VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Role of Luteal Phase Fallopian Tube Epithelium in High-grade Ovarian Serous Carcinoma
Keywords: ovarian cancer
fallopian tube
serous
glucocorticoid
inflammation
BRCA1
DAB2
progesterone
luteal
gene expression profiling

Studies of prophylactic salpingectomy specimens from BRCA1/2 mutation carriers, at risk for tubal and ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (SerCa), have consistently revealed occult carcinomas and putative histological cancer precursors in the distal fallopian tube epithelium (FTE), supporting the FTE as the source of SerCa. In this thesis I molecularly characterized and compared non-malignant FTE from mutation carriers (FTEb) and control patients (FTEn) to identify alterations that may predispose to malignant transformation. Gene expression profiling of laser capture microdissected FTEn, FTEb and SerCa indicated that SerCa have similar molecular profiles whether of presumed ovarian or tubal origin, supporting the notion they share a common cell of origin within the FTE. Furthermore, FTEb samples obtained during the post-ovulatory luteal phase showed gene expression profiles closely resembling SerCa samples, suggesting that the luteal phase milieu may contribute to serous carcinogenesis. An initial hypothesis was that FTEb may respond differently to luteal progesterone compared to FTEn, via differential expression of progesterone receptor (PR) isoforms. However, similar relative isoform expression in FTEn and FTEb samples suggested that a luteal phase-associated factor other than progesterone directs gene expression changes in FTEb. The possibility that FTEb respond differently to ovulation-associated inflammatory cytokines that are locally elevated during the luteal phase was next investigated. Importantly, FTEb specimens previously found to cluster with SerCa based on their global gene expression profiles showed evidence of increased nuclear factor-κB (NFκB)-dependent (pro-inflammatory) signalling and diminished glucocorticoid receptor (GR)-dependent (anti-inflammatory) signalling. Furthermore, I demonstrate that disabled homolog 2 (DAB2), an adaptor molecule decreased in SerCa and FTE luteal samples, enhances both GR-mediated transactivation and suppression of NFκB signalling, implicating DAB2 as a crucial determinant of inflammatory signalling and ovarian cancer risk. Altogether, this thesis identifies gene expression changes in FTE from BRCA mutation carriers during the post-ovulatory luteal phase that parallel those detected in SerCa. The data support a proposed novel testable model for predisposing events contributing to SerCa that centres on an altered ability to quickly resolve the pro-inflammatory environment created by the ovulatory event.
For the First Time - A Phenomenology of Virginity
Keywords: virginity
phenomenology
feminism
eros

I argue that virginity is a distinct phenomenon with essential structures that can be apprehended and described using a phenomenological method, and thus offer the first robust phenomenology of virginity. A more complex passage than the physical transaction of first sexual intercourse, virginity manifests the event of a coming to love through the conduit of the sexual-erotic body. Calling on Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, I argue that virginity qualifies as a saturated phenomenon, exceeding or overflowing intuition and signification in its paradoxical phenomenality. As a study in saturated phenomena my work pushes the limits of phenomenology by endorsing the exigency of a phenomenology of the evanescent and enigmatic to engage denigrated domains of human experience such as sex and love. Our access to virginity is possible because of our ontological constitution as sexuate beings, but also because of our essential potential to cultivate our sexuate existence through the lens of a primordial erotic attunement. Conscious development of our erotic potential is a form of ascesis that can elevate the sexual-erotic encounter to the ethical height of love. Still, virginity can never be forced, taken, or lost, since the phenomenon is ultimately only gifted through an act of erotic generosity and the intervention of grace. Virginity is not a one-time threshold crossing. It has the essential possibility of being perpetually renewed with each singular sexual-erotic encounter. I seek to sever sex from its legacy as mere animal instinct and from its functional and reproductive teleology in order to open a new way of thinking about our sexual-erotic being that focuses on its ethical potential and its usefulness as a model for being with others outside of the sexual-erotic relation. I take seriously the Irigarayan possibility that we can craft an ethics of Eros. My work draws broadly from twentieth-century literature on phenomenology, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis, including that of Marion, Beauvoir, Irigaray, Derrida, Heidegger, Foucault, and Butler.
Elite Entrepreneurs from the Former Soviet Union: How They Made Their Millions
Keywords: Entrepreneurship
Immigration
Ethnicity
Transitional economy
Transnationalism
Human capital
Social capital
Cultural capital
Class
Russia
Business
Soviet Union
Financial capital
Toronto
Russian entrepreneurs

One of the most interesting results of the collapse of the former Soviet Union is the emergence of successful cosmopolitan entrepreneurs from former Soviet republics who have immigrated to countries, such as the United States and Canada, and settled in metropolitan areas like Toronto and have made millions establishing businesses in their new host countries. I have chosen to study successful cosmopolitan entrepreneurs from the former Soviet Union because this group has immigrated from a place where the free market economy and privatization did not exist prior to the 1980s, so the important intellectual issue, is how did immigrants who grew up most of their lives in a state-controlled communist system where entrepreneurship was forbidden learn to become so adept at starting businesses in a market economy when they moved to Toronto. One of the central questions that this dissertation aims to address is: How did experiences in the former Soviet communist economy and in the transitional economy affect the role that human capital, financial capital, and social capital played in establishing businesses in Toronto. This study is based on thirty two interviews that I have conducted with two cohorts of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, those who immigrated to Toronto in the late 1970s and early 1980s and those that immigrated in the late 1980s and 1990s. To address how Russian immigrants established businesses in Toronto, I used three bodies of literature, including (1) transitional economy, (2) ethnic and class dimensions of entrepreneurship, and (3) transnationalism to examine how each of the following factors: 1) social capital, 2) financial capital, 3) human capital, and 4) home country experience, specifically experience in the former Soviet communist economy and experience in the transitional economy affected the Russian entrepreneur at each stage of business development in Toronto.
Scalar and Vector Coherent State Representations of Compact and Non-compact Symplectic Groups
Keywords: Lie algebra
Lie group
representation
symplectic
coherent state

When solving problems involving quantum mechanical systems, it is frequently desirable to find the matrix elements of a unitary representation T of a real algebraic Lie group G. This requires defining an inner product on the Hilbert space [special characters omitted] that carries the representation T. In the case where the representation is determined by a representation of a subgroup containing the lowest weight vector of T, this can be achieved through the coherent state construction. In both the scalar and vector coherent state methods, the process of finding the overlaps can be simplified by introducing the coherent state triplet ([special characters omitted]) of Bargmann spaces. Coherent state wave functions – the elements of [special characters omitted] and of [special characters omitted] – are used to define the inner product on [special characters omitted] in a way that simplifies the calculation of the overlaps. This inner product and the group action Γ of G on [special characters omitted] are used to formulate expressions for the matrix elements of T with coefficients from the given subrepresentation. The process of finding an explicit expression for Γ relies on matrix factorizations in the complexification of G even though the representation T does not extend to the complexification. It will be shown that these factorizations are, in fact, justified, that the overlaps and Γ action can be expressed in terms of the given subrepresentation, and that it is possible to find numerical values for the inner product in [special characters omitted]. The scalar and vector coherent state methods will both be applied to Sp(n) and Sp(n, [special characters omitted]).
Identification and Analysis of the Novel Gumby Gene and its Vertebrate Specific Roles in the Mouse
Keywords: angiogenesis
cranial nerves

Forward genetic screens in the mouse are contributing significantly to our understanding of basic mammalian development and human disease. In one such screen, our laboratory has identified the novel mouse gumby mutant, which affects the development of the neural and vascular systems. Here, I describe the characterization of the gumby mutant phenotype and the identification of its causative mutation in a novel, vertebrate-specific gene, which is one of the genes deleted in patients affected by Cri du Chat Syndrome that exhibit mental retardation and craniofacial deficits. Expression and phenotypic analyses revealed a requirement for the gumby gene in the facial nerve axon guidance and angiogenesis. Lately, it has become evident that many common mechanisms and molecules operate during neural and vascular development. My results suggest that the gumby gene is an attractive candidate for regulating both processes and its analysis in the future may help us understand how the navigational mechanisms for both systems are intertwined. My studies show that gumby is a cytoplasmic protein that is present in many embryonic and adult tissues. In yeast-two-hybrid assays gumby interacts with a member of the highly conserved Wnt pathway - Dishevelled 2 (Dvl2). In both Dvl2-/- and gumby homozygotes, the level of the cardiac neural crest cell marker Plexin2A is decreased. The three branches of the Wnt pathway have been shown to regulate a wide range of events during embryogenesis and adult homeostasis, and subsequently have been implicated in multiple human pathologies. Taken together my data suggest that gumby may be required for Wnt signaling in angiogenesis and/or facial nerve guidance. Given that Wnt signaling has been shown to play key roles in axon guidance, gumby and its roles in Wnt signaling may also contribute to the mental retardation seen in patients with Cri du Chat Syndrome. Thus, further analyses of molecular and biologic roles of gumby will provide important avenues for understanding the cell biology of human disease.
Cities of Refuge: Citizenship, Legality and Exception in U.S. Sanctuary Cities
Keywords: Sanctuary
Cities of Refuge
Immigration Law Enforcement
State of Exception
Citizenship

In the 1980s, in support of the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees, cities across the United States began to withdraw information and resources from the boundary making processes of the federal state. Inspired in part by a 1971 initiative in Berkeley, California to provide sanctuary to soldiers refusing to fight in Vietnam, “Cities of Refuge” issued statements of non-cooperation with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They passed policies that prevented police and service providers from asking the immigration status of the people they came into contact with in the course of their daily duties, and limited information sharing with the federal authorities. Drawing on archival research and interviews, this dissertation maps the shifting meaning of Sanctuary as a constellation of practices and logics which has troubled the boundaries of national citizenship. Struggles to establish Cities of Refuge reveal the complex interplay between two different political trajectories in the United States: one deeply implicated with the state’s authority over migration controls and what Agamben has understood as the sovereign exception, and the other with city sanctuary, as a form of urban citizenship. The genealogy of city sanctuary reveals the multiple and sometimes contradictory threads or genealogies that have been woven into American citizenship over time, raising questions about the ostensibly hardened relationship between sovereignty, membership, and the nation state. Exploring the interactions between the daily practices of state institutions and Sanctuary reveals the performative aspects of exception: it is produced and maintained only through the constant repetition of discourses and practices that maintain the boundaries of citizenship and reproduce the state’s authority to control the movement of people across its border. Bringing the study of sovereignty into the city, and exploring alternative assertions of sovereignty reveals the exception not as an underlying logic, but a geographically specific, ongoing struggle.
Influssi della lingua e della letteratura francesi medievali nell’Italia settentrionale e il Fondo Francese Antico della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana di Venezia
Keywords: Beuve de Hanstone
Biblioteca nazionale marciana
Buovo d'Antona
Franco-Italian
Fondo Francese Antico
Zanetti
Franco-Venetian
Old French

This dissertation regards the medieval French literary tradition’s presence in Northern Italy in the late Middle Ages. This phenomenon produced a corpus of texts copied or composed by Northern Italian scribes and authors in the French language. The Italian authors’ command of French verse was, in some cases, imperfect; in others, they consciously manipulated the French language for creative purposes. Whatever the case, what resulted was a body of work ostensibly written in French but with a distinctly Northern Italian flavour. Every work within this corpus presents unique linguistic features and a distinct blend of French and Northern Italian vernaculars. This cultural phenomenon, which is commonly referred to as “Franco-Italian,” was no doubt born from the linguistic proximity of the Northern Italian vernaculars to the languages of France in the late Middle Ages: absent an autochthonous Italian literary tradition, Northern Italian literati adapted the languages of France, which had already developed vernacular literary traditions, as a means for their own literary expression. Northern Italy constituted, in this sense, a peripheral region of a medieval “Francophonie.” This dissertation first surveys the nature and function of the Franco-Italian “language” and then presents a critical historiography of the scholarship surrounding the most important manuscript collection of French and Franco-Italian works in Italy, that of the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. This includes a discussion of all known catalogues and inventories of the corpus dating back to 1407 and an analysis of two others, until now largely unstudied, that shed new light on the history of the collection. What follows is an investigation into one little-known manuscript in the collection, Codex XIV, which recounts the adventures of Beuve de Hanstone. Codex XIV is unique in the collection insofar as it was not written in the hybrid Franco-Italian idiom, rather a pure Old French; consequently, it has received little attention from scholars. This dissertation revisits the text and its importance in the study of the influence of French literature in medieval Italy. The dissertation concludes with a series of appendices that display and compare unpublished inventories of the collection that support the arguments advanced herein.
Genesis of a Discourse: The Tempest and the Emergence of Postcoloniality
Keywords: Shakespeare
Tempest
postcolonial
adaptation
Caliban
Miranda
George Lamming
Aimé Césaire
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Michelle Cliff
Margaret Laurence
Sarah Murphry
Marina Warner
Sycorax

This dissertation contends that The Tempest by William Shakespeare plays a seminal role in the development of postcolonial literature and criticism because it was created in a moment when the colonial system that was now falling apart was just beginning to come into being. Creative writers and critics from the Third World, particularly Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and the First found that the moment reflected in The Tempest had something very specific to say to a generation coming of age in the postcolonial world of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. I establish that a significant discourse that begins in the Nineteenth Century and intensifies in the Twentieth depends on The Tempest to explore the nature of colonialism and to develop an understanding of the postcolonial world. I then examine the role theories of adaptation play in understanding why The Tempest assumes such a crucial role and determine that the most useful model of adaptation resembles the method developed by biblical typologists which “sets two successive historical events [or periods] into a reciprocal relation of anticipation and fulfillment” (Brumm 27). I ague that postcolonial writers and critics found in The Tempest evidence of a history of colonial oppression and resistance often obscured by established historical narratives and a venue to explore their relationship to their past, present, and future. Because my argument rests on the contention that The Tempest was created in a world where colonialism was coming into being, I explore the historical context surrounding the moment of the play’s creation and determine, in spite of the contention of many historians and some literary critics to the contrary, the forces bringing colonialism into being were already at play and were having a profound effect. After briefly illustrating the historical roots of several popular themes in The Tempest that postcolonial writers have embraced, I turn to the work of writers and critics from the Third World and the First to show how The Tempest plays a significant role in postcolonial studies.
The Country And The Village: Representations of the Rural in Twentieth-century South Asian Literatures
Keywords: Postcolonial
Rural
South Asia
Sri Lanka
Martin Wickramasinghe
Leonard Woolf
India
Literature
O. V. Vijayan
Raja Rao
Punyekante Wijenaike
Nationalism
Utopia
Heterotopia

Twentieth-century Indian and Sri Lankan literatures (in English, in particular) have shown a strong tendency towards conceptualising the rural and the village within the dichotomous paradigms of utopia and dystopia. Such representations have consequently cast the village in idealized (pastoral) or in realist (counter-pastoral/dystopic) terms. In Chapters One and Two, I read together Mohandas Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1908) and Leonard Woolf’s The Village in the Jungle (1913) and argue that Gandhi and Woolf can be seen at the head of two important, but discrete, ways of reading the South Asian village vis-à-vis utopian thought, and that at the intersection of these two ways lies a rich terrain for understanding the many forms in which later twentieth-century South Asian writers chose to re-create city-village-nation dialectics. In this light, I examine in Chapter Three the work of Raja Rao (Kanthapura, 1938) and O. V. Vijayan (The Legends of Khasak, 1969) and in Chapter Four the writings of Martin Wickramasinghe (Gamperaliya, 1944) and Punyakante Wijenaike (The Waiting Earth, 1966) as providing a re-visioning of Gandhi’s and Woolf’s ideas of the rural as a site for civic and national transformation. I conclude by examining in Chapter Five Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (2000) and Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide (2005) as emblematic of a recent turn in South Asian fiction centred on the rural where the village embodies a “heterotopic” space that critiques and offers a conceptual alternative to the categorical imperatives of utopia and dystopia. I use Michel Foucault’s notion of the “heterotopia” to re-evaluate the utopian dimension in these novels. Although Foucault himself under-theorized the notion of heterotopia and what he did say connected the idea to urban landscapes and imaginaries, we may yet recuperate from his formulations a “third space” of difference that provides an opportunity to rethink the imperatives of utopia in literature and helps understand the rural in twentieth-century South Asian writing in new ways.
Regulation of Plant Patterning by Polar Auxin Transport
Keywords: leaf development
root development
leaf patterning
root patterning
auxin
PIN1
vein patterning
vascular development
procambium
live imaging
founder cell
NPA
PCIB
ARF
MONOPTEROS
MP
IAA3
shy2-2
NONPHOTOTROPIC HYPOCOTYL 4
NPH4
PIN FORMED 1
auxin transport
auxin signaling
plant patterning
laser cell ablation
confocal microscopy

During embryogenesis and post-embryonic patterning, active transport of the phytohormone auxin, reflected in the expression of the Arabidopsis PIN family of auxin efflux mediators, generates local auxin distributions that are crucial for correct organ and tissue specification. Polar auxin transport routes have also long been postulated to regulate vein formation in the leaf. The molecular identification of PIN proteins has made it possible to investigate this hypothesis further by visualizing auxin transport routes in developing leaves. In Arabidopsis leaf primordia, PIN1 is expressed before the earliest known markers of vascular identity, in domains that are gradually restricted to sites of vein formation. PIN1 polarity indicates that auxin is directed towards distinct “convergence points” (CPs) in the marginal epidermis, from which it defines the sites of major vein formation. Within incipient veins, PIN1 polarity indicates drainage of auxin into preexisting veins, such that veins connected at both ends display two divergent polarities. Local auxin application triggers the formation of ectopic CPs and new veins, demonstrating the sufficiency of auxin as a vein-specifying signal. However, not all PIN1-labeled auxin transport routes differentiate as veins: Minor veins are initially unstable, suggesting local competition for auxin transport. Expression of ATHB8, a marker of vascular cell selection, correlates with enhanced PIN1 expression domain (PED) stability and vascular differentiation. Auxin application and auxin transport inhibition reveal that both CP formation in the epidermis and subepidermal PED dynamics are auxin-dependent and self-organizing. Furthermore, normal auxin perception through the ARF-Aux/IAA signaling pathway is required for the restriction of PIN1-mediated auxin transport to narrow subepidermal domains. ARF-Aux/IAA signaling is known to control auxin transport through the regulation of PIN1 dynamics, but the mechanism of this regulation is unclear. It is here shown that two redundantly acting AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR (ARF) transcription factors, ARF5/MONOPTEROS (MP) and ARF7/NPH4, jointly regulate both PIN1 expression and localization during lateral root patterning in Arabidopsis, in part through the direct transcriptional activation of PIN1 by MP. Taken together, these results indicate that feedback between PIN-mediated auxin transport and ARF-Aux/IAA signaling regulates the patterning of root and shoot organs.