A tale of two childhoods : the virtual child and the real child in Romania, 1970s and 1980s

This thesis deals with the everyday use of propaganda in Romania, between 1971 and 1989. It explores the way in which the propaganda discourse of the Romanian Communist Party was disseminated through popular culture artifacts targeting children: Pioneers' magazines, textbooks, Almanacs and moralizing stories. These artifacts configured the image of a model child, whose preoccupations complied with the requirements of the Romanian Communist Party and communicated a set of recommended practices, to be followed by Romanian children. At the same time, the thesis incorporates the response of the actual children to these desirable practices, and implicitly, their response to state propaganda.

The effects of a general excercise program on task self-efficacy and social physique anxiety in older adults

Older adults represent the most sedentary segment of the adult population, and thus it is critical to investigate factors that influence exercise behaviour for this age group. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of a general exercise program, incorporating cardiovascular, strength, flexibility, and balance components, on task selfefficacy and SPA in older adult men and women. Participants (n=114, Mage = 67 years) were recruited from the Niagara region and randomly assigned to a 12-week supervised exercise program or a wait-list control. Task self-efficacy and SPA measures were taken at baseline and program end. The present study found that task self-efficacy was a significant predictor of leisure time physical activity for older adults. In addition, change in task self-efficacy was a significant predictor of change in SPA. The findings of this study suggest that sources of task self-efficacy should be considered for exercise interventions targeting older adults.

Protein subcellular targeting inTrichoderma aggressivum f. aggressivum

Trichoderma aggressivum f. aggressivum is a filamentous soil fungus. Green mold disease of commercial mushrooms caused by this species in North America has resulted in millions of dollars in lost revenue within the mushroom growing industry. Research on the molecular level of T aggressivum have jus t begun with the goal of understanding the functions of each gene and protein, and their expression control. Protein targeting has not been well studied in this species yet. Therefore, the intent of this study was to test the protein localization and production levels in T aggressivum with green fluorescent protein (GFP) with an intron and tagged with either nuclear localization signal (NLS) or an endoplasmic reticulum retention signal (KDEL). Two GFP constructs (with and without the intron) were used as controls in this study. All four constructs were successfully transferred into T aggressivum and all modified strains showed similar growth characteristics as the wild type non-transformed isolate. GFP expression was detected from all modified T aggressivum with confocal microscopy and the expression was similar in all four strains. The intron tested in this study had no or very minor effects as GFP expression was similar with or without it. The GFP signal increased over a 5 day period for all transformants, while the GFP to total protein ratio decreased over the same period for all transformants. The GFP-KDEL transformant showed similar protein expression level and localization as did the control transformant lacking the KDEL retention signal. The GFP-NLS transformant similarly failed to localize GFP into nucleus as fluorescence with this strain was virtually identical to the GFP transformant lacking the NLS. Thus, future research is required to find effective localization signals for T aggressivum.

Application of thermal ion-molecule reactions in tackling spectroscopic inferences in inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

Part I: Ultra-trace determination of vanadium in lake sediments: a performance comparison using O2, N20, and NH3 as reaction gases in ICP-DRC-MS Thermal ion-molecule reactions, targeting removal of specific spectroscopic interference problems, have become a powerful tool for method development in quadrupole based inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) applications. A study was conducted to develop an accurate method for the determination of vanadium in lake sediment samples by ICP-MS, coupled with a dynamic reaction cell (DRC), using two differenvchemical resolution strategies: a) direct removal of interfering C10+ and b) vanadium oxidation to VO+. The performance of three reaction gases that are suitable for handling vanadium interference in the dynamic reaction cell was systematically studied and evaluated: ammonia for C10+ removal and oxygen and nitrous oxide for oxidation. Although it was able to produce comparable results for vanadium to those using oxygen and nitrous oxide, NH3 did not completely eliminate a matrix effect, caused by the presence of chloride, and required large scale dilutions (and a concomitant increase in variance) when the sample and/or the digestion medium contained large amounts of chloride. Among the three candidate reaction gases at their optimized Eonditions, creation of VO+ with oxygen gas delivered the best analyte sensitivity and the lowest detection limit (2.7 ng L-1). Vanadium results obtained from fourteen lake sediment samples and a certified reference material (CRM031-040-1), using two different analytelinterference separation strategies, suggested that the vanadium mono-oxidation offers advantageous performance over the conventional method using NH3 for ultra-trace vanadium determination by ICP-DRC-MS and can be readily employed in relevant environmental chemistry applications that deal with ultra-trace contaminants.Part II: Validation of a modified oxidation approach for the quantification of total arsenic and selenium in complex environmental matrices Spectroscopic interference problems of arsenic and selenium in ICP-MS practices were investigated in detail. Preliminary literature review suggested that oxygen could serve as an effective candidate reaction gas for analysis of the two elements in dynamic reaction cell coupled ICP-MS. An accurate method was developed for the determination of As and Se in complex environmental samples, based on a series of modifications on an oxidation approach for As and Se previously reported. Rhodium was used as internal standard in this study to help minimize non-spectral interferences such as instrumental drift. Using an oxygen gas flow slightly higher than 0.5 mL min-I, arsenic is converted to 75 AS160+ ion in an efficient manner whereas a potentially interfering ion, 91Zr+, is completely removed. Instead of using the most abundant Se isotope, 80Se, selenium was determined by a second most abundant isotope, 78Se, in the form of 78Se160. Upon careful selection of oxygen gas flow rate and optimization ofRPq value, previous isobaric threats caused by Zr and Mo were reduced to background levels whereas another potential atomic isobar, 96Ru+, became completely harmless to the new selenium analyte. The new method underwent a strict validation procedure where the recovery of a suitable certified reference material was examined and the obtained sample data were compared with those produced by a credible external laboratory who analyzed the same set of samples using a standardized HG-ICP-AES method. The validation results were satisfactory. The resultant limits of detection for arsenic and selenium were 5 ng L-1 and 60 ng L-1, respectively.