Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are impaired in cognitive processes and emotional regulation, and exhibit stereotyped behaviours. Dopamine (DA) modulates executive functions, learning, memory, emotional processing and social cognition; all of which are impaired in individuals with ASDs. Because DA modulates a number of processes that are impaired in individuals with ASDs, genes in the dopaminergic pathway are good candidates for genes influencing autistic behaviours. As our previous findings suggested a role for a dopamine-related gene in families with only affected males, this thesis describes a comprehensive study of five genes affecting DA synthesis, levels and function in mothers and affected males with ASDs in an initial TEST cohort of 112 male-only affected sib-pair families as well as a replication study in three additional male-only family cohorts. I genotyped three to five polymorphisms in the TH, SLC6A3, DRD1, DRD2 and PPP1R1B genes and performed population-based single marker case-control comparisons, family-based association tests, quantitative transmission disequilibrium tests as well as haplotype-based analyses and tests for gene-gene interactions. I found evidence for association of the DRD1 (P=0.0027-0.040), DRD2 (P=0.0002-0.007) and PPP1R1B (P=0.00042-0.001) genes with autism in affected males from the TEST cohort. Evidence for DA-related gene interactions were found between polymorphisms in DRD1, DRD2 and PPP1R1B (P=0.0094-0.012) in affected males relative to a comparison group. Furthermore, I found that polymorphisms in the TH and DRD1 genes were associated with the risk for mothers having sons with ASD in the TEST families (P=0.007-0.025) and putative risk alleles in DRD1 and DRD2 were preferentially transmitted from mothers (P=0.016) and fathers (P=0.023) respectively, to affected children. All findings remained significant following corrections for multiple testing. The TEST cohort findings were not replicated in other family cohorts. However, an examination of dysmorphology data for the different family sets revealed phenotypic differences and thus, genetic differences are to be expected. In summary, I found evidence for a contribution of DA-related genes in a specific family cohort with ASDs. Additional functional and phenotypic studies will enable a better understanding of the contributions and implications of these findings to our understanding of autism. / Thesis (Ph.D, Physiology) -- Queen's University, 2009-03-18 13:58:12.223

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On June 8, 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada [SCC] overruled its jurisprudence of the past twenty years on freedom of association. The majority of the judges agreed that section 2d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right to the process to collective bargaining. In doing so, the SCC rejected the ratio of the majority enunciated in the 1987 trilogy and, at last, gave place to international labour law, in particular to freedom of association principles elaborated by the International Labour Organization's supervisory bodies. The analysis of these principles, focused on three related rights, i.e. the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike and the right not to associate, allows the author to conclude that for the first time, Canada is showing greater respect for its international obligations. What the SCC will decide for the right to strike remains to be seen.

Dissertation submitted for the fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Masters in Information Technology, Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Accounting and Informatics, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Competitive pressure on the software industry encourages organizations to examine the effectiveness of their software development and evolutionary processes. Therefore it is important that software is measured in order to improve the quality. The question is not whether we should measure software but how it should be measured. Software measurement has been in existence for over three decades and it is still in the process of becoming a mature science. The many influences of new software development technologies have led to a diverse growth in software measurement technologies which have resulted in various definitions and validation techniques. An important aspect of software measurement is the measurement of the design, which nowadays often means the measurement of object oriented design. Chidamer and Kemerer (1994) designed a metric suite for object oriented design, which has provided a new foundation for metrics and acts as a starting point for further development of the software measurement science. This study documents theoretical object oriented cohesion metrics and calculates those metrics for classes extracted from a sample of open source software packages. For each open source software package, the following data is recorded: software size, age, domain, number of developers, number of bugs, support requests, feature requests, etc. The study then tests by means of association rules which theoretical cohesion metrics are validated hypothesis: that older software is more cohesive than younger software, bigger packages is less cohesive than smaller packages, and the smaller the software program the more maintainable it is. This study attempts to validate existing theoretical object oriented cohesion metrics by mining open source software data with association rules.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the false memory rates for word and picture Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists in children, adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Deese (1959), Roediger and McDermott (1995) developed the DRM paradigm as a method for testing the effects of semantic intrusion on the creation of false recollections. This method is used in the current thesis to test false memory in participants with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a disorder characterised by social, language and behavioural deficits. False memory studies of adults with this disorder have had conflicting results and found ASD participants have lower or similar false memory rates to controls. Experiment 1 compared false memory rates in 11 children, 11 adolescents and 5 adults with ASD to 15 children, 11 adolescents and 7 adult controls. ASD participants had higher false critical lure rates and lower studied item recognition rates than controls regardless of age. Adolescents had higher false and studied memory than children while adults had higher studied but lower false recognition rates than the younger groups. Due to the use of short DRM lists the adult participants recognised the fewest critical lures. In Experiment 2 there were 6 ASD children and 9 ASD adolescents compared with 6 control children and 9 control adolescents who were all tested both individually and in collaborative trios. Collaboration was beneficial to ASD adolescents and control children and adolescents by reducing false recognition and increasing studied item recognition. Collaboration was more beneficial for ASD adolescents and control children in the correct rejection of critical lures and for control adolescents in the recognition of studied items possibly due to decision making techniques. Critical lure recognition did not vary between collaborative trios and individuals and studied item recognition was decreased by collaboration in the ASD children. The observed decision making techniques employed revealed a clear pattern in social development and suggest ASD adolescents, but not ASD children, would benefit from group work. Overall the findings of this study, when taken into context with previous DRM studies, suggest that ASD participants have a delay in their social development and in the development of their association networks.