VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Hidden Schools: Mapping Greek Heritage Language Education in Canada
Keywords: community-based research
Greek language and culture
Hellenic diaspora
heritage/minority/international language education
language maintenance
multiculturalism in Canada

Since the languages of immigrant communities in Canada are categorized as “non-official”, our government is under no obligation to contribute to the perpetuation of these languages. Furthermore, education, in general, is a provincial responsibility. Thus, no formal reporting and documentation of Heritage/International Language Programs takes place at the national level. Given this situation, the various ethnic community groups are left alone with the task of protecting their valuable linguistic and cultural heritages. Inevitably, without national information sharing or support from the Canadian government, HL policy and programming are in a precarious state. My study involves my participation in a community-based research project that aims to locate, map, assess and develop the Greek HLE resources in Canada. Theoretically based on the concepts of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Language Maintenance, my investigation (a) addresses the question of access to Greek language and culture education by exploring the programs and resources currently available to HL learners; (b) formulates an asset-based model to analyze the capacity of the Greek community's HLE system and proposes changes for its upgrade; and (c) develops a database to allow community members, HLE stakeholders and researchers to search for information about Greek language schools, community organizations and cultural events across Canada. Overall, this investigation addresses the retention and development of Canada’s cultural and linguistic resources through HLE. My findings demonstrate that for Heritage Languages to be maintained in Canada beyond the third generation, communities need to assume responsibility and foster three necessary conditions for educational success in the 21st century: access, innovation and motivation. As a starting point, I suggest locating, sharing and developing HLE assets through collaborations with stakeholders, including universities, governments, interested professionals and funding agencies. This study not only brings into prominence Greek HLE in Canada, but also underscores the passion and determination of immigrant communities to fully participate in mainstream society without diminishing their cultural and linguistic capital.
Supporting English Language Learners with an Adaptive Mobile Application
Keywords: affect
communication
ecological approach
mobile assisted language learning
vocabulary learning

English language learners (ELL) have dedicated considerable time and effort to the development of their language proficiency. This has included the use of a variety of mobile assisted language learning (MALL) tools that are either unproven or that have undergone limited evaluations of their effectiveness. The majority of these evaluations have been performed with beginner foreign-language learners at the post-secondary level. Moreover, dedicated MALL tools rarely support the learner’s ability to communicate in English. I propose and demonstrate the feasibility of an adaptive MALL approach that aims to scaffold ELL vocabulary and communication needs. This scaffolding recommends learning materials to ELLs by employing the ecological approach to dynamically reason over logs of learner interactions with a MALL tool. The highly personalized approach to supporting learners that is operationalized through this tool was developed following user-centered design principles. The development of the learning content generation and recommendation mechanisms that are included as part of this approach to supporting English language learners was validated through two studies. An additional exploratory evaluation of this adaptive approach to supporting ELL communication and learning activities was performed before evaluating its influence on ELL vocabulary knowledge, communication, and affect through two studies. These studies considered the effectiveness of the proposed MALL approach from multiple perspectives. The first took place in a Japanese high school and focused on the relationship between student vocabulary knowledge and system usage. The second involved advanced English language learners and took place in the greater Toronto area. This study aimed to determine the relationships among system usage, user communicative success, and user affect. The work presented in this thesis shows that the use of the proposed approach can support ELL communication, vocabulary development, and affect. The evaluation of this approach allowed the creation of models that predict learning outcomes based on learners’ MALL usage and knowledge. Combining the results of these studies with those of the formative evaluations, indicates that a mobile tool that employs the ecological approach to learner modeling can support the learning activities, vocabulary learning outcomes, affect, and communication of English language learners.
Anything can Happen: Everyday Morality and Social Theory in Russia
Keywords: epistemology
ethics
ethnography
generation
postsocialism

The language and the sensibilities of social theory are used differently, and to different purposes, by experts and “laymen.” But they are increasingly shared, challenging the “meta” status of social theory vis-à-vis analytics employed by the subjects of anthropological analysis. This dissertation draws on ten months of ethnographic study in Russia, a country that offers a unique perspective on the issue of epistemology and native social theory. Focusing on those born in the 1970s, it illuminates the life-worlds of people who have lived through profound social and historical transformation. This postsocialist space has been shaped by decades of mass indoctrination with a sociocentric, socialist, and modernist social philosophy, producing a kind of “vernacular Marxism” among its population. This dissertation examines vernacular Marxism in popular discourse, especially in talk about morality, the constitution of subjectivity, and techniques of the self. It shows how something often deemed to be an ideological or performative aspect of the “has-been” Soviet project continues to shape everyday morality and practical ethics. Vernacular Marxism considers not only the tension between the individual and society, but also between two forms of communal life, characterised here as the Collective and Communitas. Subjectivity is commonly perceived through a material-metaphysical lens as a resource and an exchange of “energy.” Consumption and the relationship to material objects are complicated by anti-fetishist imperatives. Everyday reasoning is influenced by dialectics, modernisation, and historical materialism. Asserting that vernacular Marxism is more than a “local ideology,” this work discusses the epistemological and ethical questions that arise when some routine “meta” analytics are applied to social reality that is already structured by social reflexivity. Rather than evaluating the fit between these analytics and social reality, this dissertation argues that scholars must be attuned to the mutual dislocation of their own knowledge and that of their “informants,” all within a flat epistemological and ethical hierarchy.
Investigation of Biological Process for the Conversion of Bark Biomass to Bio-based Polyphenols
Keywords: Bark depolymerization
Laccases
Microbial strain selection
Monofloral honey
natural mediator substitute
Polyphenols and Polyaromatics

Due to increasing waste production and disposal problems arising from synthetic polymer production, there is a critical need to substitute these materials with biodegradable and renewable resources. The concept of green polymers has become more appealing due to the presence of large volumes of processing residuals from the timber and pulp industries. This, in turn, supports the idea of developing new polymers based on bark extractives. In this thesis, three comparative treatments i.e., enzymatic, alkaline, and UV/H2O2, have been conducted for the extraction of beetle infested lodgepole pine (BILP) and mixed aspen barks polyphenolic extractives. Use of laccases as biocatalysts to affect and enhance the catalytic properties of enzymes has been shown to be a promising solution for bark depolymerization. Furthermore, laccases are suitable for biotechnological applications that transform bark biomass into high valued bark biochemicals. The industrial and biotechnological application of ligninases is constantly increasing due to their multiple uses and applications in a diversity of processes. Bark depolymerization was conducted in submerged fermentation (SF) and we identified polyphenols/polyaromatic compounds after four weeks when the production media (PM) was induced with 50mg/100ml of each type of bark during the lag-phase. During SF where honey was used as a natural mediator substitute (NMS) in the PM, laccase activities were about 1.5 times higher than those found in comparable cultures without honey in the PM. These samples were analyzed by GC-MS. The laccase enzyme was purified using UNO sphere Q-1 anion exchange chromatography and the molecular weight was determined to be ~50kDa on 10% SDS-PAGE and laccase kinetic parameters including maximal velocity (Vmax), Michaelis constant (Km), and turnover number (Kcat) were calculated from a Lineweaver Burk plot. All calculated kinetic parameters of the laccase activity are substrate (ABTS) specific. Py-GC-MS analysis of bark showed differing effects of fungal activity on bark composition. Polyphenolics were separated in reverse-phase mode using HPLC with two selected wavelengths of 290 and 340 nm to improve separation. The replacement of conventional natural mediators (NM) by monofloral honey in production media, and investigation of the effect of fungi-derived laccases on bark polyphenols are studied for the first time by this thesis work.
Northern High Latitude Climate Variability of the Last Millenium
Keywords: attribution
climate change
climate variability
Greenland ice sheet
last millennium
simulation

This work explores the causes of northern high-latitude climate variations over the last millennium, and industrial and future periods. Attribution studies are performed on a suite of global climate simulations, and four historical reconstructions of Greenland surface temperatures and precipitation (two of which are new to this work). The simulations followed the protocols of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project 3 and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5. At least half of the multi-decadal variability in simulated Greenland climate variations over the last millennium is reproduced by a linear, empirically-generated model including terms for volcanic emissions, solar insolation changes (including total solar irradiance and orbital components) and an index associated with latitudinal shifts in the North Atlantic jet. Empirical model parameters are obtained by regressing simulated Greenland temperatures and precipitation against time series for each of the response variables. Greenhouse gas radiative forcing changes are unimportant to simulated Greenland conditions over the last millennium, although they dominate after the mid-20th century. Most of the historical Greenland climate reconstructions are restricted to the industrial period, due to a lack of spatially-comprehensive climate records. They exhibit substantial differences in the timing, phasing and amplitudes of past climate variations, due to regional sensitivities in the source data and the reconstruction methodologies. Reconstructions indicate that Greenland temperatures did not begin to follow hemispheric greenhouse gas warming patterns until the mid-1990s. This discrepancy indicates either that the warming hiatus was associated with internal climate variability, or that the simulations are missing processes important to Greenland climate. For example, indirect effects of anthropogenic aerosols are not captured in the climate model employed here. All of the external climate forcings included in the empirical models initiate significant simulated climate responses in a number of northern hemispheric regions over the last millennium. These forcing responses are not independent, however, except in Tropical regions. Particularly in the Arctic and North Atlantic, nonlinear interactions between the forcings work together to generate the transition between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age. Internal variability also plays an important role, even on hemispheric averages.
Signal Strength and SNR Enhancement Techniques for Frequency Domain Photoacoustic Radar Imaging
Keywords: Frequency Domain Photoacoustic Radar
Gruneisen parameter
Imaging Depth
Photoacoustic Imaging
Signal to noise ratio
Temperature

A method for improving photoacoustic imaging depth and signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio through an externally imposed thermal field has been developed. Uniform heating, microwave and ultrasound localized heating have been applied for PA image improvement. The microwave or ultrasound-induced elevated temperature was experimentally measured using thermocouples in ex-vivo bovine muscle. The measured temperature on the heated surface spot induced by microwaves and the temperature induced at the heated center of a HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) focal area were compared with the theoretically estimated temperature. The analytical method showed excellent agreement with the measured results. The experimental results with uniform heating showed that the maximum imaging depth was increased by 20% by raising the temperature of absorbing biotissues uniformly from 37 to 43℃, and the SNR was increased by 8%. The microwave assisted localized heating can increase the imaging depth by 11%, and the SNR by 5%. The parameters making up the Gruneisen constant were also investigated. The studies showed that the Gruneisen constant of biotissues increases with temperature. The thermal expansion coefficient contributes to the increase of the Gruneisen constant with temperature more than other relevant parameters (the specific heat capacity and the speed of sound) of ex-vivo bovine muscle. In addition to the thermal method, wavelength modulated differential PA radar is proposed for improving signal-to-noise ratio and early cancer diagnosis. This method is based on harmonic wavelength modulation which results in differential PA radar signal to enhance early cancer detection. Two chirp-waveforms out-of-phase modulating 680 nm and 800 nm laser beams can effectively suppress the background noise, greatly enhance the SNR, detect small variations in hemoglobin oxygen saturation levels, and be able to distinguish malignant tumors. The experiments were conducted at different hemoglobin oxygen saturation (StO2) levels of fresh sheep blood. Experimental results demonstrated the superior sensitivity by the differential PA method over other methods.
Nanomedicines and Combination Therapy of Doxorubicin and Olaparib for Treatment of Ovarian Cancer
Keywords: doxorubicin
nanomedicine
olaparib
ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in women of developed countries, with dismal survival improvements achieved in the past three decades. Specifically, current chemotherapy strategies for second-line treatment of relapsed ovarian cancer are unable to effectively treat recurrent disease. This thesis aims to improve the therapeutic outcome associated with recurrent ovarian cancer by (1) creating a 3D cell screening method as an in vitro model of the disease (2) developing a nanomedicine of doxorubicin (DOX) that is more efficacious than PEGylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD / Doxil ® ) and (3) evaluating additional strategies to enhance treatment efficacy such as mild hyperthermia (MHT) and combination therapy with inhibitors of the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase enzyme family (PARP). Overall, this work demonstrates the use of 3D multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) as an in vitro drug testing platform which more closely reflects the clinical presentation of recurrent ovarian cancer relative to traditional monolayer cultures. With the use of this technology, it was found that tissue penetration of drug is not only an issue for large tumors, but also for invisible, microscopic lesions that result from metastasis or remain following cytoreductive surgery. A novel block-copolymer micelle formulation for DOX was developed and fulfilled the goal of iicontrolling drug release while enhancing intratumoral distribution and MCTS bioavailability of DOX, which resulted in a significant improvement in growth inhibition, relative to PLD. MHT appeared to enhance drug accumulation in MCTS in the short term, but not after 48 h of drug treatment. Drug combination studies of DOX together with the PARP inhibitor, olaparib (OLP, Lynparza ® ) were conducted in 2D monolayers and 3D MCTS. In these studies, the effectiveness of the DOX:OLP combination therapy in monolayers and MCTS was found to be ratio dependent such that equimolar ratios resulted in an additive effect, while a greater level of synergy was observed with more extreme ratios. The synergistic effect observed bears promise for future evaluation in vivo which warrants an appropriate delivery method to ensure that the determined molar ratios of both drugs accumulate at the tumor as such, despite differences in the pharmacokinetic profile of each drug, respectively.
Novel Mouse Models to Reveal Pathogenic Determinants that Contribute to Gonococcal Infection and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
Keywords: female reproductive cycle
gonorrhea
mouse models
Opa-CEACAM interactions
pelvic inflammatory disease

Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) is an obligate human pathogen that causes gonorrhea, one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted infections worldwide. In women, endocervical infections are often asymptomatic; however, bacterial progression into the uterus and oviducts can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), an umbrella term used to describe a spectrum of inflammatory conditions of the upper genital tract. Although a mouse model for long term colonization of the lower genital tract has been previously established, there has been little consideration of Ngo infections involving the upper genital tract. As a result, host factors that influence disease outcome, which can range from mild discomfort to severe inflammation, pain, reproductive tract scarring and even infertility, remain elusive. My thesis work first aimed to establish a mouse model that can be used to study upper genital tract infection by N. gonorrhoeae. I reveal that the immunopathology associated with ascendant Ngo infections, as well as the development of a humoral response in the long term, are largely determined by the stage of the female reproductive cycle. Next, to examine how gonococcal Opa protein-mediated association with human CEACAM receptor proteins impacts infection and disease, I took advantage of “humanized” transgenic mouse lines that express various combinations of human CEACAMs. I show that CEACAM expression within the female genital tract of mice reflects that seen in humans, and that the spectrum of CEACAMs expressed influences colonization, clearance, and PID symptoms associated with gonococcal infection. Taken together, my findings provide new models to study infection within the genital tract, and use these to provide novel insights regarding factors that affect colonization and disease development.
Language Expressiveness and Quality of Service for Content-based Publish/Subscribe Systems
Keywords: content-based matching
distributed systems
event processing
publish/subscribe
top-k
total order

The publish/subscribe paradigm is known for its loosely coupled interactions and event filtering capabilities. Traditional applications using pub/sub systems require large-scale deployment and high event throughput. Thus, pub/sub has always put the emphasis on scalability and performance, to the detriment of filtering expressiveness and quality of service. The matching language is usually limited to topic-based or content-based event filtering and does not allow complex stream-based subscriptions to be expressed. Messages are delivered on a best-effort basis without any ordering or reliability guarantees. Recently, modern pub/sub applications such as online games, social networks, and sensor networks, have specifications which extend beyond the basic semantics provided by standard systems. Installing additional services and event processing systems at the endpoints can overcome these limitations. However, this thesis argues that such solutions are inefficient and put an avoidable strain on the pub/sub layer itself. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is to develop integrated solutions to extend pub/sub language expressiveness and quality of service, as well as demonstrate that this approach results in better performance from a holistic perspective. The different pub/sub extensions described are ranked data dissemination, fair subscription filtering, and total order. Each section first describes the application use cases which justify the support for the developed feature in pub/sub. Those requirements are then extracted from our use cases and a general solution is developed within the pub/sub layer. A theoretical analysis is also conducted to demonstrate the correctness of every approach. Finally, experiments are employed to compare the performance of our solution to baselines which rely on end-to-end services and holistic evaluations are performed to assess the impact of our work.
No Emissions Trading Scheme is an Island: Building a Global Linking Agreement from the "Bottom Up"
Keywords: climate change
emissions trading schemes
public international law

The global climate change regime is at a crossroads. There remains little prospect states will agree to urgently needed binding commitments through a "top down" climate agreement, but the ability of national and sub-national policies to produce sufficient emission reductions in its place faces significant challenges. This paper proposes a possible alternative model for building a centralised climate regime from the "bottom up" through linking national and sub-national emissions trading schemes in stages under a global linking agreement. This model is argued as preferable to waiting for a global carbon price to develop from decentralised linkages, or for a "top down" linking agreement to emerge. The paper then considers how the legal design of such an agreement could best facilitate linking of different schemes, concluding that parties should agree to "low end" mutual recognition of allowances under an umbrella treaty structure, with less essential elements left to non-binding arrangements.
How Effective is the Right to Health at Improving Equity in the Levels of Access to Childhood Immunisations?
Keywords: children
equity
immunisation
Law
Right to health
vaccines

This thesis explores various inequities in children's levels of access to vaccinations and considers how the normative aims of the international human right to health are being implemented in order to address them. It is argued that the right to health is a transformative right that places obligations upon states to achieve health equity. In light of this objective, this thesis investigates ways in which the right to health, in reality, is serving to influence levels of access to childhood vaccinations - a health equity enhancing intervention - and the rights impact upon equity is assessed throughout. It concludes that applications of the right to health are effective at procuring the equitable levels of access to childhood vaccinations that, in theory; its framework has been designed to effect. Remaining inequities in levels of access to childhood vaccinations might be more effectively addressed, if further rights-oriented approaches to the issues are adopted.