VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Visual Features on Scene Perception and Cognition
Keywords: attention
cognition
emotion
memory
perception
scenes

Humans are especially good at creating meaning from a chaotic visual world. My work is an exploration of how the physical world is processed by the brain, and how that processing influences and informs human cognition. Chapter 2 examines the receptive field properties of scene-selective cortex, revealing that the parahippocampal place area is able to represent various visual features related to scene content. Chapter 3 then explores how a subset of visual features (i.e., length, curvature, and orientation) automatically cue valence and threat information. The particular arrangement of contours within a scene allow for rapid gist perception, in turn influencing whether one will approach or avoid a particular environment. Chapters 4 and 5 pertain to the active scene exploration that occurs once the gist of a scene has been processed and an approach decision has been made. Specifically, Chapter 4 explores how low-level, mid-level, and high-level features, are involved in both bottom-up and top-down attentional guidance, while Chapter 5 explores how active visual exploration is linked to memory for real-world scenes. This entire process relies on the visual features present in the physical world which are interpreted as meaningful units by the brain. This thesis reveals how several of these features are involved in scene perception as it relates to emotion, attention, and memory.
Line and Generator Outage Identification using Synchrophasor Measurements
Keywords: Outage detection
Power systems
Synchrophasor

Identification of outages in power systems is crucial to raise situational awareness and prevent cascading failures. As a result of wide adoption of phasor measurement units (PMUs), synchronized measurements with high temporal resolution provide new opportunities for event detection and identification in electric power systems. This thesis focuses on two types of outages: line and generator outages. For line outages, an identification method based on the ac power flow model and voltage phasor measurements is proposed. The results demonstrate improved accuracy compared to the commonly used dc power flow approach and the significant benefits of having a higher PMU coverage. By using the proposed rejection filtering techniques, the misidentified rate can be further reduced, which is crucial to the operators. The results show relatively high identification accuracy with a small amount of PMUs. For generator outages, three algorithms for outage localization are proposed utilizing (1) frequency and ROCOF measurements, pre-outage generations and inertia constants; (2) line flow measurements and linear sensitivity factors; and (3) voltage measurements, system admittance matrix, generator internal reactances and generator injections prior to the outage events. Unlike in previous works, the frequency-based algorithm has been tested using frequency measurements generated by a realistic PMU model (proposed and tested against an SEL 451 relay). It is shown to be limited in accuracy. In contrast, the LSF-based method is able to correctly localize the origin of outage even when there are cascading generator outages in the external system. However, the existence of (nearly) indistinguishable generators may create numerical problems. A QR decomposition based clustering technique is proposed to group generators based on their impacts on available synchrophasor measurements so that the outage can be localized to the originating cluster with zero misidentification. The measurement selection problem (or PMU placement problem) can also be solved based on the same. Experimental results also demonstrate that the third proposed method, based on post-outage voltage estimation, can successfully exploit additional information (if available) to achieve even better localization. All of the proposed identification algorithms can be implemented for online application in utility control centers.
Learning Experiences and Career Successes of Immigrant Professionals in Canada
Keywords: Canada
career development
immigrants
labour market
retraining
self-determination theory

Canada, a nation reliant on immigrants for economic growth, has invited millions of professionals to live here, but census and survey data show that a majority of newcomers do not integrate into the Canadian workplace at levels commensurate with their education and experience. The reasons for this are unclear. Many recent immigrant professionals turn to retraining as part of a plan to regain their former professional status, but the results of this strategy have not been fully examined. This qualitative study examined the work search and retraining experiences of recent immigrant professionals in Canada. Twenty-six men and 26 women, economic immigrants to Canada, well-educated professionals in their countries of origin, described the challenges they experienced in semi-structured interviews. The challenges they described included understanding the economy and managing their expectations for initial employment; work search difficulties such as lacking a professional network; the vagaries of chance and opportunity; and planning for retraining, sometimes to obtain an entire Canadian credential in their field. Additionally, support programs offered to newcomers are not always based on a career development theory, nor are all career development theories tested against reality. The present study also uses the experiences described by the study participants to examine the utility of career self-determination theory (Chen, 2017), an emerging career development metatheory grounded in the psychology of motivation. This study found the three basic career needs proposed by Chen – career autonomy, career competence, and career relatedness – plus a fourth motivational career need, career consistency, in the work search and retraining experiences of these immigrant professionals. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions for further research are provided.
Causal Inference Methodology for Comparisons of Hospital Quality of Care
Keywords: Causal inference
Hospital comparisons
Indirect standardization
Provider profiling

In a national or provincial health care system, where limited financial resources are available to improve patient care, it is necessary to be able to evaluate the current care practices of hospitals to determine where resources are best spent. Assessment of hospital care quality is achieved by comparing each hospital's performance to some reference level of care, often the average care level in the system, termed standardization. Standardization allows adjustment for differences in patient characteristics between hospitals which would unduly penalize hospitals that treat sicker patients. The quality and quantity of information available to make such adjustments, or lack thereof, can bias estimates of a hospital's performance, resulting in misleading assessments of quality. Further, the goal of profiling care is not just to identify areas in which care disparities exist, but ultimately to intervene on care to improve patient outcomes. In this thesis, I take advantage of the causal nature of such comparisons (i.e. poor care leads to poor outcomes) and propose new statistical methods under a causal inference framework. First, I illustrate the current limitations of a standard hospital comparison analysis using U.S. prostate cancer data. Second, I develop a doubly robust estimator for the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) when the reference is to the system average level of care. I show that this estimator will provide unbiased estimates of the SMR as long as one of the component models is correctly specified. Third, I show that one assumption needed for the above estimator can be relaxed only for this reference comparison. Fourth, I adapt causal mediation analysis methods to derive a decomposition of the hospital effect on patient outcomes that may act through a mediating process, and develop two estimators for this decomposition. This allows quantification of the effect an intervention to improve care may have on patient outcomes so that hospitals can be prioritized in terms of those who would benefit most from government resources. Finally, I illustrate the proposed mediation methods on Ontario kidney cancer data. This thesis provides valuable tools to effectively identify and target hospitals in which care improvement is most needed.
Living in a World of ‘Riotous Difference’: Canadian Multiculturalism and Christian Hospitality within the Presbyterian Church in Toronto (Tkaronto)
Keywords: Canada
Christianity
Ethnicity/Race
Hospitality
Multiculturalism

With the secularization of Canadian public institutions, mainline protestant churches in urban centers are witnessing a steady decline in membership in recent decades. Church members are not participating in church activities as they once did, which has motivated some congregations to discuss the influence of immigration and multiculturalism within the church. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the interethnic relationships and the value of multiculturalism in Presbyterian congregations in the multicultural and multiracial city of Toronto (Tkaronto), Ontario, and more broadly, within the national denomination of the Presbyterian Church of Canada. In recounting the crisis of church precarity, this dissertation considers the contours of church governance that structure racializing practices within congregations. Additionally, this study examines the virtue of hospitality, a central theme among Presbyterian congregations that attends to denominational identity, church-run social programmes, and inclusion of minorities within congregational polity. Based on 25 months of ethnographic research among three congregations, this dissertation focuses on the personal experiences and Christian understandings of racialized and white congregants who are working to develop a meaningful church community, which is fraught with ideological and affective friction. This thesis makes two key arguments. First, the inclusion of different (non-white) bodies is needed to sustain and grow the church, both economically and spiritually, yet different bodies and their subjectivities (vis-à-vis class, racialization, and age) are challenging to congregational unity in terms of Anglo-centric denominational identity. Second, to welcome its racially, ethnically and economically diverse participants, church members express a virtue of openness in welcoming guests and strangers. Christian hospitality, which is distinct from charity, mediates and at times blurs the boundaries between stranger, guest and host, as well as the cleavages arising from modes of inclusion and exclusion. The friction in 'welcoming the stranger', a ubiquitous phrase indexing Christian hospitality, is a theological, ideological and practical conundrum. The friction is revealed in the narratives of congregants and the mundane acts of in/hospitality that highlight the affective, temporal, and spatial ambiguities that arise from the politics and ethics of integration. Throughout, this thesis investigates the linkages and ruptures between Christian hospitality and Canadian state multiculturalism.
A Multi-angled Approach to Discover and Improve Skeletal Muscle Stem Cell Therapies
Keywords: EGFR
KDR
Hydrogels
Muscle regeneration
Muscle stem cells
Single cell RNA sequencing
Skeletal Muscle

Skeletal muscle plays an essential role in locomotion, metabolism, and thermoregulation. An intriguing characteristic of skeletal muscle is its remarkable regenerative capacity: a highly orchestrated cellular process, in which the resident muscle stem cells (MuSCs) play a central role. Upon tissue injury, quiescent MuSCs are activated and give rise to a population of primary myoblasts (pMBs). pMBs undergo several rounds of division and ultimately fuse with one another to form multi-nucleated myofibers and repair the muscle. As observed in a wide range of conditions such as muscular dystrophies and aging, disruptions in the repair process can lend to impaired regeneration and progressive muscle wasting. Strategies to restore strength and function to pathological muscle include cell-based therapies to replace defective myogenic cells, and treatments to restore the endogenous repair process. Despite substantial advances, these treatment options are still in the early stages of clinical translation. The specific goal of this thesis is to improve upon currently available strategies as well as to lay the groundwork for the emergence of new therapeutic entry-points for skeletal muscle treatments. In the area of cell transplantation therapy, challenges remain in producing clinically-relevant numbers of cells that, as a population, possess high regenerative potency to produce skeletal muscle and repopulate the stem cell niche. We demonstrate that by using a bioactive hydrogel (HAMC) as the cell delivery vehicle, it is possible to improve MuSC transplantation outcomes, and thereby reduce the overall number of required MuSCs. Next, we address the issue of producing sufficient numbers of highly regenerative myogenic cells. Using a high-throughput drug screen and in-vivo intramuscular transplantation assay validation, we identify epidermal growth factor receptor (Egfr) and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (Vegfr2, Kdr) as new druggable targets, that upon inhibition, produce a population of cultured MuSCs with greater regenerative potency than control treated. Finally, using single-cell RNA sequencing, we shed light on the diversity and intercommunication of cells present in skeletal muscle. This dataset serves as a valuable resource through which new regulators of MuSCs and other cells in skeletal muscle can be evaluated with an eye towards skeletal muscle regenerative medicine applications.
Identification of Glucosylceramide Flippases in Glycosphingolipid Biosynthesis
Keywords: ATP-binding cassette (ABC)
flippase
glucosylceramide
glycosphingolipid biosynthesis
Golgi
lipids/chemistry

Glycosphingolipids (GSLs) participate in cell signaling, adhesion, differentiation, and inflammation. A variety of diseases have aberrant GSL metabolisms including GSL storage diseases, type II diabetes, drug resistant tumors, and Alzheimer’s disease. The major GSL precursor glucosylceramide (GlcCer) is synthesized on the cytosolic Golgi membrane leaflet, however GlcCer must be flipped to the luminal leaflet for subsequent complex GSL anabolism. The mechanism by which GlcCer is translocated is unclear. We have addressed this major 25-year knowledge gap in GSL biosynthesis in order to better understand GSL homeostasis and provide novel therapy targets. We synthesized and characterized photoreactive, biotinylated GlcCer analogue cross-linkers, XLA and XLB (diastereomers) to identify GlcCer interacting proteins. Using XLB and proteomics we identified microsomal GlcCer binding proteins, ABCA3, ABCB4 and ABCB10, which were depleted in DU145 cells by siRNA along with previously suggested GlcCer ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters (ABCA12 and ABCB1). Knockdown of ABC proteins differentially affected GSL biosynthesis, suggesting existence of Golgi and trans-Golgi network (TGN)-selective flippases. Putative flippase/LCS inhibitors 2A-AceGlcCer A/B, and 2A-AdaGlcCer A/B were synthesized. 2A-AdaGlcCer analogues appear to be LCS substrates. 2A-AdaGlcCer B is a LCS and flippase inhibitor whereas the A isomer is an activator of globo-series GSL synthesis. 2A-AceGlcCer analogues increased cellular GSLs. In summary, we demonstrated that ABC flippases facilitate metabolic channeling via formation of separate and overlapping Golgi pools of GlcCer for differential GSL-series biosynthesis, providing potential targets for drug therapy to reduce specific GSL species in GSL dysregulated diseases.
Attending to Differential Environmental Exposures Among Racialized Newcomer Women in Canada: Why so Difficult?
Keywords: Environmental exposures
Inequity
Intersectional analysis
Newcomers
Racialized
Women

This thesis aims to increase understanding of differential environmental exposures and to explore how inequity in environmental health can be viewed and articulated for newcomer and racialized women in Canada. Based on a subpopulation biomonitoring study of heavy metal concentrations among South and East Asian newcomer women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), entitled “Metals in Newcomer Women (MNW),” this thesis is comprised of three individual papers. The first paper modified selected reflective and transformational questions of an Intersectionality-Based Analysis to frame my examination of the environmental research itself. Through a personal reflexive process, I analyzed the processes by which the research was identified, constructed, developed, and funded to examine assumptions, definitions, and values that contributed to study decisions. Transformational questions provided a framework to think about the problem differently and about potential challenges in doing so. The second paper addresses how adopting elements of community-based research (CBR) in the MNW study increased relevance and reach for our communities of interest. The paper describes how CBR elements included developing meaningful partnerships with public health organizations and actively engaging peer researchers, as well as newcomer women with similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The latter bridged the gap with many of our participants and helped to overcome known barriers to participation. As health professionals themselves, with experience interacting in clinical settings, peer researchers provided expertise and familiarity, shared more adequate explanations of relevant topics, and helped participants overcome the reluctance to participate in a scientific study. The third paper uses mixed methods to explore the “exposure experience” of MNW study participants and to understand how individuals may process, interpret and respond to the knowledge of the presence of bodily contaminants. Grounding research in the experiences and perspectives of underrepresented populations provides a deeper and broadened understanding of non-dominant views and definitions of the environment, allowing an examination of intersecting identities and social categories and how these contribute to conceptualizing exposures. The findings of this thesis suggest that challenging dominant conceptual frameworks that underpin environmental health research, through the application of intersectional and critical race perspectives and the use of community-based approaches, can augment and enhance equity-relevant implications of environmental health for racialized newcomer women
A Multi-Methods Study of the Role of Middle Managers in Brokering Knowledge in Hospitals
Keywords: evidence- based care
Knowledge broker
Knowledge Translation
Middle manager

Hospitals are complex environments that are accountable for the quality of the services they provide. The quality of care in hospitals, however, is often less than ideal – patients may not receive treatments with proven effectiveness or may receive unnecessary or even potentially harmful care (Grimshaw et al., 2012; McGlynn et al., 2003). Hospital managers play a pivotal role in facilitating high quality care and may play a brokerage role in the sharing and use of knowledge in healthcare organizations (Birkin et al., 2018; Urquhart et al., 2019). The body of research on knowledge brokers (KBs) suggests that they may have multiple roles, but prior research has focused primarily on KBs in formal roles external to the practice community they seek to influence (CHSRF, 2003). Little is known about internal KB roles, and it remains unclear how the KB role is enacted in health care. There is a dearth of research on what impact KBs within organizations have in brokering knowledge in hospitals (Burgess Currie, 2014; Glegg Hoens, 2016). Although middle managers (MMs) may potentially play a key role as KBs, how MMs act as KBs in health care has not been adequately studied in Canada or elsewhere (Birkin et al., 2018; Currie et al., 2014). This multi-methods study examined the role that MMs play in brokering knowledge in hospitals, the determinants of their KB efforts, and the impact of those efforts. The findings of a qualitative descriptive study, using semi-structured interviews with MMs in hospitals across Ontario, Canada, conducted concurrently with a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of the literature, found that MMs enact many of the roles and activities of knowledge brokers in hospitals to create, share or implement an innovative or evidence-based practice. In addition to roles and activities, this study contributes to the extant literature by revealing determinants that may influence MM KBs efforts and their impact in hospitals and by providing actionable insights into how to optimize the role. This study also makes recommendations that administrators and policy makers can use to strengthen KB roles to better equip MM KBs to ultimately improve quality of care.
Subsistence-Based Economy and the Regional Interaction Processes of the Indus Civilization Borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat: A Bio-Molecular Perspective
Keywords: Gujarat
Indus Civilization
Molecular analysis
Regional Cooperative interaction
Rural food-producing economy
Sorath Harappan

This dissertation investigates the role of food producers in the Indus Civilization borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat, particularly during the Urban/Mature phase (2600-1900 BCE). During the Urban phase, this region was occupied by two distinct categories of settlements. The settlements from the first category were strategically situated, contained Classical Harappan type materials, and were specialized in craft production, craft-related trade and administration; these are popularly known as Classical Harappan-type settlements. The settlements from the second category, popularly known as Sorath-type settlements, were located inland, contained regional pottery and practiced agro-pastoralism. The analysis of the subsistence economy of Kotada Bhadli, a Sorath-type settlement, provides an evaluation of the nature of economic production at this settlement and the possible day-to-day interactions between this settlement and neighboring non-food craft-producing settlements. To date, our understanding of rural food production and regional everyday interaction between different specialized groups in the Indus borderland is limited, and therefore, through providing a detailed account of the subsistence-related economy at a rural settlement, this thesis aims to evaluate the nature of specialized staple production, and provide more data for the understanding the nature of staple exchange between these settlements specialized in diverse economic activities. To incorporate this everyday regional interaction in our current understanding of regional interactions during the Indus age, I summarized and arranged different arguments from various scholars into distinct models. The analysis of molecular, isotopic and micro-botanical remains suggest the involvement of Kotada Bhadli with specialized sedentary to semi-sedentary pastoralism and some form of household-level cultivation of plants, along with some importing of agricultural grains and Harappan-style craft goods from neighboring settlements. Based on these results, I propose a likely cooperative regional interaction between diverse groups and specialists such as craft producers, traders, raw material distributers and staple producers, in the presence or absence of a centralized or regional authority during the Urban phase. Such reciprocal relationship between diverse specialized groups not only supported the production of wealth but also helped to maintain status and identity, as well as dealing with critical environmental, economic and probably political conditions that may have ultimately helped sustain this civilization over many centuries.