Cet article trace la biographie du journaliste Harry Bernard (1898-1979). A partir du dépouillement de sa volumineuse corespondance, déposée à la Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, et des nombreux articles qu'il publia au cours de sa carrière au Droit et au Courrier de Saint-Hyacinthe, le portrait esquissé dévoile un itinéraire professionnel complexe où se justaposent des écrits de toutes sortes. Sa biographie constitue une contribution originale à l'étude de l'évolution des idées au Canada français entre 1920 et 1960. Aujourd'hui totalement oublié - sauf de quelques historiens littéraires -, Harry Bernard reste toutefois un important érudit et homme de lettres de son époque.

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Talcott Parsons, generally acclaimed to be one of the paramount sociological theorists at present, frequently asserts that he is seeking to develop an abstract scientific theory of social phenomena. There is, however, a corpus of notions, principles, and stratagems regarding scientific theory called the hypothetico-deductive approach. It is generally recognized as perhaps the most logically tenable and empirically revealing approach as regards the formulation of significant statements about the world. The problem, therefore, in this study centers on the question: How do Talcott Parsons' conception of the Mature and functions of scientific theory (his metatheory) and the basic structure of his substantive theory stand if they are compared with the various aspects of a hypothetico-deductive approach. To accomplish this, several lines of attack are initially pursued. Parsons' early intellectual influences and contacts are roughly traced out in an attempt to illumine the connections between Parsons and certain theorists who imparted a definite direction to Parsons' theoretical thinking. It is discovered that, the influences on Parsons were wide, diverse and, on the whole of a European speculative approach toward social theory. A discussion of the nature and functions of scientific theory and explanation in terms of a hypothetico-deductive approach is, then, carried out. Following this, an extensive elaboration and criticism of Parsons' conception of scientific theory, as revealed in a number of published essays and volumes, particularly The Structure of Social Action, is undertaken. It is found that many of Parsons' views, in this respect, are vague and logically untenable, with an extraordinary emphasis on concept development rather than the formulation of general statements (or laws) which form the heart of all scientific theory. An examination of the basic structure of Parsons' substantive theory reveals that it is structurally modelled in the light of what he conceives scientific theory to be and, consequently, is found to be decidedly lacking in a logical sense, thereby impairing its empirical applicability. It is concluded that Parsons' conception of scientific theory is inadequate and that his substantive theory is not theory if viewed from a hypothetico-deductive perspective. It is suggested, moreover, that Parsons has provided orientations in his substantive work rather than theory. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

M. S.

Petroleum reserves are forecast to dwindle during the next century. The imminent shortage of chemicals derived from fossil fuels has given an impetus to research on utilization of renewable resources throuqh microbial treatment. This work looks at the concept of lignin bioprocessing from the vantage point of a biochemical engineer. Coriolus versicolor, Phanerochaete chrysosporium and Sporotrichum pulverulentum, which being white-rot fungi are traditional lignin degraders, were found to be much less efficient in lignin metabolism than Aspergillus fumigatus, a soft-rot fungus isolated in our laboratory. Lignin fermentations with white-rot fungi failed to show any net accumulation of low molecular weight products derived from lignin. Genetic manipulation is necessary to contrive the accumulation of desired intermediates during lignin fermentations. Though recalcitrant carbohydrates and low initial glucose concentrations supported higher lignolytic activities than easily metabolized carbohydrates and high initial glucose concentrations, respectively, glucose catabolite repression was not evident during lignin metabolism by C. versicolor. It was surmised that the effect of carbohydrates on lignin metabolism may depend on the history of the organism. Through the concretion of above observations and the absolute requirement for carbohydrates during lignin metabolism, the existence of upper and lower critical glucose concentrations in lignin metabolism was postulated. Lignin metabolism relative to carbohydrate metabolism was studied by monitoring the ratio of lignin derived CO₂/total CO₂ during A. fumigatus and C. versicolor fermentations. The variability of the above ratio during lignin fennentations suggested that lignin metabolism may not be stoichiometrically linked with carbohydrate metabolism. The rate of ¹⁴CO₂ evolution from ¹⁴C-labeled kraft lignin and the ratio of lignin derived CO₂/total CO₂ during A. fumigatus fermentation were concordant and each showed a maximum with respect to time. Two new parameters, lignolytic efficiency and normalized lignolytic efficiency, were defined to evaluate the performance of large-scale lignin fermentations. During a deep-tank fermentation with A. fumigatus, lignolytic efficiency correlated well with biomass whereas normalized lignolytic efficiency decreased continually. Analyses of degraded lignins divulged that A. fumigatus brought about corporeal changes in the lignin macromolecule whereas C. versicolor was responsible for only cursory changes. Data obtained from degraded lignins such as OCH₃ loss, OH loss and yield of monomers and dimers upon permanganate oxidation were consonant with ¹⁴CO₂ evolution data from ¹⁴C-labeled lignin. The effect of nitrogen concentration and C/N ratio on lignin metabolism by A. fumigatus could not be adequately studied since the organism lost its once prodigious lignolytic capacity. C. versicolor fermentations were grossly insensitive to variations in nitrogen concentration and C/N ratio. A kinetic model was developed on the premise that cell-lignin contact is imperative for lignin metabolism. The model is, in general, concordant with real observations. Though particular mixed and successive fermentations with Poria placenta and C. versicolor were not successful, the idea of such fermentations involving brown-rot, whiterot and other lignin-degrading fungi is worth investigating. / Ph. D.

The analysis developed attempts to present a preliminary exploration for the development of an economic theory of political systems. Using the tools of economic theory, it tries to discover the expected differences among political systems, as well as to identify some of the necessary conditions for the emergence of a particular kind of political system. The study is restricted to the particular cases of representative democracy and dictatorship. It is assumed that any society consists of three rational behaving groups of individuals: citizens, politicians and bureaucrats. Each is assumed to have a separate preference function, as well as different constraints for utility maximization. The question then is: how do political institutions constrain individual choices, and how does the set of political constraints vary with political systems. To answer these questions some relevant constraints are identified and their variations with political systems analyzed. The identified constraints are: (a) the political constitutions, (b) the size of the dominant coalition, (c) the probability of overthrow from power and the degrees of freedom available to the head of government for implementing policies that his supporting coalition does not desire, (d) the flows of information, (e) the market behavior of the citizens, (f) the costs of migration for the individuals, and (g) the behavior of the bureaucracy. The theory developed in this study presents a coherent picture of the overall fiscal performance of political systems. It finds out that all the relevant forces considered reinforce the inference that, other things being equal, democracies should be expected to exhibit larger public sector shares in national income than dictatorships. Second, it reaches the conclusion that dictatorial regimes will tend to be more inefficient, from a productivity point of view, than democracies. These two hypotheses are considered in the Appendix, but no attempt is made to test them formally on the basis of the empirical evidence presented therein. Rather, a preliminary survey is provided of some of the data and the consistency of the results is checked against the theory. The formal empirical testing of the theory is left to subsequent research. / Ph. D.

The town of Blacksburg, Virginia is planning the construction of a new Community Recreation Center. The proposed facility will be located adjacent to the existing Municipal Park, and the site will be called the Blacksburg Commons. The recreation building will serve as the vehicle for an investigation into the basis of architecture and the design process. This thesis is a documentation of that investigation. / M. Arch.

The fraction of the total labor force which is unionized has remained fairly stable, at about 25 percent, for the past quarter century, while unionization in the public sector has increased rapidly over the last 15 years. One example of this growth has been the trend in unionization of college faculty. This particular group presents an interesting opportunity to study unionization, in that there are both private and public institutions of higher education; and there is a definite pattern of unionization in the public institutions, while few private institutions are unionized. Such differences allow for comparisons which help to identify the causes of unionization. Unionization has been studied by economists and sociologists. Economists tend to emphasize aggregate analysis and relate unionization to environmental factors, such as the inflation rate and unemployment rate. Sociologists tend to relate prior socialization and attitudes to unionization. This dissertation applies the economic approach to human behavior to individual choice in the context of voting for or against unionization. That is, the benefits and costs of unionization are assumed to be the relevant factors in the choice calculus of voting faculty. The primary source of benefits and costs come from the competitive market environment, which exists in the absence of a union, and the cartel power of a union. Because of the cartel power of a union, job satisfaction factors (compensation, working conditions, and job security) can be offered to faculty, provided they give up the conditions of the competitive market. That is, collective choice will replace individual choice under unionization. The power of a cartel of labor and the efficiency of labor markets vary among institutions of higher education, and these differences are shown to be consistent with the pattern of unionization of college faculty. These differences can be said to reveal the causes of unionization of college faculty. / Ph. D.

A tank test technique was developed to evaluate the resistance of one-year-old stems of 111 Malus rootstock cultivars and hybrids to pine vole damage. The tank fest proved to be an excellent method for: testing several clones at one time; providing the animals with more of a natural environment; exposing all animals to each stem in the test; and using small quantities of wood per experiment. Robusta 5 and PI 286613 when crossed with cultivars possessing other horticulturally desirable characteristics, produced several progeny containing varying degrees of vole resistance. Some other cultivars displaying high resistance to pine vole damage were: Fusca (M. fusca (Raf.) Schneider); M. sieboldii Rehd. cv. zumi·calocarpa; M. X sublobata (Cipp.) Rehd. PI 286613; NY 11928 (M. pumila niedzwetzkiana x M. atrosanguinea (Spaeth) Schneider) ; and Vilmorin (M.yunnanensis (Franch) Schneider). / Master of Science

Within the overthrust belt of southwest Virginia, windows in the Pulaski thrust sheet expose a variety of parautochthonous and allochthonous rocks, ranging in age from Cambrian to Mississippian. The décollement of the Pulaski fault as exposed in the Price Mountain and East Radford windows is in places a thick, highly complex, deformation zone. In this zone, a suite of carbonate breccias, cataclastic quartzitic rocks and deformed shales occur. The rocks of the décollement comprise a thrust chaos and tectonic mélange. Mélange and chaos fabrics are typified by folding, faulting and cataclasis. The East Radford window exposes a complexly folded and faulted antiform consisting of a telescoped, inverted stratigraphic section of Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian rocks. The antiformal structure is entirely allochthonous with minimum horizontal displacement of several kilometers. Deformation of the parautochthonous Mississippian rocks below the Pulaski décollement in the Price Mountain window includes thrust and normal faults, folds of at least 3 orders and cataclasis. / Master of Science