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Abstract This dissertation explores how the British Columbia Muslim School (BCMS) re-sponds to the tension between preserving and promoting an Islamic worldview and values and the challenge to correspond to the norms and values of the dominant soci-ety in the context of Canada’s multicultural society. The dissertation further focuses on how the school teaches students the principles of Islam to strengthen their faith and identity while providing a safe environment in which to practice their faith and adopt an Islamic way of life. It also discusses the challenges faced by students and teachers of the BCMS in practicing Islam in public. In addition, the dissertation analyses perspectives on developing multicultural com-petence; how the BCMS deals with the issue of isolation, and the compatibility of an Islamic education with Canada’s multicultural system. This dissertation argues for the development of a more open and inclusive Islamic education curriculum for the BCMS as an alternative to the present exclusive cur-riculum that, as Ramadan (2004) observes, emphasises the differences between Islam and the mainstream society. If there is a hope of creating better integrated students, the Islamic education curriculum should find a balance between preserving students’ beliefs and Islamic identity, and enhancing their multicultural competence. To this end, the Islamic education program should expand the concept of respect to in-clude non-Muslims’ beliefs and cultures, and define good Islamic practices to include good citizenship in the multicultural context. In return, this dissertation argues, Canada’s public schools, government agencies, and media outlets should develop policies aimed at challenging Islamophobia and present Islam from a perspective of peace and social justice, and not from the nega-tive images which present Islam as a religion based on extremism (Zine, 2004). Finally, the dissertation offers some recommendations for finding a balance between preserving students’ faith and identity, and enhancing their multicultural competence.

This research explores the opportunity for administrative reform in the government of Bahrain. In particular it offers an awareness and better understanding of how political elites construe and enact the principles of “NPM” in public sector organisations,explores the institutional capability of Bahrain’s public sector to initiate and sustain reform, and develops a conceptual model of reform applicable to Bahrain. In order to do so, it investigates the drivers of administrative change in Bahrain, examines how elements of NPM express themselves in management practice in Bahrain’s public sector organisations, and identifies facilitators and challenges to reform. Taking an interpretive approach, data was collected through a survey of ministries and semi-structured interviews with change leaders. Moreover, a case study was undertaken in the attempt to introduce a Performance and Programme Budgeting System (PPBS) in ministries, as a test case for an NPM-oriented initiative transferred outside its origin context. Drivers of reform were found to include, first and foremost, internal and external socio-economic forces, such as globalisation and demographic change, and, secondly, pressure from citizens for greater transparency and responsiveness. NPM elements expressed themselves to varying degrees in five key dimensions: organisational structure, the decision-making process, a movement to customer-driven, output-based funding,improvement of HRM performance and, finally, quality management in pursuit of efficiency in public services. However, certain constraints, including a lack of commitment from the political-administrative leadership and a lack of the prerequisite preparation, have impeded implementation. The research builds upon and extends existing theorising about NPM and draws practical implications for subsequent reform initiatives, in Bahrain and beyond.

The aim of this research is to investigate the hydraulic and thermal conductivities of different types of soils. These two parameters are the main ones controlling the heat flow in the ground beneath a building. Therefore in this thesis, a system, including a testing and analysis methodology has been designed that will allow the construction of new laboratory apparatus in order to determine the required thermal parameters and thus reduce the uncertainty in the design of energy piles. This thesis presents and discusses the effects of physical properties on determining both the hydraulic and thermal conductivity of soils. Two flexible wall permeameters using the constant rate of flow technique were used to determine the hydraulic conductivity of two types of clayey soil. This technique proved to be accurate and produced results in a relatively short time. One of the, aims of this research was to develop a better technique for testing coarse soils; therefore these permeameters were developed to work using falling head technique. The falling head technique proved to be accurate and produced results in relatively shorter time than the constant flow technique. Tests at low and high hydraulic gradient and over a range of effective stress show the hydraulic conductivity varies with these two parameters. A part of the thesis describes the methods of interpreting the results from both the constant flow and falling head techniques, also it describes how the falling head tests can be interpreted as a constant head test for clayey soils. A comparison between the results showed the advantages of using the new systems. It is also demonstrated how the new system can determine the hydraulic conductivity of a soil in a relatively short time of one hour. The second aim of the research was to design a simple device to determine the thermal conductivity of soils. Two thermal conductivity cell devices were designed. A test procedure and its method of interpretation are discussed and presented. The thermal conductivity results were compared with the published results and proved to be within the same range (0.15 to 4 W/m.°C). These experimental results were also compared and discussed with the predicted results produced by different thermal conduction models. The thermal results for deferent types of soils can be used to model the heat transfer between the ground and the energy piles, in which the ground can be used as a heat sink or source. It is believed that the water content of the soils together with their mineralogical constituents can be particularly valuable, not only as a basis for understanding the behaviour of the soils but also to enable a reasonably good estimate of the thermal conductivity using the thermal conduction models.

The present investigation on the biology of Bithynia tentaculata has two aims. Firstly to report on the life cycle, growth, reproduction and other aspects of the biology of this snail, and secondly to identify the larval trematode infection of the snail and to report on the incidence, seasonal variation and the development of these infections. The study area was a small artificial pond in Sefton Park, Liverpool. The biology of the snail was investigated by regular sampling of the habitat for 22 months, the snails were measured and the breeding activity was assessed. Laboratory experiments were performed on the growth, reproduction and natural diet of the snail. The larval trematode . infection of the snail was investigated and experimental infections were made. A monthly survey of the incidence of these infections was made for 13 months. The following results were obtained on the biology of the snail; 1) Growth of the snails practically ceases in the winter and the wintering population resumes growth in the spring.. The new .'F generation of snails äppears in June and growth is rapid during the summer. 2) The snails begin to breed in mid-April and active breeding is limited to April-June, but sporadic egg-laying occurs in July and August. 3) There is a minimum breeding size of the snails which varied from one year to the next depending on the growth rate. In addition to size, there is a minimum period of five to six months for maturity (oviposition) of the snails. 4) The onset of egg-laying is controlled by temperature, and the snails did not oviposit at 10-120C. 5) The snails show optimal growth when fed on detritus, and algae, growth is retarded on a diet of detritus alone. 6) Winter and unfavourable conditions cause aggregation of " the snails, and organic pollution is detrimental to their distribution within the habitat. 7) The life span of Bithynia tentaculata is about 14 to 23 months, and possibly few survive to breed for a second season. Results obtained on trematode infections of Bithynia tentaculata show the following:. 1) Six species of cercariae infect the snail, a Monostome cercaria, three Gymnocephalous cercariae, a Xiphidiocercaria and a pharyngeal longifurcate monoctome Furcocercaria. ti 2) One of these cercariae (i. e, Cercaria helvetica XIX) is a first record in British freshwater. Existing descriptions of some of the cercariae are expanded, and new descriptions of some developmental stages. are added. 3) The life cycle of Notocotylus imbricatus is traced and metacercarial infectivity is demonstrated soon afer encystment. The development of Notocotylus imbricatus in the snail host is followed and descriptions of the developmental stales are presented. 4) Multiple cercariae infections are generally rare, yet , It certain combinations of double infections are more frequent than expected. 5) The total cercariae infection of the snail, as well as four individual species of cercariae, show biannual peaks of incidence. No biannual peaks of metacercariae infections were detected. 6) Many cercariae infections enter the new generation of snails in their first summer. Some of these infections may mature in the same season, but most of the infections are carried through the winter in an immature state. New infections enter the snails in the spring, but few infections enter the snails in their second summer of life.

A method stereotype is a concise high-level description of the role of a method in a software system with respect to its context within a class. Method stereotype information can be used to lay the groundwork for more sophisticated forms of design recovery such as determining class stereotypes or improving the precision of metrics calculations. However, most software systems do not document this information explicitly in the source code and while it might seem simple to document such information manually, it can become costly to do so, and maintain, in a large software system. To address this problem, previous work on stereotypes introduced Stereocode, a tool to automatically identify method and class stereotypes in software systems. Stereocode utilizes static code analysis techniques and heuristics to extract method and class information from the code. Stereotypes are then calculated and assigned to each method and class. However, the previous versions of Stereocode have limitations, such as processing one class at a time and supporting a single programming language (e.g., C++ or Java). Additionally, these earlier versions did not account for all the information in the class, relied on a number of assumptions, and performed very basic static analysis. The work in this thesis presents two main contributions to the field of software engineering. First, it introduces a new version of Stereocode to support a more comprehensive and accurate analysis of software. The new Stereocode can perform an in-depth, language-specific analysis, to generate both method and class stereotypes for entire software systems written in C++, C#, or Java. Moreover, the tool can handle features that are unique to each language including friend functions, multi-level inheritance, properties, partial classes, generics, structs, and interfaces. The second contribution is an empirical study that investigates method and class stereotype distributions across software systems written in C#, Java, and C++. The study explores whether systems from different categories, such as GUI libraries, cluster together based on their domain, or the language used. The findings from this study provide valuable insights into stereotype distributions and their implications for improving software design and documentation.