Sea urchin embryos were very sensitive to Zn with an EC50 of 2.3 µmol/L (95% C.I. = 1.97–2.71 μmol/L) and LA50 of 4.8 (2.16-11.33) μmol/kg. Embryos displayed even higher sensitivity to Pb with an EC50 of 0.36 (0.25-0.49) µmol/L and LA50 of 1.92 (1.67-2.78) μmol/kg. The toxic effects of these metals were increased when tested in combination with extracts of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from marine and freshwater sources.

From studying larvae chronically exposed to Pb (60 µg/L), Zn (139 µg/L), Cu (6 µg/L) and Ni (47 µg/L) it was apparent that these metals rendered their toxic effects, at least in part, through disruption of Ca homeostasis. Unidirectional Ca uptake rates as well as Ca ATPase activity were significantly inhibited at various time points over development, in larvae in these metal exposures. This resulted in significantly lower levels of Ca accumulated in the larvae. Interestingly, larvae showed some capacity for recovery as Ca uptake rates and internal Ca levels returned to control values periodically over development. Also metal initially accumulated in the larvae often returned to control levels at 72 h of development with the exception of Pb, which was the only non essential metal out of the four tested. Metal effects on the whole body levels of three other ions (Na, K, Mg) as well as larval weight were modest. Surprisingly, acute exposure to much higher levels of these same metals at various stages during development had negligible inhibitory effects on unidirectional Ca uptake rate, suggesting a mechanism other than direct competition for the Ca uptake sites. We propose studying the toxicity of contaminants periodically over development as an effective way to detect sub-lethal effects, which may not be displayed at the traditional endpoint of 72 h.

Objectives: To gather perceptions of family physicians, community pharmacists and patients on the DIS being implemented in Ontario. Before such an expensive large-scale system is implemented, areas of concerns should be identified to maximize utilization of the system.

Study Design: Three different group-specific electronic and paper questionnaires

Setting: Family physicians, community pharmacists and patients. The aim was to receive 35 questionnaire responses from each group from Waterloo, Hamilton, Guelph and the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario.

Methods: A Literature search was conducted to study the current two-way electronic order communication systems and perceptions of prescribers, dispensers and patients on ePrescribing or eDispensing within primary care. Group-specific questionnaires, used with consent from a Scottish study, were altered and tailored for Ontarians, and distributed to all 3 groups via convenience and snowball sampling. Study findings were compared to the same Scottish study.

Results: The ‘adjusted’ response rates were 82% (patients), 72% (community pharmacists) and 60% (family physicians). All three groups were in favour of DIS being implemented in Ontario. Generally only the pharmacist group had any knowledge of DIS before this survey. Most respondents agreed that patient care would improve with the implementation of DIS.

Conclusion: Implementation of the DIS in Ontario is perceived as a good idea amongst all pharmacists, family physicians and patients. However, eHealth Ontario and MOHLTC need to increase awareness amongst all three, but mostly consumer and prescriber groups of the potential benefits of the DIS in order for them to accept and adapt to this new system.

Descriptive parameters derived from spectral (total signal intensity) and temporal (lifetime and Laguerre polynomial coefficients) analysis were used to evaluate the data. It was found that data were only compromised when the total signal intensity for the peak wavelength 455 nm fell blow 19.5 V·ns. The data did not exhibit any signs of photobleaching or pulse width broadening that would have otherwise distorted the lifetime from its true fluorescence response. Data for diseased tissue were limited so the clinical diagnosis was used to classify normal duodenum tissue from normal esophageal tissue. Over 400 pairs of parameters demonstrated k-means can identify duodenum tissue with 87.5 % sensitivity and 87.5 % specificity or better. With some dimensional axis transformations these results could be improved. The lifetimes are not factors here but the relative intensity and decay shape were. Protocols can be applied to diseased or other tissue types with little adaptation. Just a single set of parameters may hold the key to help surgeons choose optimum locations for traditional biopsies or perhaps one day replace them altogether.

In the first half of the dissertation, I outline how the historical avant-garde's revolutionary aim to merge art with everyday life presumes that life can offer a new foundation for social organization beyond liberalism’s institutional forms. Turning to the Futurists in Italy, I argue for a more complex understanding of how intertwined discourses of national organicism and a revolutionary vitalism resulted in their self-contradicting political program for anti-liberalist and, occasionally, anti-colonial revolution that frequently exceeded its own self-imposed national limits. The dissertation’s second half shows how modernism’s politics of life were eventually recuperated to a liberal consensus in the twentieth century, first in William James’s figure of a new social body traversed by overwhelming and destabilizing sensations, which required better systems of self-management, and which, I argue, anticipates the regulated national space of mid-century welfare state liberalism. Meanwhile, D. W. Griffith's compulsive return to scenes of rebirth in two films, Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), expresses an ideology of imperial rebirth that rearticulates liberalism as the management of sensations and populations in America’s turn of the century, transnational moment.

Focusing on two national contexts in which migration and imperialist expansion were transforming domestic politics, this study extends a recent turn towards transnational articulations of modernity, by reconsidering how the cultural forms emerging in these sites are marked by a biopolitical discourse that reimagines how social reproduction can take place.

My first chapter traces the theological landscape of early modern England, noting the continental Catholic and Protestant positions which defined the Reformational debates, as well as roughly locating the position of the English Church in the centre of these debates. While each of these doctrinal positions contains certain understandings about metaphorical thought, this chapter argues that it is the general uncertainty and the society-wide fluctuations between these ideas that defines my concept of the “theological aesthetic.” In my final two chapters I look at specific metaphors in the works of Robert Southwell (“Saint Peter’s Complaint,” “Christ’s bloody sweat,” and “The prodigal childs soule wracke”) and John Donne (“The Cross,” “Holy Sonnet 10: Batter my heart, three- personed God,” and “Holy Sonnet 2: I am a little world made cunningly”). Close analysis of these poems reveals that Southwell’s poetry often combines imagery and tropes in complicated ways to form multifaceted metaphors, while Donne’s poetry often functions as a meditation upon the possibilities of figurative language to create meaning.

This thesis does not attempt to form a comprehensive theory of early modern metaphor, but rather examines how the theological debates of the Reformation questioned the representational efficacy of figurative language, allowing metaphor to be redefined by the experiments of early modern poets like Southwell and Donne.

In this thesis we present three contributions to the field of digital IC design automation that leverage the presence of programmable delay tuning elements. These new automated approaches are geared toward three distinct objectives. The first one is to maximize the circuit performance using a scalable algorithmic framework. The second objective is to combat the lifetime performance degradation caused by circuit aging. The final objective is to improve the timing of the scan enable signal during the at-speed testing of digital ICs.

As the programmable delay tuning elements will become prevalent in the future generations of digital ICs, the contributions from this thesis will help improve the design methodologies that are expected to evolve in order to address at runtime the timing problems introduced by the increased fabrication process variability.

To address the research problem, the thesis proposes to model enterprise agents in SOA with a generic software agent called the Service Representative. This is a generic software agent which stays at the client side and can be customized by different service providers to process client data locally. Moreover, to employ a service representative, the thesis proposes a new type of web services called Task Services. While a traditional web service, called Data Service, processes client data completely at the server side, a task service is a web service with the capability of processing client data and resources partially or completely at the client side, using a Service Representative. Each task service assigns a task with three components to the generic service representative: task model, task knowledge, and task data. The task components are mapped to business components such as business process models, business rules and actions, and business data, where they can be efficiently transmitted by service messages.

The combination of a service representative and task services provides an executable platform for service providers at the client side. Moreover, the client does not need to reveal its data, and hence privacy and security are maintained. Large volume client data is processed locally, causing less network traffic. Finally, real-time and event-triggered web services can be developed, based on the proposed approach.

The main contributions and novelty of this research are: i) a domain independent computational model of enterprise agents in SOA to support a wide variety of client-processing tasks, ii) client- side web services which are compatible with typical server-side web services and comparable to other client-side processing technologies, iii) extensions of the SOA architecture by adding novel generic components including the service representative, the competition desk, and the service composition certifier, iv) provision of a formal model of client-side and server-side web services based on their construction of business components, v) empirical evaluations of the web service model in a number of different applications, using a prototype system, and vi) the application of the developed model to a number of target domains including the healthcare field. Furthermore, because client-side and server-side web services are complementary, a decision support model is provided that will assist service developers to decide upon the best service type for a web service.

The sphere formation capacity and expression of known BTIC markers in brain metastases was suggestive of a self-renewing population. Differentiation studies demonstrated that neither clinical samples nor NCI-H1915 cells had neural lineage potential. Intracranial xenotransplant of clinical samples and NCI-H1915 cells into NOD-SCID mice led to formation of multiple focal masses throughout the ventricles; the tumours were also serially transplantable, further implicating a TIC population. Of known BTIC markers, only CD15 expression levels and patterns were similar enough in clinical samples and NCI-H1915 cells to warrant prospective sorting experiments in the cell line. Use of CD15 failed to identify a CSC or TIC population in NCI-H1915 cells.

These findings suggest that a TIC population is present in brain metastases; however, this remains to be identified. It is recommended that due to the limitations of cell surface markers, the study of brain metastasis should use a selective gene expression approach, in order to target genes and pathways essential to metastasis. It was shown that NCI-H1915 cells could be useful for such an approach, studying the effects on proliferation, sphere formation, and tumour formation capacity of brain metastases from the lung. Further study using this model could ultimately lead to the disruption of pathways essential to the metastatic process, transforming a uniformly fatal disease into a more localized and treatable one.

In the first phase of the work gold was used as a model substrate. ATH was attached by three different methods: direct attachment, attachment via a short chain linker, and attachment via PEO. Analogous heparin-modified surfaces were prepared for comparison. Surfaces were characterized using contact angle measurements, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ellipsometry and quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM). The data suggested that the heparin moiety of ATH was directed away from the surface, in an orientation allowing ready interaction with blood components. The ATH-modified surfaces showed greater antithrombin binding than the heparin-modified surfaces as measured by radioactive labelling and Western blotting analysis. Antithrombin binding was found to occur predominantly through the active pentasaccharide sequence of the heparin moiety of ATH, demonstrating the potential of the ATH for catalytic anticoagulant function. From measurements of the ratio of total heparin to active heparin (anti-factor Xa assay), ATH-modified surfaces were shown to have greater bioactivity than heparin-modified surfaces. The adhesion of platelets to gold and modified gold surfaces was measured from flowing whole blood in vitro using a cone-and-plate device and was lower on all of the modified surfaces compared to bare gold. PEO-ATH surfaces were also shown to prolong plasma clotting times compared to control and heparinized surfaces.

In subsequent work, surface modification methods were developed for polyurethane (PU) substrates. Isocyanate groups were introduced into the PU surface for attachment of PEO and ATH was attached to the “distal” end of the PEO. Surfaces using PEO of varying molecular weight and end group were investigated to determine conditions for maximum anticoagulant activity and minimum non-specific protein adsorption. Surfaces were characterized using contact angle measurements and XPS, and protein interactions were studied using radiolabelling. The optimum balance of bioactivity and protein resistance was found to occur with PEO of low to mid range MW (ie. MW 300-600). These PU-PEO-ATH surfaces showed low fibrinogen adsorption and high selectivity for antithrombin. Consistent with results using gold substrates, platelet adhesion remained low when ATH was attached to polyurethane surfaces grafted with PEO. A hetero-bifunctional amino-carboxy-PEO (PEO-COOH surface) was compared with a “conventional” homo-bifunctional dihydroxy-PEO (PEO-OH surface) with respect to their effectiveness as linkers for attachment of ATH. The PEO-COOH-ATH surface was shown to bind slightly greater amounts of antithrombin, indicating higher catalytic anticoagulant activity. Thrombin binding was measured to determine whether the surfaces could provide direct anticoagulant activity. The PEO-OH-ATH surface bound high amounts of thrombin, indicating potential for direct thrombin inhibition. It is hypothesized that the PEO properties (MW and functional end group) may have an effect on the orientation of ATH on the surface thus influencing its "preference" for catalytic vs. direct anticoagulant function.

This thesis provides new information regarding the interactions of proteins and platelets with ATH immobilized on biomaterials. ATH-modified surfaces were superior to analogous heparin-modified surfaces with respect to antithrombin binding and catalytic anticoagulant ability. Immobilized ATH was also shown to bind thrombin, suggesting potential for direct anticoagulant activity. It can thus be seen as a unique surface modifier with dual functioning anticoagulant activity. The modification of polyurethane with ATH using PEO as a protein resistant linker-spacer, may provide a material of improved antithrombogenicity for the construction of blood contacting devices.

Measurement uncertainty can be due to various sources from environmental surroundings to instrument settings and the components of the system itself. In many scenarios, inaccuracies are random and cannot be completely resolved. In this thesis, a new tuner characterization technique that improves source tuner characterization is presented. Additionally, a new gain compensation technique is applied to measured noise powers that attempt to improve noise parameter extraction accuracy is proposed. The tuner characterization technique is evaluated against a current industry solution and the affects of the gain compensation technique is evaluated using a newly developed figure of merit. This research work concludes that a direct noise power correction is valid and necessary to further improve noise parameter accuracy. However, the proposed technique when applied resulted in minimal change to the overall noise parameter data. It is found that that source termination selection and total points used for fitting continue to be the major source of uncertainty for noise parameter accuracy.

Water is used by Herbert to indicate his own sense of defilement and it becomes a sign of God's wrath with the power to destroy corruption. At the very moment of destruction, however, water also symbolizes purification and the establishment of new life. Similarly, fire destroys and recreates, and blood, too, defiles and purifies. Moreover, contact with each of these three symbols reveals a glimpse of the character of the holy; the paradoxical qualities inherent in the symbols are a reflection of the paradoxical qualities of the divine nature itself. Finally, each of the symbols transforms Herbert's world by abolishing the divisions between the sacred and profane, the temporal and the eternal, even between life and death itself. Through water, fire, and blood, all things are made new.

In the Introduction to the thesis I define, and demonstrate the connections between, the terms which are most important to this study. They are 'imagination,' 'vision,' 'empathy,' 'sympathy,' 'illusion,' and 'delusion.' The thesis is divided into four chapters which follow Joyce's patterning for the gradual maturation of the central characters. The thesis also attempts to show a movement from the young and hopeful imaginations of the earlier stories, through a steady lessening of the characters' powers of imagination and a descent into illusion and delusion, until "The Dead" offers a positive example of the visionary potential of the imagination.

It is my hope that this thesis will occasion a reevaluation of the central importance of character to Dubliners and that it will create a heightened awareness that, above all else, Joyce valued the individual's powers of imagination and vision.

In the study's Introduction, the terms 'mythic component' and 'realistic component' are defined, and their applicability to Lawrence's fiction is explained. Lawrence's own definition of authorial immorality is then explored, and the study's primary argument, that Lawrence's use of mythic and realistic components in the Ladybird tales is immoral by his own standards, is stated. Each of the three chapters is devoted to supporting this argument as it pertains to one of the Ladybird novellas.

It is hoped that this thesis will create an awareness that the world-view presented in the Ladybird novellas is not so much an integral part of the art as it is an imposition on the art by the author.

The dominant personality types at McMaster University as determined by the 70 participants are: INFP, ENFJ, and ISTJ. In type preference it was found that 68% of the participants prefer the attitude of Introversion (I), 70% prefer the perceptive function of Intuition (N), 54.3% prefer the judging function of Thinking (T), and 61.4% prefer the orientation of Judging (J). The following personality preferences were found to be correlated with the CAVE’s explanatory dichotomies: Internal/External with Sensing (S) / Judging (J), Stable/Unstable with Extraversion (E) / Sensing, Global/Specific with Sensing/Thinking, and Controllable/Uncontrollable with Sensing.

Of the 630 submitted social media content, 68.4% of them were found describing positive events. It was found that 92.1% of the social media content contained an optimistic explanatory style. These findings strongly suggest that the majority of content written and uploaded on social media is positive and that personality type plays a minor role in content and explanations produced. It is concluded from these results that social media is an inherently positive medium for university students. The primary reason for this is believed to be a result of social media being an immensely public sphere forcing all individuals, regardless of personality type, to engage in higher levels of self-monitoring.