VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Maternal Depression in Barbados: Exploring How Black Women Experience, Understand, Manage and Cope with Self-Reported 'Baby Blues' and Postpartum Depression
Keywords: Baby Blues
Barbados
Caribbean
Intersectionality
Maternal Depression
Postpartum Depression

Postpartum depression is a major depressive disorder whose onset can appear up to one year after delivery and last for weeks, months or years (O'Hara, 1987). The `baby blues' is a mild affective syndrome common during the first three days after birth and can last up to 10 days (O'Hara, 1987; Cole, 2009). Existing research on maternal depression in the English-speaking Caribbean uses epidemiological methods to investigate the incidence and prevalence of depression occurring during pregnancy and the postpartum period, but largely excludes research on the `baby blues'. Also absent from the Caribbean research are studies that use qualitative methods which can help build understanding about how women's social worlds impact their mental health (Amankwaa, 2003; Almond, 2009). To investigate these gaps, a qualitative research project was conducted with 11 (n=11) Black women in Barbados to explore how they have understood, managed, coped, and sought treatment for self-reported postpartum depression and the `baby blues'. Black Feminist and Caribbean Feminist Theoretical frameworks anchored the project and helped consider how women's social, historical, racial, and cultural backgrounds were linked to their maternal mental health. The project's findings show that early maternal depression literature from North America and Europe largely excluded women from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. Studies conducted to fill this gap have recorded higher rates for the `baby blues' and postpartum depression in Caribbean contexts. Research with Black Caribbean women in the Diaspora highlights their Intersectional experiences and explanatory models which have helped them understand maternal depression. Barriers that prevented research participants from receiving the maternal mental health care they needed included a lack of formal information and education on maternal depression at the postnatal stage; proliferation of international and non-local information sources on maternal depression; women's intersecting race, class and gendered experiences with self-reported maternal depression; and social/cultural stigmas around mental health. The formal and informal supportive resources women discussed and critiqued during their maternal depression experiences included local healthcare institutions, family members, intimate partners, and religious and spiritual sources. The research findings confirm that maternal depression exists in Barbados, and affirms that these conditions are a global public health concern. They also show that an Intersectional framework can facilitate analyses that acknowledge women's multi-layered identities which can help transform how maternal depression is treated and prevented.
Defining, Investigating and Supporting Anticipatory Driving - A Systematic Investigation of the Competence to Predict Traffic
Keywords: Anticipation
Driver Behaviour
Driver Experience
Driving Simulator
In-Vehicle Displays
Novice Drivers

Driving research shows safety and economic benefits of anticipatory competence. While the literature recognizes the notion of anticipation, it has not yet operationalized the construct. This dissertation addresses this gap by presenting a systematic investigation of anticipation in driving. It starts by defining anticipation as a competence relying on the conscious perception of visual cues and their cognitive processing. Two driving simulator studies then investigate the ability of novice and experienced drivers to anticipate conflicts in stereotypical scenarios. The first experiment shows the feasibility of identifying anticipation through the surrogate measure of pre-event actions relative to a conflict event, and confirms the hypothesis that experienced drivers exhibit these actions more often. This experiment supports an information-processing model of anticipation. The model suggests two crucial steps for the facilitation of anticipatory competence: (1) the conscious perception of appropriate cues that serve as indicators for the traffic scenario, and (2) efficient cognitive processing of those cues for a correct situational assessment. The second experiment investigates the effect of two interfaces designed to aid these steps. The attentional interface aids only the perception of cues and is hypothesized to yield larger benefits for experienced drivers who do not struggle with the interpretation of traffic. The interpretational interface supports both steps and is hypothesized to improve particularly novice driversâ competence in interpreting traffic. Contrary to these hypotheses, results show similar improvements in anticipation for both interfaces across all participants, although fewer and shorter glances towards the attentional interface suggest that it is preferable from the perspective of driver distraction. This dissertation extends the formerly vague concept of anticipation by defining and operationalizing it as a construct, identifying anticipatory actions, demonstrating that driver experience predicts anticipatory competence, and suggesting aids to support anticipation. These advances promote anticipation as a viable construct for future driver behaviour research.
Gender-Pay Inequality and Organizational Culture: A Multi-Organizational Analysis
Keywords: gender
job evaluation
organizational behavior
pay inequality
stereotyping
work

According to sociologists, more female-concentrated occupations pay less mainly because societal culture devalues work associated with women. But less clear is how much the cultural context of the work organization fosters or suppresses this devaluation. This question is vital because pay and work are not formally linked at the occupation level, but at job level - through a formal workplace practice known as job evaluation. And as researchers often note, the outcomes of this practice are ultimately influenced by organizational culture. Drawing from the literature on gendered organizations, organizational culture, job evaluation, and stereotyping theory, this dissertation examines whether organizations with more masculine cultures have intensified levels of devaluation in their job-reward systems - reflecting the logic that more masculine cultures prescribe wider status differences between what is stereotyped as masculine and feminine. The analysis draws from a confidential dataset linking over 50 thousand jobs to 68 separate government organizations of a single country. Main findings suggest that while the statistical effect of organizational culture is modest, the amount of devaluation in an organization's job-reward system intensifies in more female-concentrated jobs that are located in more masculine organizational cultures. Further, in some instances, the traditional framework of job evaluation might encourage gender stereotypes to manifest as pay inequalities that benefit more female-concentrated jobs. But this counterintuitive form of inequality is largely masked in more masculine organizational cultures. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to a more organizational-cultural understanding of pay determination by considering how the cultural context of work organizations influences formal organizational activities that were intended to be gender neutral. It also contributes to the more recent gendered-organizations literature that has become increasingly concerned with the impact of organizational context on gender inequalities, and to some of the more recent social-psychological literature concerned with the impact of background effects on stereotyping outcomes.
Examination of type I IFN mediated regulation of the post-transcriptional antiviral response
Keywords: antiviral
innate immune response
interferon
metabolism
translation
virus

Interferons (IFNs) are pleiotropic cytokines that regulate both innate and adaptive immunity. Early post viral infection, there is induction and secretion of IFN-β which alerts nearby cells and primes leukocytes for an immune response. A rapid response is necessary for effective control of virus replication and spread. Previously in our lab, the IFN-α/β inducible PI-3'K/mTOR mediated induction of translation was shown to operate in concert with the prototypical JAK/STAT mediated transcription of IFN stimulated genes (ISGs). In the absence of key signaling intermediates of the PI-3'K/mTOR pathway, namely, Akt or PI-3'K, an IFN-α/β inducible antiviral response was abolished. Given the apparent importance of this pathway, we sought to enhance IFN-α/β signaling by targeting key negative regulatory intermediates. In vitro experiments demonstrated that cells lacking suppressors of translation, TSC2 or 4E-BP1, are more sensitive to IFN-α/β inducible effects as indicated by increased antiviral protein synthesis, and enhanced resistance to virus infection. In vivo experiments showed that mice lacking 4E-BP1 are similarly more resistant to virus infection, and also more sensitive to the antiviral effects of IFN-β treatment. These in vitro and in vivo effects were demonstrated for different viruses, including Vaccinia virus, Influenza virus and Coxsackievirus. Given these findings of rapid mRNA translation to enable a robust IFN antiviral response, and aware that this is an ATP consuming process, we next examined whether IFN-α/β treatment also exerted effects on cell metabolism. Through a series of in vitro experiments we demonstrated rapid IFN-α/β-mediated regulation of glucose uptake in an Akt and PI-3'K dependent manner. Given the number of signaling intermediates shared by IFN-α/β and insulin, we examined the in vivo effects of metformin, an insulin sensitizer, during antiviral treatment with IFN-β. Interestingly, prophylactic treatment with both metformin and IFN-β produced a significant antiviral effect during the acute phase of viral myocarditis caused by Coxsackievirus B3 infection. Taken altogether, the work described in this thesis provides further evidence for the importance of post-transcriptional regulation exerted by IFN-α/β during a virus infection.
Characteristics of Social Networks Relevant to Predictions of Social Influence
Keywords: centrality measures
ego betweenness
network structure measures
network topology
social networks

Understanding social influence and identifying influential members of a community is of interest to the designers and evaluators of various online services such as recommender systems in e-commerce or health promotion programs in healthcare. Various methods have been proposed for the identification of influentials in past research. However, there is limited research on the relationships between these different methods and the role of networks' topology on these relationships. The main goals of the research in this thesis were to study relationships between measures of network structure, and to characterize different types of network, where the properties of structural measures differ across the network types. Understanding the structure of social networks should lead to more useful and usable social network applications. In the research reported in this dissertation I began by examining the relationship between structural and behavioral measures of social influence, finding that they are relatively independent of each other in the two social networks that were examined. I then focused on social network centrality measures, which are structural measures commonly used to identify central and potentially influential members of a social network. Two new factors representing network topology properties were identified and a set of 62 real-world social networks were grouped into three different types based on their scores on those factors. Correlations amongst various structural influence measures, and the effect of network topology on structural measures of centrality, were also examined. A secondary goal of this research was to determine when approximations of computationally complex measures may be used to estimate social influence. Using the factors representing network topology, the correlation between the computationally complex measure of betweenness centrality and the computationally simpler measure of ego betweenness was found to vary depending on network topology, opening the way towards network topology-based selection of centrality-based measures of influence. The research findings presented in this thesis are offered as a first step towards improved methods of identifying influential members in very large social networks.
Contesting Migrant Labour: A Politics of Precarity on the Thai-Myanmar Border
Keywords: Governmentality
Industrialisation
Labour
Migration
Regulation

The global proliferation of export processing zones, linking migrant labour to international markets and global supply chains, has established these sites as critical components of contemporary globalised capitalism. As regulatory enclaves of industrial production, export processing zones are marked by forms of population administration organised around the optimisation of low-waged, flexible labour. This dissertation is a study of the social construction of formal and informal labour regulation at one such regulatory enclave. It focuses on the Mae Sot Special Border Economic Zone in northwest Thailand, where some 200,000 plus Myanmar migrants have been engaged in highly precarious employment in garment and textile manufacturing, agriculture, and service work since the early 1990s. While formal state policy significantly impacts the on-the-ground regulation of migrant labour in Mae Sot, the local situation exhibits a variety of overlapping, formal and informal regulatory regimes. These multiple regimes of regulation are subject to continual processes of contestation, negotiation and compromise, with uncertain effects on Mae Sot's border capitalism. In order to trace these processes, I present ethnographic accounts of migrants engagement with various state and private actors, including the Mae Sot police, officials of the Thai government's Labour Protection Office, private passport companies, and non-governmental organisations. I further trace the emergence of migrant social formations, shaped by the particular conditions of low-waged, flexible labour as well as despotic employment practices and coercive policing. The dissertation concludes by following the organisational efforts of a group of migrants employed at one Mae Sot garment factory, as they seek to raise their wages and improve their working conditions over the course of a year. Throughout, I find that migrants' everyday practices and patterns of struggle are shaped both by the site's network of governmental rule and by the disciplinary powers of the local police.
A Systematic Analysis of Intertwined Homomeric Proteins
Keywords: Homomeric Proteins
Intertwined Proteins
Structural Biology

Intertwined homomers are multimeric protein complexes, whereby identical subunits appear to exchange small segments or compact protein substructures (domains). Using a formal definition of intertwined homo-oligomers, we survey the Protein Data Bank for all such complexes. Results show that intertwining occurs in 13,442 (24%) of all surveyed structures. This thesis charts the landscape of intertwined proteins by examining their structural properties and classifying them accordingly. We define three primary categories to classify intertwined proteins, based on the structural nature of the exchanged element. S-type intertwined proteins exchange one contiguous chain segment and account for the majority of all intertwined homomers (72%). D-type intertwined proteins (10%) exchange structural domains. M-type intertwined proteins (18%) display complex swapping topologies that exchange multiple segments or domains. The studies presented in this thesis provide unique insights into the role of intertwining in homomeric association. For instance, intertwining promotes homomer formation for all three classes of intertwined proteins, particularly among the S-type class and smaller protein structures. Additionally, we found that intertwining provides some homomeric proteins with the ability to adopt different inter-subunit geometries, with minimal changes in the subunit-subunit interface. These changes in inter-subunit geometry were thoroughly investigated among D-type intertwined homomers and were found to be associated with a number of roles, such as DNA binding and functional regulation.
Mathematical models provide insight into the role of interneurons in hippocampal CA1 network theta rhythm generation
Keywords: Computational Neuroscience
Fast-Spiking Interneurons
Hippocampal Microcircuits
Hippocampal Oscillations
Network Models

The theta rhythm, a network rhythm oscillating between 3-12 Hz, is one of the most prominent clocking mechanisms detected in the mammalian brain. These rhythms are recorded in the hippocampus during exploratory behaviour and R.E.M. sleep, and are associated with episodic memory and spatial navigation (Buzsรกki, 2002). A "classic" theta model predicts that pacemaker neurons in the medial septum drive the hippocampal rhythm. However, Goutagny et al. (2009) recently showed that the hippocampal formation possesses the necessary and sufficient circuitry to generate its own theta rhythm, implying that different subregions of the hippocampus can perform separate computational tasks simultaneously. Mathematical models have been used to investigate the possibility of independent hippocampal theta generators, but in general rely on a population of pacemaking interneurons to drive the system (Wulff et al., 2009; Rotstein et al., 2005; Tort et al., 2007), a mechanism that may not be physiologically relevant (Kispersky et al., 2012). In an attempt to understand the underlying dynamics of this rhythm, a number of experimentally constrained mathematical network models are developed with a focus on the CA1 hippocampus. We first describe the development of simple models of individual CA1 parvalbumin-positive (PV+) interneurons, oriens-lacunosum-moleculare (OLM) interneurons, and pyramidal cells (PYR), as derived from an intact, whole hippocampus preparation in vitro expressing population oscillations. These single cell models are used to construct thousands of network models, and we investigate the role of these different cell types in CA1 network oscillations. Networks of PV+ interneurons alone exhibited sharp transitions into coherent high frequency firing (> 100 Hz), providing insight into how these fast oscillations could become nested in theta rhythms. We predict that the dis-inhibitory effect of OLM cells on bistratified cell (BSC) to PYR interactions plays a critical role in the power of network theta oscillations. Additionally, our network models demonstrated that without a phasic drive, PYR network models alone could not exhibit coherent oscillations while maintaining sparse firing - a feature of our PYR recordings during theta. However, when PV+ cell networks were incorporated into the PYR networks, PYR sparsely fired, and network frequency and stability was increased. Thus, our experimentally constrained network models suggest that PV+ interneurons play a key role in the frequency and stability of network oscillations, and that OLM-BSC interactions may influence network theta power.
Content Management in Planet-Scale Video CDNs
Keywords: Cache coordination
Content distribution network
Overlay multicast
Server provisioning
Video caching

Global video Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) serve a significant fraction of the entire Internet traffic through a global network of cache servers. Effective handling of the massive traffic at the edge is vital for the feasibility of these CDNs, which can otherwise incur significant monetary costs and resource overloads in the Internet. We study this problem from several angles. First, we design cache management algorithms for individual servers of these CDNs: an LRU-based baseline solution to address their unique requirements; a flexible ingress-efficient algorithm; a greedy offline cache aware of future requests to estimate the maximum possible efficiency; and an optimal offline cache (for limited scales). In addition, we study cross-server content management. We analyze how in the absence (impracticality) of cooperative caching, the knowledge of requests in other serving locations can lead to better caching decisions overall and reducing up to hundreds of Gbps of costly traffic. We call this practice cache coordination and design the proper mechanism for realizing it. Based on actual workload data from a large-scale, global video CDN, we first conduct a detailed analysis of the spatial correlation of video popularities---workload similarities---worldwide. We then analyze the effectiveness and feasibility of cache coordination and its scalability: from within a city to across countries. Furthermore, we study the problem of provisioning the right CDN server cluster to deploy in each location, a central problem for today's continuously expanding CDNs. We optimize the proper server count, peering bandwidth, and server configuration as the disk drives and the necessary SSD and/or RAM cache layers to sustain the intensive I/O load. The optimization framework carefully captures the interaction of cache layers inside each server, the interplay between egress/disk capacity and network bandwidth, storage drives' read/write constraints and their costs. Finally, we study the generic problem of large-scale message distribution in networked systems with minimum end-to-end latency. We develop a rich suite of algorithms for different message delivery requirements and application scenarios, with up to 60% reduction in delivery latency and support for several times larger scales compared to existing solutions.