional TSCDR slab. In addition, ferrite and austenite co-exist over wide range of temperature in many third generation steels, making it extremely important to understand the hot deformation behavior of these materials, which have traditionally received less attention in the literature.
In order to investigate the microstructure evolution of ferrite-austenite mixtures during thermomechanical processing, an Al containing model alloy, for which the two phases co-exist over a wide temperature range, was designed. Two types of experiments were carried out: the first involved single hit hot compression tests; and the second involved stress relaxation tests.
According to the microstructure observation the main change of austenite microstructure under deformation conditions was a decrease in the spacing of the austenite particles within the ferrite matrix. In other words the austenite phase behaved as hard particles inside a soft ferrite matrix. Hot deformation led to the static recrystallization of the ferrite matrix. The most favourable nucleation sites were in the vicinity of the old grain boundaries and the around austenite particles.
The recovery and recrystallization kinetics of ferrite were analyzed using the stress relaxation test. Based on analysis of the stress relaxation tests, more than 95% of stored energy was consumed by recovery, while static recrystallization consumed less than 5% of the stored energy. The retardation of recrystallization in the model alloy is attributed to both the high rate of recovery in BCC materials and texture effects.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Applied Science (MASc)


title: The Hartleian Male Protagonist: A Search for Self

contributor:
Ross, Michael
Humanities

subject:
L.P. Hartley
male protagonists
symbolism
Jung, Freud

abstract:
This study examines L.P. Hartley's male protagonists who provide the focus for his major fiction. The male characters' difficulties in understanding themselves, and the world which confronts them, are issues discussed by the few serious critics of Hartley's work. The book-length criticism, however, has tended to rely heavily upon figures like Freud and Jung, and upon Romantic and Judaeo-Christian thinking and
symbolism, in order to establish its views. My study constitutes an attempt to avoid the overt application of "schools" to Hartley's work, although like Hartley himself I cannot claim to have been completely untainted, for example, by our Freudian
climate. Specifically, I am interested in demonstrating the complex processes by which Hartley's sensitive male protagonists near self-understanding, and how Hartley uses detailed, even intricate, symbolism to express those developments.

Using the Eustace and Hilda trilogy, I thoroughly examine Eustace Cherrington's growth toward self-understanding in order to demonstrate the special problems confronted by a typical Hartleian male. Leo Colston, in The Go-Between, and Stephen Leadbitter, in The Hireling, are then included in the discussion, and the three males' associations with fantasy worlds, and with manipulative women, are seen to contribute to the difficulties faced by these protagonists. In a final chapter, by examining the earlier fiction in the light of some of Hartley's less symbolic later novels, in particular The Harness Room, I indicate how Hartley's symbolism has been
used, in the past, to conceal his interest in male homosexual relationships.

Hartley, in addressing the issue of self-knowledge in his fiction, also makes a statement concerning the difficulty faced by the individual who, after the Second World War, was especially confronted with the task of securing an identity for himself in an increasingly egalitarian, fast-paced "modern" world. Hartley's canon is a metaphoric expression of how what Hartley terms the "Great Man" of Victorian fiction becomes the weak, victimised, but in many ways "greater" twentieth century man; for all his insecurity and failure, the Hartleian male of the 1970's is one who has painfully explored both himself and his environment in an attempt to survive, and to establish for himself, however temporarily, a "unique personality" appropriate to his time.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: The Design and Estimation of Regional Economic Accounts in Ontario

contributor:
Williams, J.R.
Economics

subject:
Regional economics
local development
investment
fiscal relations

abstract:
Regional economics addresses a number of major tasks related to regional and local area development issues such as the planning of investment (private and public), the provision of public goods, urban redevelopment schemes, fiscal and financial relations among various levels of government and subsidy and area development programs. These issues are often surrounded by a sense of urgency stemming in part from the strong spirit of development in many communities and the rising awareness of regional disparity. Yet, the lack of adequate information on subnational economies has traditionally hampered efforts at analyzing many of these issues and at providing adequate choices for decision making.

The inadequacy of statistical data at the regional level seldom means, however, a complete lack of information. The available statistical and administrative data are usually prepared by a variety of government agencies and sources for different purposes and, consequently, lack a coherent or systematic framework which relates them meaningfully to each other and to data on the total economy. There is, thus, an obvious need to integrate these data sets with each other and with information on the economy as a whole in order to enhance their usefulness for analysis and decision making at the regional level.

It is maintained in this dissertation that a system of economic accounts provides a suitable framework for the integration and systematic treatment of available regional microdata. The application of economic accounting to various types of regional information can give rise to a complete set of regional economic accounts useful for economic analysis at the regional level. This has been demonstrated by designing a
system of regional accounts - based on national (provincial) accounting concepts - to Ontario and by estimating the accounting entries for each of its 10 economic regions. The estimation of regional entries is accomplished by a disaggregation or apportionment of the Ontario Accounts totals in the year of estimate (1971) on the basis of various allocation techniques and by using the microdata sets available at the industry and regional levels as allocators.

The systematic integration of fragmented regional data by means of an economic accounting framework produces consistency, comprehensiveness and comparability of economic data among the regions and between them and the total economy. It is hoped that economic accounting in Ontario at the regional level will increasingly become recognized as a flexible tool of analysis which can generate a useful interaction between data and method thereby improving both theory and empirical results. The principal achievement has been to highlight areas of weakness
in constructing regional economic accounts. It is also hoped that it can serve as a benchmark in future research efforts.

The set of regional accounts for Ontario derived in this study was utilized in the context of a regional macro model (based on aggregate demand and supply) for the purpose of calculating a set of regional income multipliers. The multipliers based on regional accounting data are a precise and powerful tool of analysis - especially in determining the multiplier effects of exogenous expenditure in each region - which enriches our knowledge of regional economies and appreciation of the effect
of regional policies.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: "Absence Supreme": Narrative Strategies in Beckett's Post-trilogy Prose

contributor:
Hutcheon, Linda
English

subject:
Beckett
post-trilogy fiction
narrative structures

abstract:
This dissertation examines the ways in which Beckett, in his post-trilogy fiction, challenges the "meaning-ful" structures of the traditional novel {character, plot,
action) and offers the reader, in their place, new narrative strategies. These strategies {mnemonic, canonic, catechetical, recursive) are an experiment with linguistic
and narrative structures and can be seen to "dis-close" what Beckett terms as the chaos and flux behind form.

Chapter II establishes those sorts of "meaning-ful" structures which give form to the chaos of experience, structures which, according to Frank Kermode, make sense
of man's life, both in myth and in fiction, by enabling him to place a "telos" on nothingness. In this way, man constructs a world filled with teleological sequence,
and consequently, "objectifies" and "spatializes" his life by insisting that there is concordance and consonance in the world.

Chapters III and IV deal primarily with the "syntax of weakness" and the "rhetoric of abstractiom" that are characteristic of Beckett's narrative st_rategies. On the
levels of language and narrative, Beckett's prose can be seen to subvert the traditional form of fiction (sequential progression of plot; motivated action; character development and presentation; ordered fictional universes with spacetime co-ordinates; and linearity) and to deprive language of its accustomed, grammatical form.

Chapter V shows the sort of fictional world we are left with when such human consanances (normal linguistic structures and ordered fictional universes) are removed. The reader is denied that traditional fictional world, a world which, as Beckett shows us, is illusory, and which both defies category and works to dismantle--de-construct-its form.

Beckett's fiction becomes all the more provocative when we see that his denial of closure in fiction--the formal need to have beginnings and ends--opens up the hermeneutic potential of the text. Readers, accustomed to more traditional narrative structures, are involved in a dialectic when they attempt to impose order and form om
a body of language that, replete with ambiguities and abstractions, defies that impulse to establish consonance and continues to sabotage the reader's pre-conditioned impulse to construct meaning.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: THE ASSOCIATION OF THE 5-HTTLPR POLYMORPHISM WITH PERINATAL ONSET OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND DISTINCT BRAIN ACTIVATION PATTERNS: A GENETIC NEUROIMAGING STUDY

title: PERINATAL OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER

contributor:
Steiner, Meir
Neuroscience

subject:
perinatal
obsessive-compulsive disorder
women's mental health
functional neuroimaging
resting state functional connectivity
gene environment interaction
serotonin transporter polymorphism
childhood maltreatment

abstract: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is heterogeneous. Clinical presentation of OCD differs by sex and age-of-onset and evidence supports classification based on these subtypes. The prevalence of OCD in the general population is 2%. However, it has been established that women tend to experience onset and exacerbation of OCD during reproductive milestones. In particular, the prevalence of postpartum OCD is between 4 to 9%. This study seeks to examine the effects of past childhood maltreatment and S/Lg-allele status of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism on perinatal obsessive-compulsive symptoms and aberrant resting state functional connectivity in the postpartum period. Forty women participated in the first visit and sixteen women have been followed up with in the postpartum period. 5-HTTLPR genotype was determined from whole blood samples via polymerase chain reaction and a restriction fragment length digest. We used the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale and Perinatal Obsessive-Compulsive scale to measure symptom severity. Resting state functional connectivity was determined from functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Obsessive-compulsive symptoms during late pregnancy are significantly predicted by 5-HTTLPR genotype, past history of total childhood maltreatment or childhood emotional neglect and trait anxiety symptoms. Whereas obsessive-compulsive symptoms during the postpartum period are predicted by poor sleep quality and childhood emotional maltreatment or 5-HTTLPR genotype, childhood emotional maltreatment and trait anxiety symptoms. Seed to region-of-interest analysis was employed to evaluate resting state functional connectivity differences between OCD patients and healthy controls in the postpartum period. Compared to healthy controls, OCD patients show greater connectivity between the caudate nucleus with the orbitofrontal cortex, the pars triangularis and the cingulate area. The insular cortex shows decreased connectivity between the right and left, the dorsal anterior cingulate area and the pars opercularis. The amygdala has increased connectivity with the cingulate area, the calcarine fissure, the supramarginal gyrus and decreased connectivity with the gyrus rectus. The above clinical and neuroimaging findings are in line with past work. However, this is the first study to show both 5-HTTLPR genotype and history of childhood maltreatment predict obsessive-compulsive symptoms in a perinatal population. Further, the resting state data replicates findings in the OCD literature but the study is the first to show this in postpartum women. This study serves as a platform for future work to further investigate both gene-environment interactions and distinct neuroimaging correlates in perinatal OCD.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Science (MSc)


title: On the complex eventive structure of dispositional middle constructions

contributor:
Kučerová, Ivona
Cognitive Science of Language

subject: Linguistics Syntax

abstract:
This thesis is concerned with the syntactic and semantic properties of a dispositional
middle construction. Building on new empirical observations, I argue for a novel
derivational account of the middle construction, namely that it has a complex eventive
structure. This proposal contrasts with existing analyses that can be divided into
syntactically uniform approaches and semantically uniform approaches. Crucially,
existing analyses have failed to address the fact that only transitive activity and
accomplishment verbs undergo middle formation. I use this observation to argue
that an eventive cause, or a CAUSE head, is a defining structural feature of a middle
construction. Furthermore, I argue that the middle construction does not project
the understood agent in syntax and the understood theme is base-generated in the
internal argument position. The desired surface structure arises via movement of
the understood theme, which creates a linearizable structure. The complex eventive
structure argued for in this thesis not only captures the syntactic properties of a
middle construction, but it also serves as the source of a dispositional interpretation,
which is one of the characteristic properties of a middle construction.

abstract: Thesis

abstract: Master of Science (MSc)


title: Parameter Estimation and Prediction Interval Construction  for Location-Scale Models with Nuclear Applications

contributor:
Hoppe, Fred M.
Mathematics and Statistics

subject:
Parameter estimation
Prediction interval
Mixed method
Generalized bootstrap
Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Bayesian method

abstract:
This thesis presents simple efficient algorithms to estimate distribution parameters and to construct prediction intervals for location-scale families. Specifically, we study two scenarios: one is a frequentist method for a general location--scale family and then extend to  a 3-parameter distribution, another is a Bayesian method for the  Gumbel distribution. At the end of the thesis, a generalized bootstrap resampling scheme is proposed to construct prediction intervals for data with an unknown distribution.

Our estimator construction begins with the equivariance principle, and then makes use of unbiasedness principle. These two estimates have closed form and are  functions of the  sample mean, sample standard deviation, sample size, as well as the mean and variance of a corresponding standard distribution. Next, we extend the previous result to estimate a 3-parameter distribution which we call a mixed method. A central idea of the
mixed method is to estimate the location and scale parameters as functions of the shape parameter.

The sample mean is a popular estimator for the population mean. The mean squared error (MSE) of the sample mean is often large, however, when the sample size is small or the scale parameter is greater than the location parameter. To reduce the MSE of our location estimator, we introduce an adaptive estimator.  We will illustrate this by  the example of the power Gumbel distribution.

The frequentist approach is often  criticized as failing to take into account the uncertainty of an unknown parameter, whereas a Bayesian approach incorporates such uncertainty. The present Bayesian analysis for the Gumbel data is achieved numerically as it  is hard to obtain an explicit form. We tackle the problem by providing an approximation to the exponential sum of Gumbel random variables.

Next, we provide two efficient methods to construct prediction intervals.  The first one is a Monte Carlo method for a general location-scale family, based on our previous parameter estimation. Another is the Gibbs sampler, a special case of Markov Chain Monte Carlo.  We derive the predictive distribution by making use of an approximation to the exponential sum of Gumbel random variables .

Finally, we present a new generalized bootstrap and show that Efron's bootstrap re-sampling is a special case of the new re-sampling scheme. Our result overcomes the issue of the bootstrap of its ``inability to draw samples outside the range of the original dataset.''  We give an applications  for constructing prediction intervals, and simulation shows that generalized bootstrap is better than that of the bootstrap when the sample size is
small. The last contribution in this thesis is an improved GRS method used in nuclear engineering for construction of non-parametric tolerance intervals for percentiles of an unknown distribution.  Our result shows that the required sample size can be reduced by a factor of almost two when the distribution is symmetric.  The confidence level is computed for a number of distributions and then compared with the results of applying the generalized bootstrap.  We find that the generalized bootstrap approximates the confidence level very well.

abstract: Dissertation

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)


title: The Virtues of Critical Thinkers

contributor:
Hitchcock, David
Philosophy

subject:
Critical thinking
virtues
skills
education
transfer
willingness
inquire
inquiry
critical thinker

abstract: Critical thinking is an educational ideal with an accumulating canon of scholarship, but conceptualizing it has nevertheless remained contentious. One important issue concerns how critical thinking involves an interplay between cognitive abilities and associated character traits, dispositions, and motivations. I call these and other aspects of the critical thinker “critical thinking virtues”, taking them to be intellectual excellences of character, cultivated by people who tend to aim towards making reasoned judgments about what to do or believe. The central virtue that motivates any critical thinker to engage her skills in critical thinking I call “willingness to inquire”, connecting the character of the person to the skills she must use consistently to be a critical thinker. Willingness to inquire is the virtue that ranges over the application of all critical thinking skills, a basic motivational drive guiding a person towards the educational ideal. Other critical thinking virtues, such as open-mindedness, fairness, and respect for dialectical partners, also facilitate the appropriate application of critical thinking skills in a process of inquiry. Pedagogues should therefore seek not only to instruct for skills, but also to explicitly mention and instruct for the virtues as well. I conclude by offering curricular recommendations in this regard.

abstract: Dissertation

abstract: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)