O objetivo desta pesquisa foi descrever o desenvolvimento motor de crianças de 0 a 18 meses de idade, identificando os principais fatores de risco para atraso motor, assim como, analisar a validade da Alberta Infant Motor Scale para avaliação do desenvolvimento motor de crianças gaúchas, verificando a representatividade de seus critérios motores. A amostra deste pesquisa foi de 561 crianças, provenientes de Escolas de Educação Infantil, Creches, Entidades e Unidades Básicas de Saúde. Os instrumentos utilizados na coleta de dados foram: 1) Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS); 2) Affordance in the Home Environment Motor Development (AHEMD); 3) Questionário estruturado com perguntas sobre características biológicas. Das crianças avaliadas, 63,5% foram consideradas com desenvolvimento motor normal para idade, sendo que os bebês com idade entre 3 e 12 meses foram os que demonstraram pior desempenho. Foi observado uma inferioridade nos comportamentos motores referentes as posturas prono e em pé. Entre os fatores biológicos de maior influência, destacaram-se o baixo peso ao nascer, a prematuridade e o tempo de internação na UTI. No que se refere aos fatores sócio-ambientais, destacaram-se a escolaridade dos familiares; o grau de instrução paterna, a renda familiar mensal, o número de adultos e de crianças que vivem na casa, tempo carregado no colo e número de brinquedos para motricidade fina e ampla. Quanto ao processo de Validação da AIMS, as análises de correlação, associação e consistência interna indicaram que a AIMS é válida e fidedigna para população gaúcha. Conclui-se que as crianças apresentaram seqüência progressiva do aparecimento de habilidades motoras nas posturas avaliadas, porém parte destas foram consideradas com desenvolvimento motor inferior ao esperado para idade. Sugere-se que os fatores biológicos, contextuais e o instrumento de avaliação influenciaram no desenvolvimento motor das crianças avaliadas, sendo a AIMS um instrumento significativamente útil e confiável para utilização em várias áreas da pesquisa científica e clínica. / The purpose of the present study was describe the motor development of infants aging from 0 to 18 months and verify the influence of the biological and socio-environmental risk factors and analyze the validation of Alberta Infant Motor Scale to evaluate the motor development of southern children, analyzing the representativeness of the instrument´s items. The sample was composed of 561 children, coming from Kinder gardens, Children Education schools, Health Basic Units of Rio Grande do Sul. The instruments used were: 1) Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS); 2) Affordance in the Home Environment Motor Development (AHEMD); 3) biological factors through structured questionnaire. From the evaluated infants, 63, 5% were considered with a regular motor development for their age, and the babies aging from 3 to 12 months were the ones with the worst development. It was found inferiority in the motor behaviors regarding the prono and standing postures. Among the biological factors with a major influence, the low weight when they are born, the prematureness and the time they spend in the intensive treatment unit (ITU) are prominent. In relation to the socioenvironmental factors, the parents’ schoolarity; the father’s instruction, the family’s income, the number of adults and children that live in the house, the time being hold and the number of toys for fine and global motricity. On the Validation process, the analysis of correlation, association and internal consistency indicate that the AIMS is valid and trustworthy in the evaluation of infants motor acquisitions of southern children. Conclused that the infants from this study presented a progressive sequence of appearance of motor abilities in the evaluated postures, however parts of these were considered with an inferior motor development according to what was expected by their age. It is suggested that, either the socio-environment risk factor as well as the biological and evaluation instrument influenced in the motor development of the infants, being the AIMS a significatively useful and reliable instrument to several areas of clinic and scientific research.

This paper seeks to explain divergent policies toward oil and gas development across two jurisdictions, Alberta, Canada and Norway. Empirical evidence reveals that Norway collects a significantly higher portion of available economic rent from oil and gas activities than Alberta. Edwards (1987) postulates that if we assume governments have similar economic objectives (e.g. to receive the highest possible levels of revenue from the exploitation of a depleting natural resource), then it is to be expected that oil and gas policy outputs in various states would be similar. Why then did Norway develop a policy regime that allows it to capture comparatively higher levels of economic rent? The puzzle is even more interesting given the fact that Alberta and Norway are both advanced, industrialized, mature democracies that share many institutional characteristics. In response to this question, this paper presents a framework that links contemporary variations in rent collection performance to early government policies in Alberta and Norway. Several alternative explanations are tested as a means for understanding these divergent policies: resource differences approaches, bargaining power explanation, and political institutional differences. Finding each of these alternative explanations insufficient, it is argued that fundamental differences in political culture are important for understanding variations in early policies and ultimately in rent collection performance. The implications of this research are important both theoretically and empirically. For one, the analysis overcomes some of the traditional shortcomings of political culture analyses by delineating the specific dimensions of political culture that impacted policy outcomes. The analysis is pushed further by hypothesizing the intervening mechanism linking political culture to policy outcomes, namely motives. On the empirical side, there is a dearth in the political-economy literature dealing with why oil and gas fiscal policy outputs differ between developed states. This research seeks to fill this gap by focusing on how political culture can affect oil and gas policy. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

The project is a new city hall for the city of Lethbridge, Alberta, intended to replace the current building which was outgrown over twenty years ago, forcing several departments and city council to be housed in separate buildings. Past proposals for a new city hall have been confined to the current location in the Civic Centre, located on the periphery of the central business district. The primary objective of this project, however, was to create a city hall that was a successful public building, functioning not only as a setting for civic functions and ceremonies, but also as a place of everyday gatherings and activities that would contribute to the vitality of the city. For this reason a site was chosen downtown, on a block across from Gait Gardens, a park that at one time was the early coal mining settlement's town square. Once the commercial centre of the city, the blocks around Gait Gardens contain many heritage buildings, including the original city hall building. As retail activity moved to other locations the area and the park went into general decline. The block chosen as the site was cleared in 1965 and is currently occupied by a supermarket and a parking lot. In recent years the City of Lethbridge has made plans to reestablish Gait Gardens as the heart of the downtown area. Part of this strategy includes a radical redesign of the park itself which destroys much of its original formal plan. Locating an important public building, like City Hall, adjacent to the park would be a positive contribution to the revival of the area. City offices wrap around a wind-sheltered courtyard and large interior public space in order to fill up the block and to allow the building to come out to the street. The original twenty-five foot lot lines that ran east-west across the site govern the location and dimensions of major building elements. A tower, housing chimes and wind driven panels, marks the ceremonial entrance facing the park. A restaurant and small retail outlet are located along the west side of the building to support activity outside city hall hours. The southeast corner of Gait Gardens is redesigned to become a public plaza. Its main feature is a square reflecting pool and skating rink that corresponds exactly to the dimensions of the city hall courtyard. The park otherwise retains its original character and layout. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate

This is a report of the use that farm operators make of twenty-seven different sources of agricultural information and the attitudes that they hold toward these sources. In addition, several concepts are described and delineated in order to precisely define the areas of concern of the study. Personal interviews were conducted with a stratified random sample of 147 farm operators in the County of Two Hills in the province of Alberta. A primary purpose was to determine any associations that might exist between seventeen selected socio-economic characteristics of the farm operator and his use of and attitude toward each source of agricultural information included in the study. The study also suggests that farmers may be grouped according to their information seeking activity. It presents a model for such groupings and identifies some of the socio-economic characteristics which may describe the persons in each group. Scaling techniques were used and correlation coefficients were calculated for all possible associations. The data were processed at the Computing Centre at the University of British Columbia. The study reports the associations existing between each socio-economic characteristic and the use of all sources of information as well as attitude toward each source of information. Each source of information was examined with respect to the use of the other sources of information. Attitudes were also examined on a similar basis. The final examination of data identifies 3 groups of respondents based on their information seeking activity. It also determines that certain socio-economic characteristics may be useful to identify these groups. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

Using methods derived from post occupancy evaluation and ethnography, the visual and physical environmental characteristics of eighteen daycare centres were studied and inventorized. The attitudes, perceptions and ideologies of the directors and staffs to these learning environments and arts activities were also ascertained. The centres were located in Edmonton, Alberta, and both private and public centres were studied. The children attending these centres came from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. The characteristics were recorded in an informal manner, through field notes, photographs and a pre-coded checklist which rated the quality of the items. From this, three subcategories of quality were derived; standard, below standard and above standard. The descriptive data indicated that the majority of the components of the centres constitute a standard quality, that centres have hard, institutional like qualities and that adult standards predominate. Analysis of 38 questionnaires returned from the directors and staff of the centres and evidence from the data and descriptive material, revealed there was a significant lack of knowledge or concern for the child's intrinsic needs, and the role of the visual and physical environment in learning. Their concern within the the learning environment was primarily for the physical aspects and changes to those aspects and arts activities were made according to adult standards. Apparent in the data was an adult product oriented approach to arts activities. What is recommended in this study is the need for early childhood educators to recognize the importance of the visual and physical environment to learning, and the role arts activities play in the total development of a pre-school child. Further recommendations include the investigation of training programmes for day care personnel, and the development of, through co-operation with arts educators, artists and architects, environmental alternatives for learning. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines various features of the market for petroleum reserves, in theory and empirically for the time period 1947-1970 in Alberta, Canada. The main thrust of analysis is directed towards the industry supply process in the reserves market which results from the activities of exploration companies. In particular the thesis focusses attention on the activity of New Field Wildcatting. A totally new data bank regarding oil and gas exploration in Alberta is established, containing many items of information which have net previously been available and whose lack was considered a major stumbling block in analysing the petroleum exploration process. For example, the data files show the direction of search of exploratory wells, towards either oil or gas, the class of well which discovered each petroleum pool, the company which was the principal operator of the discovery well, the cost of wells, etc. Thus, it was possible to analyse the discovery sequence from well class, etc. to the discovered pool and its detailed reserves characteristics. With this data bank an original and unique approach amongst studies of oil and gas supply and exploration was possible. The study isolates the geological and economic factors which contribute to the incentives and costs of participants in the market for reserves. It should be noted that the data bank, on computer tape and described in a 130 page manual, can be obtained upon request from the author. The hitherto unavailable detail of this data invites further analysis. On the demand side of the reserves market, data was generated which allowed a detailed estimation of the price incentive to explore for reserves. This included consideration of production delays, expected well productivities, royalties, operating costs, joint products, income taxes, etc. It is established that New Field Wildcat wells may be viewed as the primary discovery activity of the petroleum reserves market. A main objective of the thesis is to define the components of the economic market for reserves so that empirical tests may be conducted to demonstrate the economic linkages between the incentives to explore for oil and gas and the rates of wildcat drilling and subsequent reserves discovered. This objective is met by providing an extensive descriptive and statistical backdrop of the oil and natural gas industry in Alberta, developing theoretical economic models of petroleum exploration and production, and then fitting econometric equations to estimate the elasticity and shifting of the industry' s short run petroleum reserves supply function. It is shown that the short run elasticity between the reserves price incentive to explore and New Field Wildcatting for oil averaged between 0.3 and 0.4 during the period in Alberta. The comparable elasticity for natural gas was around 0.1. We stress, however, that these elasticities may be rather unimportant out of their context of a shifting supply function. They do not remain constant as a region is depleted and the rate at which the supply function shifts as a region is explored will be more significant in determining the longer run petroleum supply than the short run elasticity. Such shifting of the supply function is also estimated. Secondary objectives are to examine the exploration characteristics of large companies compared to the others. Statistical analysis shows that the "Big Eight" companies have realized higher success ratios in New Field Wildcatting, have discovered much larger oil and gas pools and have done considerably more geophysics on their land holdings than other companies. Many other features of the petroleum discovery process, such as the statistical nature of the populations of pools discovered in sequential time periods, are also examined. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

In recent years, Canada's previously stable energy economy has undergone a series of remarkable changes. The early seventies, and particularly the dramatic OPEC price increases of 1973, have marked the advent of a new era in energy policy. Canadian governments seem unwilling to accept the fact that national net self-sufficiency in energy, particularly in oil, may well be a thing of the past. Thus, mammoth energy projects have been proposed or undertaken by industry and government alike, in a desperate attempt to reduce dependence on foreign sources of supply. This new sense of urgency has led to unprecedented co-operation between government and industry, while increasing the traditional tension amongst different levels of government. Typical both of the novel pattern of development and of the unusual government-industry alliance is the Syncrude project, the latest attempt at exploiting the Alberta oil sands. This paper investigates the potential role that the oil sands might play in Canada's energy future. Mora specifically, the economics of Syncrude itself are analysed, and conclusions of a general nature are based on this case study. In section 1, the reader is introduced to the topic through a description of the oil sands, a review of currently available recovery and refining methods, and a short history of oil sands development. Sections 2 and 3 constitute the main body of the paper, dealing first with the expected costs and benefits of the Syncrude project and, second, with the likely macroeconomic consequences. Finally, section -i explores the implications of more substantial oil sands development, compares the various techniques that might be employed in the future, and discusses the oil sands' role in the national energy policy. The conclusions of the paper have several dimensions. With regard to the cost-benefit analysis, Syncrude as a whole seems to be a rather marginal venture. Particularly interesting is the manner in which the returns are distributed among the various consortium members, as alberta and the private industry participants are subsidized by Ontario and the federal government. Although consideration of sunk costs at the time of Syncrude's "go" decision somewhat improves the basic economic picture, an analysis of risk and uncertainty demonstrates how sensitive returns are with respect to several unknown parameters. Some of the special arrangements of royalty and taxation that distinguish Syncrude from the petroleum industry in general are quantified, thus demonstrating the extent to which this project is being subsidized relative to others. Also, a crude appraisal of the scale economies in oil sands development is attempted. On the macroeconomic side, a dynamic simulation model of Syncrude is incorporated into RDX2, an aggregate econometric model of the Canadian economy. This enables an appraisal of the likely consequences that oil sands development may have for the national economy. The major conclusion is that such projects can hardly be justified on the basis of their aggregate effects, if the cost-benefit results are unfavourable. In the final section, an analysis of more intensive oil sands development (several Syncrude-size plants) shows that the present government-industry arrangements are unlikely to apply to future oil sands ventures. Thus, private industry will probably be dissuaded from engaging in further surface-mining schemes, pending some major cost-rsducing technological breakthrough and/or a substantial increase in the relative price of oil. Although similar financial and technical problems currently haunt 'in situ' development, it is believed that this recovery method will play a greater part in the oil sands' future. Finally, some critical remarks are included on the national energy policy and the governments' handling of Syncrude. An attempt is made to analyze why Ottawa, Alberta and Ontario decided to join the companies in an obviously marginal and risky undertaking. Sy results suggest that little, if any, analysis preceded either the federal or the Ontario government's decision to participate in the project. In this regard, I conclude that Syncrude could set a dangerous precedent for the future management of the country's resources. / Arts, Faculty of / Vancouver School of Economics / Graduate

Mining operations have led to an increase in polycyclic aromatic compound (PAC) concentrations in the Alberta oil sands area. However, the toxicity of most PACs and PAC mixtures is not well characterized. Some PACs and PAC mixtures are known to be mutagenic, though there is limited research on the genotoxicity of PACs from the Alberta oil sands to wildlife. This thesis tested the hypothesis that anthropogenic sources of PACs from the Alberta oil sands are mutagenic to wildlife. The objectives were: 1) to determine whether wildlife with increased exposure to PACs had increased mutations, and 2) to determine whether an anthropogenic source of PACs is mutagenic in a controlled lab setting. For the first objective, we used a single-molecule polymerase chain reaction (SM-PCR) assay to detect microsatellite mutations in river otters with differing liver tissue PAC concentrations in the Athabasca oil sand region (AOSR; Alberta, Canada). For objective two, an in vitro mammalian mutagenicity assay with the FE1 MutaMouse epithelial cell line (FE1) was used to determine the mutagenic potential of a bitumen extraction by-product, tailings pond bitumen. We found that PAC exposure in the AOSR was positively correlated with elevated microsatellite mutations in river otters. From the in vitro study, tailings pond bitumen extracts did not induce lacZ mutations in the FE1 cells. Differences in detection methods between the two assays and PAC profiles between the otter tissue and tailings pond bitumen are suspected reasons for contradictory results. Further investigation of the different sources and PAC profiles within the AOSR environment and wildlife food web will provide insights on what types of PACs are mutagenic. Cytotoxicity, observed following exposure to tailings pond bitumen extracts, also suggests other toxicity pathways should be considered when investigating the toxicity of bitumen from the AOSR. Overall, this thesis provided data on the potential mutagenicity of PACs in the AOSR, which can be used to elucidate potential molecular mechanisms of toxicity in wildlife exposed to oil processing contaminants.

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