Thèse (Ph.D.) - Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 2006. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr. : f. 269-306. Également disponible en format microfiche.

Most people are at least aware that, in the past, companies that owned mines, lumber mills, and other large-scale industrial projects in isolated areas also ran company towns. For many people, such towns conjure up images miserable working conditions, exploitative company stores, and inadequate shacks for most workers, while managers live in relative luxury up on “snob knob.” Most people are also fairly certain that such towns, at least in the United States, died out about the same time as the horse and buggy. Several industries in Wyoming, however, continued to support company towns through the end of the 20th century, with one such town surviving into the early 2000s. This project looks at two of these towns supported by the uranium mining and milling industry that dominated central Wyoming’s economy for about 30 years starting in the mid-1950s. These towns, Gas Hills and Jeffrey City, along with Wyoming’s other modern company towns represent a new era in the history of these communities. Furthermore, they actually had many advantages for inhabitants, companies, and the local economy, especially compared to a small conventional community located near a resource boom. Often, and in contrast to the towns in this thesis, conventional towns must scramble to meet the demands of a massive migration, only to be left with unpaid bonds when the resource dries up or becomes no longer profitable.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of applying an intrinsic decompressive pre-load to a particular dynamic stabilization device on the biomechanical response of the lumbar spine. The FlexSPAR, which supports this ability, was used as a test case. A finite element model of a full lumbar spine was developed and validated against experimental data, and tested in the primary modes of spinal motion. The model was used to compare five lumbar spine test cases: healthy, degenerate, implanted with a pre-loaded device, implanted with a device without a pre-load, and implanted with rigid fixators. Results indicated that a pre-loaded FlexSPAR led to improved disc height restoration and segmental biomechanics. Results also showed that a pre-loaded FlexSPAR led to less change in bone remodeling stimulus in comparison to the device without a pre-load and rigid fixators. This work shows that there is a potential to improve the performance of posterior dynamic stabilization devices by incorporating a pre-load in the device.

No description available.

A taxonomia vegetal atualmente exige um grande esforço dos botânicos, desde o processo de aquisição do espécime até a morosa comparação com as amostras já catalogadas em um herbário. Nesse contexto, o projeto TreeVis surge como uma ferramenta para a identificação de vegetais por meio da análise de atributos foliares. Este trabalho é uma ramificação do projeto TreeVis e tem o objetivo de identificar vegetais por meio da análise do corte transversal de uma folha ampliado por um microscópio. Para tanto, foram extraídas assinaturas da cutícula, epiderme superior, parênquima paliçádico e parênquima lacunoso. Cada assinatura foi avaliada isoladamente por uma rede neural pelo método leave-one-out para verificar a sua capacidade de discriminar as amostras. Uma vez selecionados os vetores de características mais importantes, os mesmos foram combinados de duas maneiras. A primeira abordagem foi a simples concatenação dos vetores selecionados; a segunda, mais elaborada, reduziu a dimensionalidade (três atributos apenas) de algumas das assinaturas componentes antes de fazer a concatenação. Os vetores finais obtidos pelas duas abordagens foram testados com rede neural via leave-one-out para medir a taxa de acertos alcançada pelo sinergismo das assinaturas das diferentes partes da folha. Os experimentos consitiram na identificação de oito espécies diferentes e na identificação da espécie Gochnatia polymorpha nos ambientes Cerrado e Mata Ciliar, nas estações Chuvosa e Seca, e sob condições de Sol e Sombra / Currently, taxonomy demands a great effort from the botanists, ranging from the process of acquisition of the sample to the comparison with the species already classified in the herbarium. For this reason, the TreeVis is a project created to identify vegetal species using leaf attributes. This work is a part of the TreeVis project and aims at identifying vegetal species by analysing cross-sections of leaves amplified by a microscope. Signatures were extract from cuticle, adaxial epiderm, palisade parenchyma and sponge parenchyma. Each signature was analysed by a neural network with the leave-one-out method to verify its ability to identify species. Once the most important feature vectors were selected, two different approachs were adopted. The first was a simple concatenation of the selected feature vectors. The second, and more elaborated approach, consisted of reducing the dimensionality (three attributes only) of some component signatures before the feature vector concatenation. The final vectors obtained by these two approaches were tested by a neural network with leave-one-out to measure the correctness rate reached by the synergism of the signatures of different leaf regions. The experiments resulted in the identification of eight different species and the identification of the Gochnatia polymorpha species in Cerradão and Gallery Forest environments, Wet and Dry seasons, and under Sun and Shadow constraints

From an institutionalized conception of contemporary intellectuals as silent or absent, the aim of this thesis is to analyse how the representation of the intellectual changed from a hero of reason to a more or less absent actor. Descriptions of intellectuals that were initially analysed which showed that the representation of the intellectual, besides being linked to modernity, contained a relationship between the individual actor and political power, a relationship which could be traced back to ancient myths. Using discourse theory and concepts primarily from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the dissertation demonstrates how the discourse of intellectuals changed the representation content in relation to the myth of the postmodern and to the myth of the modern society. In relation to the modern intellectual, the discourse linked the representation with elements as reason, freedom and politics. Texts written after the linguistic turn or the myth of the postmodern describe intellectuals as specific, bourgeois, academic and politicized. This makes the representation impossible in relation to the initial establishment. The main contribution of the thesis to research on the discourse of intellectuals is the myths bearing on how intellectuals can or should act and how the representation can be described. The notion of the intellectuals can only be understood in an already existing discourse based on what an intellectual should do or be.

A taxonomia vegetal atualmente exige um grande esforço dos botânicos, desde o processo de aquisição do espécime até a morosa comparação com as amostras já catalogadas em um herbário. Nesse contexto, o projeto TreeVis surge como uma ferramenta para a identificação de vegetais por meio da análise de atributos foliares. Este trabalho é uma ramificação do projeto TreeVis e tem o objetivo de identificar vegetais por meio da análise do corte transversal de uma folha ampliado por um microscópio. Para tanto, foram extraídas assinaturas da cutícula, epiderme superior, parênquima paliçádico e parênquima lacunoso. Cada assinatura foi avaliada isoladamente por uma rede neural pelo método leave-one-out para verificar a sua capacidade de discriminar as amostras. Uma vez selecionados os vetores de características mais importantes, os mesmos foram combinados de duas maneiras. A primeira abordagem foi a simples concatenação dos vetores selecionados; a segunda, mais elaborada, reduziu a dimensionalidade (três atributos apenas) de algumas das assinaturas componentes antes de fazer a concatenação. Os vetores finais obtidos pelas duas abordagens foram testados com rede neural via leave-one-out para medir a taxa de acertos alcançada pelo sinergismo das assinaturas das diferentes partes da folha. Os experimentos consitiram na identificação de oito espécies diferentes e na identificação da espécie Gochnatia polymorpha nos ambientes Cerrado e Mata Ciliar, nas estações Chuvosa e Seca, e sob condições de Sol e Sombra / Currently, taxonomy demands a great effort from the botanists, ranging from the process of acquisition of the sample to the comparison with the species already classified in the herbarium. For this reason, the TreeVis is a project created to identify vegetal species using leaf attributes. This work is a part of the TreeVis project and aims at identifying vegetal species by analysing cross-sections of leaves amplified by a microscope. Signatures were extract from cuticle, adaxial epiderm, palisade parenchyma and sponge parenchyma. Each signature was analysed by a neural network with the leave-one-out method to verify its ability to identify species. Once the most important feature vectors were selected, two different approachs were adopted. The first was a simple concatenation of the selected feature vectors. The second, and more elaborated approach, consisted of reducing the dimensionality (three attributes only) of some component signatures before the feature vector concatenation. The final vectors obtained by these two approaches were tested by a neural network with leave-one-out to measure the correctness rate reached by the synergism of the signatures of different leaf regions. The experiments resulted in the identification of eight different species and the identification of the Gochnatia polymorpha species in Cerradão and Gallery Forest environments, Wet and Dry seasons, and under Sun and Shadow constraints

According to the American Heritage College Dictionary, the word “community” derives from the Latin roots: communitas and communis meaning “fellowship” and “common,” respectively. The word “amateur” derives from the Latin roots: amator meaning “lover.” A community of amateurs, who love to put on plays, exists within the Denton Community Theatre. Their first attempt at classical theatre was the January 2006 production of Romeo and Juliet, directed by Brad Speck. The film follows two actors (through observational shooting) - Kevin Wickersham, a waiter who is trying theatre for the first time, and Jeffrey Johnson, a theatre college student trying Shakespeare for the first time - as they relate to a process and community that is new to them.

Serial killers are present in most Media today: TV-shows, books, magazines, news shows and music. Research about them has been made in many fields, such as criminology, psychology and psychiatry. There is also research about the serial killer as a cultural being. In my paper I have looked into the serial killer in fiction. I have chosen to compare two novels that deal with the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The novels are Lotta Lotass’ Min röst skall nu komma från en annan plats i rummet and Joyce Carols Oates’ Zombie. By examining how the novels relate to the actual case and how they describe the violence and the person,I wanted to see if fiction can give a contrasting picture of how serial killers are usually described. I wanted to know if itis possible for fiction to represent serial killers as persons rather thanas inhuman monsters. My paper shows that although the novels differ in a lot of aspects, they both manage to contrast the picture of Dahmer. Zombieis more loosely based on Dahmer than Min röst, but focuses more on the violence. The Dahmer character in Zombie is more psychologically complex than the one in Min röst, but they both manage to describe the characters as human and they both avoid the stereotypical representation of serial killers.

Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-52).