It is well recognized that there are imperfections in the market for knowledge transfer due to the nature of ideas and inventions. This is consistent with market failures commonly discussed in the economics of information literature. Some of the impediments to efficiency axe examined here in three essays—one empirical, one theoretical, and one case study—all of which share the theme of scientific knowledge movement. The first essay is empirical and measures the systematic effects of direct interaction and geographic distance between university and firm scientists on the economic performance of imported inventions. This study concludes that, with respect to licensing royalties, scientific interaction has an elasticity of approximately 3 at the mean, which is highly robust, and that distance does not have a significant effect after controlling for interaction. This suggests imperfections in the market for know-how that are sensitive to distance. The second essay is a case study of an invention from the area of robotics and control systems and augments the empirical work presented in the previous essay by illustrating specific reasons why interaction was important for the commercialization of one particular early stage invention. The third essay develops a game theoretic model involving the strategic manipulation of incentives by an incumbent to create an 'intellectual property commons' for the purpose of preventing the commercial development of a disruptive technology that would otherwise threaten existing industry margins. The strategy of spoiling incentives to commercialize public sector scientific inventions by eliminating exclusive intellectual property rights—the strategy of the commons—is motivated by a fear of cannibalization and supported by a credible threat. It is shown that the degree of cannibalization to which the new technology exposes the old market is responsible for this market failure.

This qualitative study was undertaken for the purpose of answering the following two research questions: (a) What is the personal meaning and experience of mothering for women who feel they are actively resisting the Western dominant discourse on mothering?, and (b) How are these personal meanings and experiences grounded in the participants' personal contexts as well as in dominant and alternative discourses and discursive practices? Fifteen women ranging in age from 23 to 46 years, who self identified as actively resisting the dominant discourse, were interviewed about their mothering experiences. Their interviews were transcribed and analyzed following a critical interpretive approach (Cushman, 1995; Packer & Addison, 1989). In answering the first research question three themes were identified: (a) resisting is rewarding and liberating, (b) resisting entails juggling and balancing, (c) resisting entails cognitive work, refraining, and reconciling. Although acknowledging the pragmatic and cognitive challenges inherent in so doing, the women in the study experienced a sense of empowerment and pride in their choice to resist. In answering the second question, participants' identified concrete structural barriers to their efforts to mother differently and acknowledged the importance of supportive partners, friends, extended family members, education, financial resources, and flexible employment as critical in their efforts to resist having their own needs completely subjugated to those of their children. Participants drew on the discourses of feminism, achievement, individualism, collectivity, self-care, science, attachment, and alternative medicine in supporting their efforts to resist. They positioned themselves as caring responsible mothers, independent women, educated/professionals, critical thinkers, and activists. The findings suggest that in positioning themselves in opposition to the dominant, 'selfless mother' discourse, the participants were faced with negotiating between multiple and often contradictory discourses. In particular, the women in the study struggled to negotiate between the selfless mother and the individual rights/self actualization discourses. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the perception of resistance may be as important in engendering a sense of agency for women who mother, as the actual manifestation of resistance in their mothering practices. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for research, theory, and clinical practice.

An exploratory case study using multiple cases investigated the question "What is the meaning of stealing in eating disordered women?" Seven women diagnosed with bulimia nervosa participated in in-depth interviews about this experience. The findings of these interviews revealed commonalities and variations in the patterns and dynamics of both stealing and bulimia. Important information emerged about this experience regarding restrictive family patterns, participants' reactions to these restrictions through stealing and the parallel restrictions and reactions of the bulimic behaviours they later imposed upon themselves. These results add new and in-depth information to the few existing quantitative studies and clinical knowledge addressing stealing in bulimic women. Recommendations for future research and implications for clinical practice were presented.

This dissertation explored factors related to heterosexual women's use of the label "PMS" and the question of why so many women who say that they have PMS do not meet prospectively-based researcher criteria. Participants were recruited through Vancouver city newspapers and posters for a study of emotional, behavioural, and health patterns. They were screened for hysterectomies, ovariectomies, pregnancy, and chronic illnesses. The 58 women in this study (mean age=34.5) provided daily prospective data over a mean of 15 weeks for 15 variables representing 4 different types of symptoms: mood, relationship, concentration and work performance, and physical and activity symptom types. At the beginning of the study, they completed the Beck Depression Inventory. During a final interview they completed various questionnaires regarding romantic relationships, stress, history of abuse, and attitudes toward menstruation. During her final interview, each woman was asked whether she had ever had PMS and, if so, what she believed caused it. Only 16% of the women met researcher-designated criteria for PMS and 9% met researcher-criteria for PDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, APA, 1994), but 60% believed that they currently had PMS. There was very little match between researcher-designations and self-designations for any of the 15 prospective variables. Instead, consistent with schematic theories of PMS, it was women's attitudes toward menstruation that were most strongly related to self-designation. Women who said that they currently had PMS were more likely to view menstruation as debilitating, natural, and predictable. They had higher depression scores and reported more frequent and enduring experiences of anger. More of these women reported having been emotionally abused as an adult, emotionally abused as a child, and physically abused by a past or current romantic partner. Although women who said that they had never had PMS perceived menstruation as more bothersome, they believed that women should be able to ignore it. Current-Say and Never-Say women did not significantly differ for other forms of abuse, partner satisfaction, or daily uplifts. Daily hassles did not reach statistical significance at the multivariate level, but univariate significance indicated that Never-Say women might experience fewer daily hassles than Current-Say women. The prospective data were analyzed idiographically using prediction analyses. Current-Say women demonstrated more uncharacteristic cyclicity during the midcycle phase across the 15 variables and 4 symptom types. Never-Say women showed more uncharacteristic cyclicity during the postmenstrual phase. No differences were found for other phases. These findings, and other results, argue against the use of simple premenstrual-postmenstrual and premenstrual-intermenstrual difference measures in diagnosing PMS or PDD. It was concluded that, although the women's self-designations did not match their prospective data, they could not be explained simply as a mislabelling of negative cyclicity in other phases. There was also mixed evidence for the hypothesis that women's reports of having "PMS" were part of a generalized over-reporting of symptomatology or dissatisfaction. Possible explanations for women's self-designations are discussed, including schematic representations of both menstruation and general illness and a "contrast hypothesis" modified from the version proposed by McFarlane and Williams (1994). This contrast hypothesis suggests that cyclical changes occurring during a particular non-premenstrual phase are related to women's self-designations according to (a) the timing of these changes relative to the visible and salient menses, in conjunction with (b) their attitudes toward menstruation. Close to half (45%) the women who said that they had experienced PMS attributed their perceived PMS to a bidirectional model of physiology and environment, and 58% of the women saying that they had PMS believed that it happened occasionally rather than inevitably. Overall, the women's representations of menstrual cyclicity were neither simple reflections of cultural stereotypes nor pervasively negative, but rather diverse and complex. The results that link depression, anger, and specific forms of abuse to self-designations suggest that women saying that they have PMS are indicating difficulties that may or may not be menstrually-related. Researchers and other professionals need to assess the nature of those difficulties in women presenting with "PMS".

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The re-usability and modularity of components reduce the cost and complexity of the software design. It is difficult to predict run-time scenarios covering all possible circumstances to ensure that the components are full compatible with the system. Monitoring run-time behaviours of components presents a close view of the component qualities. The existing monitoring approaches either implement applications with built-in monitoring features, or observe the external resource and events to predict the status of the components. In this thesis work, we propose an approach to monitor the run-time behaviours of components with aspect-oriented wrappers and contracts. We design monitoring wrappers to encapsulate the monitored components. The wrapper has the access to interfaces and properties of the wrapped component. We adopt the methodology of Design by Contract to enforce security policies on component wrappers. The contracts define the mutual obligations of two interacting components. The policies implemented in contracts are woven into component wrappers as separate aspect modules. If the component contains any flaws, the wrappers can monitor the behaviours and prevent failures propagating into the wrapped components and the rest of the system. This approach assures that the system is running in a safe environment with the erroneous behaviours or failures detected appropriately. Secure access between the wrappers guarantees a secure environment for the wrapped components. We conducted experiments on the run-time monitoring of SQL Injection and Cross Site Scripting attacks. We designed cross-cutting concerns such as logging for components to illustrate monitoring components without touching the underlying components. Monitoring on access control is also possible and feasible to add as an additional concern and is also demonstrated in the experiments. The results show that the framework is very flexible to impose separate policies as aspects on component wrappers without the modifications of the underlying components. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2011-01-02 20:43:16.884

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