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No description available.

The purpose of this study was to explore associations between early-life factors and the development of youth onset type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Until 1990, T2DM was seldom reported in youth, however rates of youth onset T2DM are rising worldwide. This retrospective case-control study utilized repository data housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy to review perinatal exposures of Manitoba youth with and without T2DM. The mean age at time of diagnosis was 13.1 years and 61% of youth onset T2DM cases were female. The majority of youth with T2DM resided in rural areas at time of diagnosis. This study found a 14-fold increase in the risk of youth onset T2DM when the mother had pre-gestational diabetes, and 6.5-fold increase in that risk if the mother had gestational diabetes. Breastfeeding was found to be protective, and a lower income quintile at time of birth was found to be more significantly associated with the development of youth onset T2DM than increasingly higher income quintiles . The findings emphasize that efforts aimed at preventing T2DM in youth must begin in the pre-conception period and continue throughout pregnancy.

Semantic Networks have long been recognised as an important tool for natural language processing. This research has been a formal analysis of a semantic network using constructive type theory. The particular net studied is SemNet, the internal knowledge representation for LOLITA(^1): a large scale natural language engineering system. SemNet has been designed with large scale, efficiency, integration and expressiveness in mind. It supports many different forms of plausible and valid reasoning, including: epistemic reasoning, causal reasoning and inheritance. The unified theory of types (UTT) integrates two well known type theories, Coquand-Huet's (impredicative) calculus of constructions and Martin-Lof's (predicative) type theory. The result is a strong and expressive language which has been used for formalization of mathematics, program specification and natural language. Motivated by the computational and richly expressive nature of UTT, this research has used it for formalization and semantic analysis of SemNet. Moreover, because of applications to software engineering, type checkers/proof assistants have been built. These tools are ideal for organising and managing the analysis of SemNet. The contribution of the work is twofold. First the semantic model built has led to improved and deeper understanding of SemNet. This is important as many researchers that work on different aspects of LOLITA, now have a clear and un- ambigious interpertation of the meaning of SemNet constructs. The model has also been used to show soundess of the valid reasoning and to give a reasonable semantic account of epistemic reasoning. Secondly the research contributes to NLE generally, both because it demonstrates that UTT is a useful formalization tool and that the good aspects of SemNet have been formally presented.

The observational trend that disky elliptical galaxies exhibit younger luminosity- weighted ages than boxy ellipticals is investigated. The presence of a possible young stellar disk embedded in these galaxies is explored by comparing kinematics derived from the near-infrared Calcium II triplet (around 8600 Å) and Hβ (4863 Å) Balmer line, thought to be sensitive to older and younger stars respectively. Using synthetic stellar population spectra of these two wavelength regions, it is found that a young disk component produces observable differences in the kinematics derived from the two wavelength regions. Specifically, very young disks produce differences in the Gauss-Hermite coefficients, h(_3) and h(_4). Disks with an intermediate age produce offsets in the rotation velocities. Older disks produce clear two-component structure in the derived LOSVDs. Thus, diagnostic indicators are established which can be applied to observations. A comparison is presented of the major- and minor-axis kinematics derived from the Calcium II triplet and Hβ absorption features for a small sample of disky elliptical galaxies with enhanced Hβ absorption strength, indicative of a young component. For two galaxies in the sample, NGC 584 and NGC 821, Hβ gives a rotation velocity higher than that from the Calcium II triplet. These offsets are not consistent with the spectral models, since the offsets in velocity are not accompanied by the expected offsets in the other LOSVD parameters. This implies that the disks have either formed over time with a modest star- formation rate; or that the young stars in these systems are present in both the disk and spheroid components. From dynamical modelling of ground-based integral-field spectroscopy combined with HST STIS data, the disky elliptical NGC 821 is found to have a mass-to-light ratio of 4.12± 0.06 in I-band solar units, and harbours a central black hole of mass (3.41 ± 0.68) x 10(^7) M(_ʘ). This black hole mass is consistent with Gebhardt et al. (2002), who use the same STIS data with their independent modelling code. The phase-space distribution of the orbits in the model shows evidence for a two-component structure, which corresponds to a slowly rotating spheroidal component superimposed with a flattened, strongly rotating component. This second component, which has properties similar to a disk, accounts for 15% of the total system mass. Applying the two-component stellar population models, a disk of this mass would have formed 6 Gyr ago to produce the observed Hβ absorption. Such a disk is not consistent with the long-slit observations, as no offset was found between the Calcium II triplet and Hβ velocity dispersions. However, this cannot be strongly excluded due to the effects of metallicity and disk velocity dispersion on the spectral modelling.

In this thesis we study problems associated with the generalisation, to include Grassmann type variables, of the 'group theoretical' approach to quantisation of C.Isham [37]. Although a full generalisation of this quantisation scheme is not achieved, consideration of this problem leads us to make studies in four principle sectors: (A) Graded Poisson brackets and graded 'vector field like’ constructs. A graded version of the Hamiltonian vector field is defined and it is found that both left acting and right acting vector fields are necessary. Properties of these vector fields are investigated. (B) Local graded canonical transformations and graded function groups. Simple examples of these structures are studied. (C) The realisation of a general superalgebra by the use of graded 'functions' and the graded Poisson bracket. The graded generalisation of a standard classical result is presented. Also the - question of central, extensions to these algebras is studied and a partial generalisation of a classical result on this is given. (D) Investigations into a model of quantum mechanics on a2-sphere which incorporates fermions. This model is similarto that derived by Spiegelglas [56] and Barcelos-Neto et al.[6,7]from the 0(3) supersymmetrie sigma model first studied by Witten in [62,63], except that an additional primary constraint has been included. The graded Dirac brackets of this model are calculated.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Uppsala : Uppsala universitet, 2005. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Univ., 2004. / Härtill 3 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 53-63).

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-51). Also available via the Internet.