VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Hashtnagar Peasant Movement: Agrarian Class Struggle, Hegemony and State Formation in Northwestern Pakistan, 1947–1986
Keywords: agrarian
class
hegemony
Pakistan
peasant
state

This study examines how peasant movements led by revolutionaries impacted state formation, or more broadly the institutional configuration of power, in post-colonial Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The study asks, first, how did a movement of lower classes, specifically tenant farmers and landless labourers, win concessions from landed elites and also shape the direction and institutionalization of state power in the 1970s? Second, why did revolutionary politics in Pakistan decline and fade away, diverging from its counterparts in other parts of South Asia? Based on archival research, oral history, and participant observation, the study divides a narrative of nearly forty years of events into three critical conjunctures, comparing and contrasting the inter-actions of radical organizers, rural classes, the political organizations representing exploiting propertied classes, and the state. The first conjuncture concerns the late 1940s, when the Communist Party of Pakistan’s inadequate preparation and organization of peasants led to an ultimately failed movement in the northern Hashtnagar area. The second conjuncture covers the period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s in which the communists formed the Mazdoor Kisan Party. The party’s organizational work contributed to the comparative success of 1970s peasant struggles in the form of de facto land and tenancy reforms and the decline of institutions of landlord power in villages, alongside the generation of new and renewed institutions of peasant power. Peasant organization compelled the state apparatus to intervene in favour of tenants. The third conjuncture concerns the denouement of the peasant movement in the latter 1970s and 1980s. As tenants became de facto proprietors of land their involvement in the movement and party organization declined, leaving them unable to mount a significant challenge to a military regime that restored some of the power of landed elites. Nevertheless, tenants largely preserved the gains they had made. Ultimately, the institutional configuration of power inside and outside of the apparatus of the state was determined by the balance of power between different classes. Moreover, strategic choices that revolutionary organizers made about confronting the state frontally as opposed to lowkey organizing increased or decreased their own organizational capacity and longevity.
Investigating Balance, Plantar Pressure, and Foot Sensitivity of Individuals with Diabetes during Stair Gait
Keywords: Balance
Diabetes
Insoles
Neuropathy
Plantar Pressure
Stair Gait

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a prominent issue for the diabetes population and may lead to ulceration and lower-extremity amputation. Individuals with DPN have diminished plantar sensation and exhibit abnormal peak foot pressure while walking, however, a direct connection between plantar pressure and extent of plantar sensation loss has not been entirely explored. Further, research has shown that environmental factors such as stair gait and insoles affect dynamic balance of healthy aging individuals, therefore individuals with DPN may be even more risk. The objective of this dissertation was to examine the effects on balance, plantar pressure and foot sensitivity of individuals with DPN, while considering both intrinsic (health) and extrinsic (stairs and insole) factors. The three studies that make up this dissertation provide another perspective of the contributions of various health characteristics have in relation to DPN, as well as provide insight into the role of stair gait and insoles on balance and plantar pressure. Specifically, the first study investigated the severity of sensation loss and plantar pressure during stair gait, while taking into account relevant health factors. The study also attempted to better understand factors that may best predict pressure using a hierarchical multiple regression model. This model was utilized to observe the contribution of diabetes related factors, above and beyond factors of age, body mass, and walking characteristics. The second study compared balance and plantar pressure between individuals with diabetes and pronounced sensation loss and a healthy age-matched group. The third study provided much needed understanding to how insoles may offload pressure and affect dynamic balance of individuals with diabetes during star gait. These studies provide insight into the role of health factors on plantar pressure and sensation, as well as provide a dataset of balance and pressure during the task of stair gait. The balance and pressure results suggest that individuals with diabetes may have exhibited a cautious walking pattern, compared to the control group. Further, commercial pressure offloading insoles worn by individuals with diabetes were no better in reducing foot pressure than normal insoles, during the specific task of stair gait.
Technologies of Sexuality: The HPV Vaccine and an Investigation into Parental Responsibility, Progressive Sex-Education, and Adolescent Girls’ Subjectivities
Keywords: Adolescence
HPV Vaccine
Responsibility
Sex Education
Subjectivities

This dissertation problematizes responsibility and the persistent tensions accompanying vaccines, sexual health, and sex-education in contemporary society. I connect the everyday micro-level of parents, teachers, and adolescent girls, with macro-politics of biomedicine, “good parenting,” and progressive sex-ed to understand how vaccine politics and sex-education relate to girls’ development of their own subjectivities. I argue that while parents and teachers work to be responsible to girls’ health and sexual health, their actions may not support adolescents in ways they imagined. Chapter two, using data from 28 qualitative semi-structured interviews with Canadian mothers tasked with consenting to the HPV vaccine, challenges the overly narrow binary where parents are labeled as “responsible” if they vaccinate, “irresponsible” if they do not. I find that HPV vaccine-consenting mothers follow normative conceptualizations of responsibility, aligned with HPV vaccination. Some non-HPV vaccine-consenting mothers exercised alternate responsibilities, aligned with broad efforts to manage their teens’ sexual health and sexuality. They extend responsibility beyond cancer protection vis-à-vis vaccines to a more general responsibility for their daughters’ sexual health and self-esteem. Chapter three, based on observations of four public school sex-education classrooms and interviews with Ontario teachers, shows that these sex-ed teachers deliver lessons in ways that align with key dimensions of “progressiveness” – facts, choice, and promoting diversity. This chapter uncovers how systems of gender, sexual, class, religious, racial, and ethnic inequalities are reproduced despite progressiveness. Chapter four, based on 19 qualitative interviews with girls (aged 11-16), outlines the patterns through which girls’ subjectivities, sexual health knowledge, and thoughts on the HPV vaccine are intertwined and operate in relation to other people and larger sociocultural structures. This dissertation serves as a call to challenge and reflect on the taken-for-grantedness of biotechnical inventions, like the HPV vaccine, and progressive sex-education in contemporary society.
Straight to the Subject. A Unified Analysis of Preverbal and Postverbal Subjects in Broad Focus Constructions in Spanish
Keywords: argument structure
prosody
Spanish
subject agreement and position
syntax-phonology interface
word order

This study re-examines subjects, subject distribution and subject properties in Spanish. It includes an experimental prosodic component that brings new empirical evidence to the theoretical discussion. Theoretically, it adopts a composite understanding of subjecthood (Harley, 1995; McCloskey, 1997), and incorporates the notion of argument structure. The result is a less rigid approach to the notion of default word order, which directly contributes to the possibility of a unified analysis of broad focus (BF) structures. Two options of subject realization, the inflectional layer and the left periphery, were assessed with respect to their prosodic features. The results of the analysis showed that there are differences in duration and fundamental frequency (F0) (for some speakers) between subjects that are old information and appear in the left periphery, and BF subjects. Taking into account these findings, differences in subject distribution in BF contexts, and the event-related interpretation of BF contexts, a new analysis—based upon Borer’s (2005b) Event Phrase—is proposed. In this analysis specEP is the locus of preverbal subject realization, and the need to license the event by binding the event variable is the trigger of the movement to this preverbal position. Since specEP can be filled by non-nominative elements, this analysis can accommodate different word orders, such as those with a preverbal locative or a dative DP and a postverbal nominative subject. Additionally, this analysis also sheds light on the position that postverbal nominative subjects occupy in these structures. This study also examined the syntactic operation of agreement in contexts that have been claimed to display variable number agreement, and demonstrated that such variability is only apparent, as each instance corresponds to a different underlying structure. Finally, issues related to the syntax-phonology interface are discussed in the light of the experimental findings, specifically the type of information that should be available at the interface, the type of syntactic information that is prosodically represented, and the mapping between syntax and prosody.
Determinism vs. Stochasticity in Community Assembly Processes: The Role of Species Phylogeny and Dominance
Keywords: determinism-stochasticity
dominant removal experiment
ecosystem services
landscape ecology
phylogenetic dispersion
plant community assembly

The deterministic or stochastic nature of the rules that regulate which species co-exist in a community has been long debated in ecology. This thesis aims to answer (1) if understanding the degree of determinism in the co-existence of species is more or less informative than other sources of uncertainty affecting regional biodiversity, (2) if biodiversity is important to understand ecosystem processes, and (3) if dominance and determinism are correlated. Using a landscape model I show that the degree of determinism or stochasticity (1) controls regional species richness, and (2) causes more uncertainty on species richness than land use change or climate change in the Tropical Andes. In herbaceous communities around the world, diversity is important to improve predictions of biomass productivity and litter accumulation mostly when the diversity and biomass descriptors of the communities were partitioned into legumes, forbs and graminoids. Graminoids, grasses and Carex, and one forb lineage were more likely to be dominant species than non-dominant, while more than a dozen forb lineages were more likely to be non-dominant species. The environment affected the dominant plants the most, increasing the role of habitat filtering, with a less common effect of limiting similarity; in contrast, non-dominant plants were mostly affected by limiting similarity among the non-dominants, but with no signal of habitat filtering. This pattern was observed in herbaceous systems using a local dominant removal experiment and a global observational dataset. The results show that dominant species are a more deterministic subset of species that converge towards a predictable optimum constrained by environmental conditions. In contrast, non-dominant species are better described as a diverging group of species, potentially with multiple optimums, and therefore with a less predictable response. Understanding the differences between dominant and non-dominants can improve models of ecosystem services that rely either on biomass accumulation or on diversity.
Nomads in Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia: Mobility and Social Change in the 5th and 4th Millennium BC
Keywords: Ceramic analysis
Late Chaloclithic
Mesopotamia
Movement
Pastoralism
Petrography

Due to the nature of their lifestyle and inherent mobility nomadic groups of the past have left little if any discernible imprint in excavated archaeological records. This is regrettable since most regions of the world that saw the emergence of complex societies were shaped by pastoralism as much as by agriculture, requiring us to study the modes in which nomadic and sedentary populations interacted with each other. My study addresses the transformative impact that nomadic groups had on Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia during the Early Late Chalcolithic period (4500 – 3800 BC), a crucial time span of social and technological innovations that foreshadowed the “Urban Revolution” of the 4th millennium BC. Using chaîne opératoire as underlying analytical tool I studied material assemblages from surveys and excavations across southeastern Turkey, Northern Syria, northern Iraq and Western Iran to identify items of material culture that can be associated with non-sedentary populations and their seasonal movements within this greater region. This study was complemented by detailed petrographic analyses of ceramics from key sites that had seen extensive excavation. My study not only contributes to a better regional understanding of Late Chalcolithic societies (notably the social and economic relationships between settlements and hinterland) but also provides a template for how to enhance the visibility of the “invisible nomad” within the archaeological record.
Exploring the Role of Zirconia Surface Treatments on the Properties and the Material’s Bonding to Resin Cement
Keywords: microtensile bond strength
surface characterization
thermocycling
Y-TZP

Objectives: 1. To evaluate the bond strength of yttria-tetragonal zirconia polycrystalline (Y-TZP), lithium-disilicate, and feldspathic ceramics to 10-methacryloyloxydecyl dihydrogen phosphate (MDP)-containing and non-MDP resin cements. 2. To evaluate the effect of ultrashort-pulse laser (UPL) on surface treatment on Y-TZP surface properties, the material’s bond strength to resin cement, and the effect of thermal stress on bond strength. Methods: Lithium-disilicate (LD), feldspathic porcelain (FP), and Y-TZP blocks received surface treatment according to the manufacturer recommendations (LD and FP: hydrofluoric acid, Y-TZP: alumina-blasting), and were luted to human dentin using MDP-containing (UL) or non-MDP adhesive system (UN). Specimens were microtensile tested. Fully-sintered Y-TZP received either no treatment (CTL) or one treatment of: ALB, SIL, or UPL. UPL consisted of either dots (LSD) or lines (LSL) patterns. Surface roughness, contact angle, and crystalline phases were evaluated. Y-TZP were cemented to composite using resin-based cement combined with a silane and MDP-containing adhesive. Specimens were incubated for 48 hours, then microtensile tested directly or after thermocycling. Results: The type of ceramic and the resin cement both had significant effects on bond strength (P≤.001). Y-TZP showed significantly lower bond strength (p
The Reprogramming of White Adipose Tissue to Brown Adipose Tissue Mediates Adverse Metabolic Dysfunction After A Burn Injury
Keywords: Adipose
Beige fat
Browning
Burns
Metabolism
Trauma

A burn injury represents one of the most severe forms of trauma and affects more than two million people in North America annually. Of all cases, nearly 4000 people die of complications related to the injury. A hallmark of severely burned patients is the activation of a hypermetabolic stress response, which is characterized by hyperglycemia, lipolysis, and protein catabolism. Perhaps the most serious gap in our understanding of the hypermetabolic response in burns is the role of the adipose tissue. Humans harbour two distinct adipose depots, white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT) that carry out essentially opposite functions. WAT is primarily involved in storing excess energy, whereas BAT burns excess energy in the form heat. This fat burning aspect of BAT has emerged as a powerful tool in combating the metabolic syndrome (hyperglycemia, excess body fat, hypertension). Additionally, it has been discovered that our WAT can be reprogrammed to become BAT, however, whether or not such reprogramming (white to brown fat) occurs after a burn injury is unknown. We therefore investigated the adipose tissue, and its role in post-burn hypermetabolism, by using an animal model of burn injury and tissue from clinical burn patients. In our first study, we report the reprogramming of WAT to BAT in both burn patients and post-burn mice indicated by increased expression of the brown adipocyte marker, uncoupling protein 1 (UCP-1). This reprogramming of WAT post-burn injury required both IL-6 and catecholamine secretion from alternatively activated macrophages. In our second study, we demonstrated that WAT browning with its associated lipolysis increased plasma levels of free fatty acids, leading to the accelerated development of hepatic steatosis and dysfunction after a burn injury. The last study of this thesis was geared towards clinical applications, and centered on the inhibition of the WAT to BAT switch via the use of an IL-6R blocker and propranolol to improve post-burn hypermetabolism and organ steatosis. In summary, our findings highlight an essential role of the adipose tissue in contributing to post-burn hypermetabolism and pathology.
Chiral Donor-Functionalized N-Heterocyclic Carbenes for Asymmetric Catalytic Applications in Hydrogenation – From Design to Application
Keywords: Asymmetric Catalysis
Chirality
Computational Chemistry
Hydrogenation
Kaibene
N-Heterocyclic Carbene

In this thesis, the synthetic protocol for a new class of enantiopure, primary-amine tethered N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligands is described. The synthesis, coordination chemistry, and applications in catalysis for three ligands from this class with general formula (S,S)/(R,R)-H2N-CHPh-CHPh-NHC (NHC = -NCHCHN(C)R, R = Me, tBu, or Mes) are reported. The imidazolium salt of these ligands can be prepared in high yield and purity from the SN1 reaction between chiral sulfamidates and the corresponding N-substituted imidazoles. The method of coordination of the NHC ligands to metals depends on the acidity of the C-H functional in the imidazolium salts. Silver and copper compounds can be prepared in high yield with the ligand to the metal ratio of 2:1 or 1:1. Ruthenium, iridium, and rhodium complexes can also be prepared via transmetallation from the silver or copper reagents, intramolecular base deprotonation, or C-H oxidative addition. Four ruthenium complexes and two iridium complexes based on these ligands were proven active for ketone hydrogenation, under relatively mild condition (50℃, 25 bar H2(g)). Three half-sandwich ruthenium compounds containing Cp (cyclopentadienyl) or Cp* (1,2,3,4,5-pentamethylcyclopentadienyl) are highly active aryl and alkyl hydrogenation catalysts with TOF (turnover frequency) up to 67 s-1, TON (turnover number) up to 104, and ee (enantiomeric excess) up to 86%. An experimental and computational study of the half-sandwich ruthenium systems suggests that the heterolytic splitting of dihydrogen over the metal-amido bond and hydride transfer from the catalyst to the substrate can both be rate-determining. An alcohol-assisted mechanism was also calculated to explain the rate enhancement when the catalysis was conducted in polar, protic solvents such as 2-PrOH. A full experimental and computational study was also performed for a Fe(P-NH-P’) system. Similarly, heterolytic splitting and hydride transfer are the two most energy demanding transition states. In addition, the enantiodetermining step (EDS) of this asymmetric ketone hydrogenation catalyst was calculated, and the origins of enantioselectivity were summarized as steric repulsion, the high compressibility of the backbone, and H-bond contributed stabilization.
Photo Control of Protein Activity Using Genetically Encoded Photoswitches
Keywords: Optogenetics
Protein design
Protein folding
Protein structure

Many biological processes are governed by protein activities that are spatially and temporally regulated. Where (i.e.: in a particular cell type or subcellular organelle) and when (i.e.: in relation to a cue, or for what duration) a protein is active can dictate its biological role. Photo-control, in which a target protein is made sensitive to light, can be used to precisely match the spatial and temporal patterning of protein activity in living cells. However, photo-control of protein activity often requires extensive protein engineering. This thesis describes three unique approaches to achieve photo-control of protein activity, as well as biophysical data to guide design of new optogenetic tools based on a novel red light-switchable protein. Chapter 2 describes the design and characterization a photo-switchable fusion protein, in which a coiled coil forming motif (Ehelix) is inserted into a circular permutant of photoactive yellow protein (c-PYP). c-Ehelix-PYP forms domain-swapped dimers that bind tightly to a peptide motif, whereas the monomers are inactive, enabling a novel mechanism for photo-control. Chapter 3 describes a blue light controlled dominant negative inhibitor to the transcription factor CREB (opto-DN-CREB). opto-DN-CREB was designed by fusing a transcription factor inhibitor (A-CREB) to PYP and making complementary mutations to PYP using the software suite ROSETTA. We demonstrate that opto-DN-CREB binds selectively to CREB in the dark, and that photo-control of CREB activity in cells is possible. Chapter 4 uses phage display to select for light-switchable protein interactions. Small proteins that bind selectively to the light or dark states of PYP and Avena sativa light-oxygen-voltage domain (asLOV) were selected, characterized extensively in vitro. They were then used to control subcellular localization of a fluorescent protein reporter in eukaryotic cells. Chapter 5 describes the biophysical characterization of a small, soluble red light-switchable protein (GAF3). NMR characterization shows that GAF3 undergoes conformational changes upon red light irradiation and suggest key residues involved. Together, this work adds to the available optogenetic toolkit and to our fundamental knowledge in the engineering of photo-switchable proteins.