Narratives in the forms of music or literature have traditionally been highlightedfor their ability to evoke empathy; however, the specific features of the narrativethat serve as the underlying mechanisms responsible for this effect remain unclear.The aim of the present study was to examine the impact of a narrative’s style onempathy. An experimental repeated measures research design was used with 41participants (31 female, 10 male; age range 20-63 yrs, M=30.2 yrs) that underwentthree conditions each comprised of a different stimulus (i.e., a song, a piece ofprose and a poem), with the same narrative content but differing in style. The orderof the stimuli was randomized across participants. After each stimulus, empatheticresponses were captured via self reports, measuring valence and arousal of theparticipant, as well as their perceived valence and arousal of the main character ofthe narrative. The song had a strong correlation between participant-rating andcharacter-rating on valence and arousal, thus evoking a stronger (affective)empathetic response than the other two styles of stimuli, having moderatecorrelations. The character-rating barely differed between the style of stimuli, andthe narrative first presented lowered the participants’ valence regardless of style.These findings could possibly be explained by cognitive empathy responding to thenarrative, evoking the same understanding of another person, whereas affectiveempathy seem more prone to respond to stylistic features. Future research andpossible therapeutic implications are discussed. / Narrativ i form av musik och litteratur är kända för att kunna framkalla empati hos mottagaren; däremot är det fortfarande oklart vilka specifika aspekter av ett narrativ som ligger bakom denna effekt. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka effekten av narrativ stil på empati. En experimentell studie med inomgruppsdesign användes med 41 deltagare (31 kvinnor, 10 män, åldersintervall 20-63 år, M = 30.2 år) vilka exponerades för tre olika stimuli; en sång, en prosatext och en dikt. Varje stimuli hade samma narrativa innehåll men skilde sig åt beträffande narrativ stil. Presentationsordningen för stimulina randomiserades för deltagarna. Efter varje stimuli mättes empatisk reaktion via självskattningar av valens och arousal hos deltagarna, liksom hur de skattade valens och arousal för berättelsens huvudkaraktär. Sången visade en stark korrelation mellan deltagarnas självskattningar och skattningar av huvudkaraktären på både valens och arousal, vilket innebär att sången skapade ett starkare (affektivt) empatiskt gensvar än övriga två stimuli, vilka hade måttliga korrelationer. Skattningar av huvudkaraktärens valens och arousal påverkades ytterst lite av narrativ stil. Presentationsordningen påverkade deltagarnas skattningar då första stimulit sänkte deltagarnas valens oavsett narrativ stil. Dessa resultat kan eventuellt förklaras genom att kognitiv empati svarar på narrativets innehåll, att oavsett narrativ stil framkallas samma förståelse för en annan person, medan affektiv empati verkar påverkas utav den narrativa stilen. Framtida forskning och terapeutiska implikationer diskuteras.

Collective memory is a socially shared representation of the past. History, contrastingly, strives to be an unbiased, objective, and critical account of the past. Many researchers have argued that the so-called “history” found in school textbooks and curriculums align more with collective memory; however, many individuals do not know of the pervasiveness of collective memory in supposed “history” texts. To examine perceptions of accuracy and preference of American “history” textbook passages, individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n= 404) participated in an online study where they were randomly assigned to read one passage that was either negatively biased, neutral, or positively biased regarding the U.S. dropping the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Participants rated their emotional valence of the event and their perceptions of accuracy and preference for the passage. The results suggest that individuals perceive negatively biased passages as less accurate and less preferable, even if their emotional valence matches the bias within the text. Individuals also showed the hypothesized interaction for preference; those who perceived the event as not negative preferred the positive text to the neutral and negative texts. The findings support evidence that individuals are motivated to prefer history passages consistent with their attitudes and rate higher accuracy among positive and neutral texts. The results have broader implications on reporting or dismissing human rights violations within collective memory.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Verbal government of Russian and Czech verbs. Determination of basic conception of rection, bilinguism, interference, transfer, homonymy. The acquirement of foreign language difficulties. Preventing interference. The influence of transfer. Left-valency and right-valency actant. Competition of binding. Russian - Czech dictionary. Error analysis. Contrastive analysis.

Recent years have seen tremendous developments in methods for computational modeling of (bio-) molecular systems. Ever larger reactive systems are being studied with high accuracy approaches, and high-level QM/MM calculations are being routinely performed. However, applying high-accuracy methods to large biological systems is computationally expensive and becomes problematic when conformational sampling is needed. To address this challenge, classical force field based approaches such as free energy perturbation (FEP) and empirical valence bond calculations (EVB) have been employed in this work. Specifically: Force-field independent metal parameters have been developed for a range of alkaline earth and transition metal ions, which successfully reproduce experimental solvation free energies, metal-oxygen distances, and coordination numbers. These are valuable for the computational study of biological systems. Experimental studies have shown that the epoxide hydrolase from Solanum tuberosum (StEH1) is not only an enantioselective enzyme, but for smaller substrates, displays enantioconvergent behavior. For StEH1, two detailed studies, involving combined experimental and computational efforts have been performed: We first used trans-stilbene oxide to establish the basic reaction mechanism of this enzyme. Importantly, a highly conserved and earlier ignored histidine was identified to be important for catalysis. Following from this, EVB and experiment have been used to investigate the enantioconvergence of the StEH1-catalyzed hydrolysis of styrene oxide. This combined approach involved wildtype StEH1 and an engineered enzyme variant, and established a molecular understanding of enantioconvergent behavior of StEH1. A novel framework was developed for the Computer-Aided Directed Evolution of Enzymes (CADEE), in order to be able to quickly prepare, simulate, and analyze hundreds of enzyme variants. CADEE’s easy applicability is demonstrated in the form of an educational example. In conclusion, classical approaches are a computationally economical means to achieve extensive conformational sampling. Using the EVB approach has enabled me to obtain a molecular understanding of complex enzymatic systems. I have also increased the reach of the EVB approach, through the implementation of CADEE, which enables efficient and highly parallel in silico testing of hundreds-to-thousands of individual enzyme variants.

Thesis advisor: Ziqiang Wang / One of the most unconventional electronic states in high transition temperature cuprate superconductors is the pseudogap state. In the temperature versus doping phase diagram, the pseudogap state straddles across the antiferromagnetic (AF) state near half filling and the superconducting (SC) dome on the hole doped side above the transition temperature Tc. The relationship between the pseudogap state and these two well known states - the AF state and the SC state is believed to be very important for understanding superconductivity and the emergent quantum electronic matter in doped Mott insulators. The pseudogap is characterized by the emergence of a soft gap in the single-particle excitation spectrum in the normal state in the temperature range between Tc and a characteristic temperature T*, i.e. Tc < T < T*. The most puzzling feature of the pseudogap is the nodal-antinodal dichotomy. Observed by ARPES in momentum space, the Fermi surface is gapped out in the antinodal region leaving a Fermi arc of gapless excitations near the nodes. Whether the pseudogap is an incoherent superconducting gap (onegap scenario) or it is a different gap governed by other mechanisms, other than superconductivity, (two-gap scenario) is still under debate. In this thesis I study the particle-particle channel and the particle-hole channel of the valence bond fluctuations away from half filling. Based on a strong-coupling analysis of the t-J model, I argue that the superexchange interaction J induced incommensurate bond centered density wave order is the driving mechanism for the pseudogap state. Low energy density of states (DOS) are eliminated by multiple incommensurate scatterings in the antinodal region at the Fermi level. I show that the interplay between the incommensurate bond centered d-wave density wave instability and the intrinsic electronic inhomogeneity in real cuprate materials is responsible for the observed pseudogap phenomena. Utilizing the spatially unrestricted Gutzwiller approximation, I show that the off-stoichiometric doping induced electrostatic disorder pins the low-energy d-wave bond density fluctuations, resulting in a VBG phase. The antinodal Fermi surface (FS) sections are gapped out, giving rise to a genuine normal state Fermi arc. The length of the Fermi arc shrinks with underdoping below the temperature T* determined by thermal filling of the antinodal pseudogap. Below Tc, the d-wave superconducting gap due to singlet pairing coexists and competes with the VBG pseudogap. The spatial, momentum, temperature and doping dependence of these two gaps are consistent with recent ARPES and STM observations in underdoped and chemically substituted cuprates. The temperature versus doping phase diagram captures the salient properties of the pseudogap phenomena and provides theoretical support for the two-gap scenario. In addition to resolving the complexities of the quantum electronic states in hole-doped cuprates, my unified theory elucidates the important role of the interplay between the strong electronic correlation and the intrinsic electronic disorder in doped transition metal oxides. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Physics.

Esta dissertação faz uma análise da abordagem do conceito de valência em livros didáticos de química geral para nível superior publicados nos EUA ao longo das primeiras décadas do século XX. Para tanto, foi feito um estudo de caso histórico a respeito do desenvolvimento do conceito de valência no final do século XIX e início do século XX, no qual se observou a influência de duas teorias sobre a combinação dos elementos: a teoria dos tipos e a teoria dos radicais. Outros pontos de destaque no caso histórico foram o envolvimento de vários cientistas, de vários países, e a relação do conceito de valência com os estudos sobre ligação, periodicidade e estrutura química, além de mudanças na nomenclatura e notação utilizadas. Num segundo momento, investigou-se a presença do conceito de valência nos livros didáticos selecionados, buscando uma análise qualitativa do material, tendo como referencial a análise textual discursiva. Os critérios de análise incluem: localização do assunto no livro, a nomenclatura e a notação utilizada, a definição fornecida e se ela está atrelada a alguma determinação histórica, matemática ou experimental, a presença do contexto histórico e do desenvolvimento do conceito ao longo dos anos, quais assuntos se apresentam correlacionados e quais os usos e aplicações dados à valência. Observou-se nos livros: a ausência de discussões mais aprofundadas a respeito da história da ciência; a grande importância dada pelos autores ao conceito de valência; a existência de um período de transição entre o conceito clássico e o eletrônico, ocorrido pouco tempo depois da construção do conceito eletrônico pelos cientistas; e uma mudança no enfoque da ciência química apresentada nos livros, os quais gradativamente deixam de reconhecer a existência de incertezas e lacunas no conhecimento químico. / This dissertation analyzes the approaches to the concept of valence in university-level general chemistry textbooks published in the USA throughout the first decades of the twentieth century. A historical case study about the development of the concept of valence in late nineteenth and early twentieth century is presented. It is shown that the concept of valence emerged from two theories on the combination of elements: the theory of types and the theory of radicals. Other important points from the historical case study were the involvement of several scientists from various countries and the relationship between the concept of valence and studies on chemical bonding, periodicity and chemical structure. Changes in nomenclature and notation for valence were also noted. In a second moment, the presence of the concept of valence in selected textbooks was investigated, by means of a qualitative analysis based on discursive textual analysis. The criteria for analysis included: location of the subject in the textbook; nomenclature and notation used; definition provided and whether it is linked to some historical, mathematical or experimental method of determination; presence of the historical context and the development of the concept over the years; which subjects are related to valence; and which uses and applications were given to valence in the textbooks. The main results of such analysis include: the absence of in-depth discussions about the history of science; the importance given to the concept of valence by the authors; the existence of a transition period from the classical to the electronic concept of valence, which occurred shortly after the construction of the electronic concept by scientists; and a shift in the focus of chemical science presented in the textbooks, which gradually fail to recognize the existence of uncertainties and gaps in chemical knowledge.

Nesta dissertação estudamos sistemas de spins em redes de baixa dimensionalidade e em temperatura nula, analisando suas transições de fases quânticas. Mais precisamente, estu- damos as propriedades do estado fundamental e as possíveis transições de fase do modelo de Heisenberg quântico antiferromagnético de spin-1/2, com interações entre os primeiros e segundos vizinhos, em diversas redes, e em particular na rede triangular, que é o foco de nosso estudo. Para a obtenção do estado fundamental aproximado, usamos um método variacional em que a rede é particionada num conjunto de plaquetas de sítios. O estado fundamental é escrito como um produto tensorial dos estados das plaquetas. Para a rede triangular, escolhemos um triângulo como uma plaqueta. Quatro fases foram encontra- das: a fase antiferromagnética de Néel, a colinear, a fase de Néel modificada e aquela que denominamos de ligação covalente ressonante. Obtivemos as energias e as magnetizações de subrede em função da razão entre as interações de primeiros e segundos vizinhos. En- tre as fases de Néel e a colinear, podemos observar a fase de ligação covalente ressonante caracterizada como um singleto quanto ao spin de cada plaqueta. / In this thesis we study spin systems in low-dimensional lattices at zero temperature, analyzing their quantum phase transitions. More precisely, we study the properties of the ground state and the possible phase transitions in the antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 quan- tum Heisenberg model with interaction between the first and second neighbors, in several lattices, and in particular in the triangular lattice, which is the focus of our study. To obtain the approximate ground state, we use a variational method in which the lattice is partitioned into a set of plates of sites. The ground state is written as a tensor product of the states of plates. For the triangular lattice, we choose a triangle as a plate. Four phases were found: the antiferromagnetic Néel phase, the collinear, the modified Néel phase and that we call resonating valence bond. We obtained the energy and the magnetization as a function of the ratio of the interactions between the first and second neighbor sites. Between the Néel and collinear phases, we can observe the spin resonating valence bond phase, characterized as a singlet with respect to the spin of each plate.

Cette thèse a pour objet le classement et la description des verbes intransitifs monoactanciels en géorgien, dans une perspective linguistique typologique. L’analyse comporte deux phases : d’une part un classement des verbes, et d’autre part une réflexion critique sur la complexité du système mis en évidence ainsi que sur la notion d’intransitivité en général. Le classement proposé commence par séparer les verbes non dérivés d’autres verbes (‘intransitifs primaires’) de ceux dont la morphologie indique un processus de dérivation détransitive (‘intransitifs dérivés’). Les verbes monoactanciels primaires se divisent en deux classes, ayant chacune une unité à la fois sémantique et morphosyntaxique : les verbes téliques (comme ‘mourir’) et les verbes atéliques (comme ‘vivre’). Les verbes biactanciels sont ensuite brièvement décrits selon une échelle de transitivité. Puis sont abordés les verbes monoactanciels dérivés, qui peuvent avoir jusqu’à quatre interprétations : passive, décausative, autocausative et antipassive, et enfin les couples de verbes dont les deux membres transitif et intransitif sont marqués morphologiquement. L’intransitivité monoactancielle en géorgien n’a pas encore été traitée de façon globale, en particulier certains aspects comme l’antipassif, dont on propose une étude détaillée. Le présent travail entend apporter une contribution à la fois aux études kartvéliennes et aux récentes réflexions générales sur les concepts de transitivité, de valence et de voix. En effet, par son grand nombre de classes verbales et par le lien étroit qu’il fait entre morphosyntaxe et sémantique, le géorgien a des données de premier choix à fournir à l’étude de ces concepts. / The topic of this PhD thesis is a classification and description of one-argument intransitive verbs in Georgian in a typological perspective. The analysis consists of two steps: firstly, the classification of the various types of verbs and secondly, a critical investigation of the complexity of the system under study and on the concept of intransitivity in general. The proposed classification begins by separating verbs not derived from other verbs (‘primary intransitives’) from those whose morphology indicates a process of de-transitive derivation (‘derived intransitives’). Primary one-argument verbs, in turn, are divided into two classes, each consisting of verbs with the same morphological, as well as semantic properties: telic verbs (such as “to die”) and atelic verbs (e.g. “to live”). Two-argument verbs are briefly described according to a transitivity scale. Discussed next are derived one-argument verbs which may have up to four readings: passive, decausative, autocausative and antipassive, and finally, verb pairs whose members, one transitive and one intransitive, are both morphologically marked. One-argument intransitivity in Georgian has not yet been investigated thoroughly; this particularly applies to some of its aspects such as the antipassive, of which a detailed study is offered here. The present work is intended to contribute to Kartvelian studies and at the same time, to recent discussion in general linguistics on the concepts of transitivity, valency and voice. Indeed, owing to its large number of verb classes and the close connection between morphosyntax and semantics, Georgian offers excellent data for the study of these concepts.

Le stockage géologique du CO2 est un des enjeux scientifiques majeurs envisagés pour contrôler le réchauffement climatique lié aux gaz à effet de serre. Le stockage en domaine sédimentaire nécessite une connaissance des facteurs stabilisant/destabilisant les réservoirs, qui peut être apportée par l’étude d’analogues naturels. L’utilisation de méthodes pétrographiques, microthermométriques et géochimiques appliquées aux carottes du forage V.Mo.2 traversant le réservoir naturel de CO2 de Montmiral (France), permettent de suivre les migrations de CO2. Dans le socle Paléozoïque, les inclusions fluides carboniques témoignent de la démixtion sous forte couverture d’un fluide aquo-carbonique chaud, probablement à la fin du Crétacé ou au Paléogène, qui marquerait le remplissage du réservoir de Montmiral. L’étude des unités sédimentaires sus-jacentes montre que le CO2 est resté confiné dans les niveaux rhéto-sinémuriens sous les marnes du Domérien à l’Oxfordien Moyen. Ces marnes jouent le rôle de barrière étanche aux fluides au cours des principaux stades de circulations reconnus. Un premier stade lié à l’extension téthysienne affecte les séries sous-jacentes aux marnes. Un deuxième stade, rattaché à la compression pyrénéenne grâce à une étude de terrain, induit une karstification des séries sus-jacentes à l’écran marneux. A la base du forage, c’est à cette période que le réservoir fuit, mais cette fuite reste confinée sous l’écran marneux. La stabilité du réservoir de Montmiral est due à la présence de l’épais niveau marneux et à la structuration en blocs du bassin de Valence et de son socle limités par des failles jouant le rôle de barrière latérale. / Study of natural CO2 analogues brings key informations on the factors governing the long term stability/instability of future anthropogenic CO2 storages. The main objective of this work, through the study of cores from V.Mo.2 well crosscutting the Montmiral natural reservoir (Valence Basin, France), is to trace the deep CO2 migrations in fractures. Petrographic, geochemical and microthermometric studies of the V.Mo.2 cores were thus performed in order: 1) to describe the reservoir filling conditions and 2) to detect possible CO2-leakage through the sediments overlying the reservoir. Fluid inclusions from the Paleozoic crystalline basement record the progressive unmixing of a hot homogeneous aquo-carbonic fluid. The Montmiral reservoir was therefore probably feeded by a CO2-enriched gas component at the Late Cretaceous-Paleogene. The study of the sedimentary column in V.Mo.2 well, demonstrates that the CO2 did not migrate towards the surface through the thick marly unit (Domerian-Middle Oxfordian). These marls have acted as an impermeable barrier that prevented the upward migration of fluids. Two main stages of fluid circulation have been recognized: 1) an ante- Callovian one related to the tethysian extension 2) a tertiary stage during which the upper units underwent a karstification, with CO2 leakage related but which remained confined into the deeper parts of the Valence Basin. Since the Paleogene, the Montmiral reservoir has apparently remained stable, despite the pyrenean and alpine orogeneses. This is mainly due to the efficient seal formed by the thick marly levels and also to the local structuration in faulted blocks which apparently acted as efficient lateral barriers.