VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Polytellurophenes as Solution Processable Materials for Applications in Organic Electronics
Keywords: Conjugated polymer
Organic electronics
Polytellurophene
Tellurophene
Transistor

With very few previous publications on polytellurophenes prior to 2009, this is a largely unexplored class of conjugated polymers. This thesis details investigations into two types of tellurophene polymers. The synthesis of four novel tellurophene containing polymers is described and the characterization of their optical, solid-state, and electronic properties is discussed. The first chapter provides an introduction to the history of the field of polytellurophenes and provides context for the work presented in this thesis. The second chapter describes the synthesis of a novel bitellurophene monomer and its use in palladium-catalyzed polymerization. Once synthesized, the polymer is used to explore the unique chemistry of tellurium and its ability to form coordination species with bromine. Upon treatment with elemental bromine, changes in the optical properties of the system are observed. In chapter three, the synthesis of the first examples of soluble tellurophene homopolymers is presented. These poly(3-alkyltellurophene)s are solution processable materials and are fully characterized in solution and the solid-state. Chapter four describes further studies into the thin-film morphology of the materials presented in chapter three. Furthermore, semiconductor:insulator blends are prepared using poly(3-alkyltellurophene)s and high-density polyethylene. Taking advantage of the elemental contrast provided by the tellurium heavy atom, the micro- and nanostructure of the blend thin-films are investigated with various microscopy techniques providing insight into these types of blends that was previously unavailable. In the final chapter, the performance of these materials in thin-film field-effect transistors was investigated.
From 21st Century Learning to Learning in the 21st Century: Influences on Transforming Teacher Knowledge of Constructivist Practices in Technology-rich Learning Environments
Keywords: Change and Improvement
Knowledge Building
Learning in the 21st Century
Learning Sciences
Pedagogy
Technology

Teaching practices supported by networked digital technologies that activate the kind of learning environments advocated by the learning sciences require significant changes in pedagogical practices (Fullan Langworthy, 2014, Fullan, 2012; Friesen Lock, 2010; Dede, 2010; Scardamalia, 2010, 2006, 2004; Koehler Mishra, 2008; Sawyer, 2008). Using technology to support a constructivist approach to K-12 education, this thesis looks at factors that impede and facilitate that stance. Some studies describe the challenge of creating these types of learning environments as related to teachers' abilities and desires to develop new ways of knowing, which in turn drive the process of change and improvement. Other studies indicate change and improvement is more likely driven by collaborative action among teachers, and it is action that leads to new understandings. This study seeks to determine how such change happen by asking K-12 teachers what influences their tendencies to adopt more constructivist practices in technology-rich environments. Concepts and assumptions inherent in the popularized term "21st Century Learning" are deconstructed and reconstructed. Employing a qualitative constructivist grounded theory design, the findings indicate that teachers believe the use of technology in classrooms will only be successful when it is effectively used as a tool to support sound pedagogical practices, and the tools used are connected to authentic teaching and learning. The findings demonstrate that an understanding of how knowledge is constructed accelerates teachers' transitions to constructivist practices in technology-rich environments. The findings also suggest that shifting teacher practice is most effective when teachers are empowered to collaboratively and collectively shape change and improvement initiatives. A clear sense of how the educational community can support teachers in change and improvement initiatives that engage students in deeper and more authentic learning emerges.
Forelimb Muscle and Muscle Attachment Morphology
Keywords: Activity
Animal model
Bone growth
Bone remodelling
Muscle architecture
Muscle attachment

The ability to make behavioural inferences from skeletal remains is critical to understanding the lifestyles and activities of past human populations and extinct animals. Muscle attachment site (enthesis) morphology has long been assumed to reflect muscle strength and activity during life, but little evidence exists to directly link activity patterns with muscle development and the morphology of their attachments to the skeleton. This research used a primate sample (
The Politics of "Access": Undocumented Students and Enrollment in Toronto Schools
Keywords: Anti-Racism
Bureaucracy
Critical Race Theory
Migration
Schooling
Undocumented Migrants

Bordering occurs beyond ports of entry. It operates in spaces where immigration status is examined in order to participate or access a public good. In Ontario, schools serve as borders and often exclude undocumented migrant on the basis of status. At the same time, community activists work to erode border-zones and redefine "membership." This project tracks and analyzes one such initiative. It historicizes constructions of membership in relation to the Toronto District School Board and its "Students Without Legal Immigration Status Policy." This policy, discursively known as a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy stipulates that the Board would protect students by barring employees from asking, reporting, or sharing information regarding a family's immigration-status. However, the policy remains to be fully implemented, the Board has constructed procedures that make enrolment more difficult, and undocumented students continue to experience exclusion. . Thus, this project addresses the gaps in implementation as well as differing understandings of what constitutes "access."The project combines Anti-racist theory, LatCrit, border rhetoricity, and concepts developed by Frantz Fanon, and Antonio Gramsci. This framework facilitates the examination of the construction of internal borders along hegemonic understandings of membership, how these processes are facilitated by the dehumanization of undocumented migrants, and the resistance practices of migrants and their allies. Data stems from interviews, experiential knowledge, and grey literature. Interviews were conducted with fourteen differently located social actors including TDSB administrators and grassroots organizers. Grey literature from the TDSB, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Coalition, and No One Is Illegal- Toronto was also examinedKey findings include the ways bureaucratic processes at the TDSB invisibilize undocumented migrants and the resultant hegemonic reproduction of bordering in spite of "access" policies. Additionally, this project highlights the strategies employed by community organizers to make Toronto a space of "non-compliance" to immigration authorities and how access to schooling is framed as a key component. Finally, different framings of "access" are examined. While Board practices equated access to the ability to enroll, local activists demanded broader understandings of this concept including recognition of the ways interrelated factors, including safety and access to other services affected schooling.
Canadian Social Housing: Policy Evolution and Impacts on the Housing System and Urban Space
Keywords: History
Policy
Social housing
Spatial
Urban
Welfare state

The social housing system is analysed as an element of the evolving welfare state, housing system, and urban space, focusing on a 1965-1995 prime period in Canada, Ontario and Toronto. The theoretical concerns pertain to welfare state evolution and impacts. These include: in policy change, the relation between institutional continuity, structural factors, and political forces; in the housing system, decommodification in a liberal-welfare regime in shifting eras; and in urban space, the structuring of social mix by socio-tenure segregation. The policy history, using archival sources, interviews, and reinterpreted secondary literature, is the first detailed overview all turning points including the critical junctures of the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Its structured narrative analyses the reshaping of policy by the political-economic context, housing market and urban development factors, ideas, and specific events. The housing system analysis reviews impacts in production, housing mix, rents paid, mobility (choice), and the value of rent-geared-to-income (RGI) assistance as a social transfer. The spatial analysis uses administrative and census data to analyse, for Greater Toronto 1971-1996, the evolving locations of low-income RGI tenants vis-Ă -vis low-income market renters and all households. The close relation of social housing policy change to critical junctures in welfare state evolution is confirmed, but also the large impact of housing market conditions and urban development agendas; shifting ideas; and particular political actors and events. Social housing accounted for about 10 percent of production, while RGI reduced rents to under 40 percent of market levels for almost 40 percent of low-income renters, and accounted for about one-fifth of their residential mobility. The thirty-year social housing prime created a mixed economy of urban development, its non-market housing sector altering urban space and mitigating the low-end extremes of inequality: comparable to what Canada's then `mid-Atlantic' welfare state effected generally in that era.
Open-cell Foaming with Injection Molding
Keywords: Foam
Injection Molding
Open-Cell
Polymer Crystallization
Polypropylene
Thermoplastic Polymer

Open-cell foams are very versatile and continue to proliferate in our daily lives. Despite the bright future prospect, the open-cell plastic foam industry is facing many challenges. The use and end-of-life disposal the common non-recyclable thermosetting open-cell foams have received increasingly stringent regulation and public opposition over years. Hence, there is a strong demand and interest in the industry to devise strategies to produce recyclable thermoplastic open-cell foams with conventional processing processes, particularly with injection molding due to its manufacturing flexibility and cost-effectiveness. However, it has been technologically challenging to achieve foams with high foam expansion or open-cell morphologies with this process. Foams manufactured by conventional injection molding technique have a void faction much lower than 50%. Owing to that, the cell wall thicknesses are relatively thick, and therefore, it is very difficult for the bubbles meet with each other and create opening. Some open-cell structures had been reported earlier with injection molding, however, most of them were the result from excessive elongation of premature cells or from improper processing control; therefore, the overall structures tended to be very poor and not acceptable.In this context, the objective of this thesis is to investigate open-cell foaming of recyclable thermoplastic foams with injection molding in conjunction with the mold-opening method to attain higher foam expansion. Processing control of the process was achieved by controlling the temperature of the foam expansion step through the varying the material cooling/dwelling time in the mold cavity. A numerical model was also established to provide a reasonable estimation on this material temperature, which is critical to the investigation of open-cell foaming with the proposed process. A clarifying-type crystal nucleating agent, MDBS, was also used to refine the size and increase the number density of the crystals of PP, and thereby, increasing the cell density for achieving thinner cell walls for cell wall opening. Results from the crystallization kinetics analysis, as well as the estimated temperature profile from the numerical simulations, were used to explain the evolution in the cellular morphologies and to postulate a potential mechanism for achieving open-cell and highly-reticulated foam structures in this study.
Moving Towards Thought: Theatricality, Technology, and the Theatre
Keywords: Deleuze
Technology
Theatre
Theatricality

Inspired by the question of what forces us to think and employing the Deleuzian concepts of affect and the new, this thesis argues that the technologies used in theatre production construct an affective encounter from which new thinking may emerge. Moreover, this thesis maintains that a consideration of the affective encounter is a productive means of further understanding theatricality because the experience of theatricality is rooted in the affective encounter. This argument brings together theatricality and thinking through the experience of affect that is produced by the technologies used in performance. Technology becomes an integral element to this project because it is positioned as the disruptive element that incites the affective encounter from which theatricality and new thinking may emerge.This examination of the relationship between thought, technology, and theatricality is grounded by an analysis of theatre productions by The Builders Association, Troika Ranch, Toni Dove, and Marie Brassard. It is further structured by an evaluation of ways that technology shapes and reshapes understandings of space, presence and event; each of which are significant elements in our conceptualizations of theatricality. More specifically, the individual chapters consider how technologies used in performance produce disruptions that open spaces for thinking the new. This is done through an examination of the ways that screens articulate the disjuncture inherent to theatrical space; how vocal mediation challenges conceptions of presence as an originary site; and how the theatrical event is reconstituted by the use of technologies that place the spectator in the midst of a "happening" that intensifies and disrupts their common sensuous experience. The empirical material of performance is used in this thesis as a means of working through the larger philosophical concerns of the project including: questions of thought, the new, and the role that technology plays in the creation and experience of theatricality. Building upon established discourses of intermedial performance, theatricality, and affect, this thesis outlines an expression of the creative potential of spectatorship, and is ultimately invested in considering how active participation may move the spectator to think the new.
Characterization of Muscle Contraction with Second Harmonic Generation Microscopy
Keywords: Birefringence in Muscle
Muscle Contraction
Sarcomere Syncronization
Second Harmonic Generation

Muscle cells have the ability to change length and generate force due to orchestrated action of myosin nanomotors that cause sliding of actin filaments along myosin filaments in the sarcomeres, the fundamental contractile units, of myocytes. The correlated action of hundreds of sarcomeres is needed to produce the myocyte contractions. This study probes the molecular structure of the myofilaments and investigates the movement correlations between sarcomeres during contraction. In this study, second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy is employed for imaging striated myocytes. Myosin filaments in striated myocytes inherently have a nonzero second-order susceptibility,
A Longitudinal Examination of the Interrelationship of Multiple Health Behaviours
Keywords: Alcohol Consumption
Physical Activity
Public Health
Smoking

Background: Evaluating the interrelationship of health behaviours could assist in the development of effective public health interventions. Furthermore, the ability to identify cognitive mediating mechanisms that may influence multiple behavioural change requires further evaluation. Purpose: The objectives of this nationally representative multi-wave longitudinal analysis were: (1) to evaluate co-variation among health behaviours; specifically alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activity, and smoking, and (2) to examine whether mastery acts as a mediating cognitive mechanism that facilitates multiple health behaviour change.Methods: Secondary data analysis was conducted on the first seven cycles of the Canadian National Population Health Survey. Data collection began in 1994/1995 and has continued biennially to 2006/2007. This longitudinal sample consisted of 15,167 Canadians 12 years of age or older. Alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activity, and smoking were assessed as continuous variables. Parallel process growth curve models were used to analyze co-variation between health behaviours as well as to evaluate the potential mediating effects of perceived mastery. Results: An increase in leisure-time physical activity was associated with a greater reduction in tobacco use, while a flatter positive trajectory in alcohol consumption was associated with a steeper decline in tobacco use. Co-variation between alcohol consumption and leisure-time physical activity did not reach statistical significance. For the most part, mastery was unsuccessful in mediating the interrelationship of multiple behavioural changes.Conclusions: Health behaviours are not independent, but rather interrelated. Although one could argue that the estimated magnitude of such behavioural changes were quite small, modest and attainable behavioural changes at the population level can have considerable effects on the morbidity, mortality, and health care costs. In order to optimize limited prevention resources, these results suggest that population level intervention efforts targeting multiple modifiable behavioural risk factors may not need to occur simultaneously.
Noncovalent and Reversible Covalent Interactions as the Basis for Reaction Development
Keywords: borinic acids
halogen bonding
organoboron catalysis
Suzuki-Miyaura cross-couplings

Noncovalent and reversible covalent interactions are of central importance to the fields of catalysis and supramolecular chemistry. The work presented in this thesis focuses on our interests in furthering the understanding and utility of halogen bonding (XB) and boron-diol interactions. Chapter 1 describes the development of tridentate halogen bond donor receptors that were used to assess the strengths of various XB interactions. By exploiting the chelate effect of these tridentate receptors, XB association constants varying by four orders of magnitude were obtained, enabling comparisons to other noncovalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonding and anion-π interactions. Furthermore, free energy relationships between computed and experimental data were apparent over the wide range of electronically diverse donors studied.A review of organoboron acid-based catalysts is presented in Chapter 2. Their ability to function as Lewis acids and to activate carbonyl pronucleophiles, carboxylic acids and hydroxyl groups is discussed, alongside the advantages and limitations associated with their use as catalysts.Chapter 3 describes the development of novel borinic acid catalysts for the regioselective functionalization of di- and polyols under mild reaction conditions. This work builds on the group's previous finding that diphenylborinic acid can reversibly bind to diols. Through the formation of a tetracoordinate `ate'-compex, the bound oxygens are activated as nucleophiles. 9-Hetero-10-boraanthracene-derived borinic acids were found to be less prone to oxidative decomposition than diphenylborinic acid, thus lowering reaction times and improving catalyst turnover. Furthermore, the physical properties of the boraanthracenes were studied through X-ray crystallography, NMR, UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy.Chapter 4 describes studies aimed at using 9-hetero-10-boraanthracenes as substrates for Suzuki-Miyaura cross-couplings (SMCs). Using this methodology, benzannulated heterocycles were synthesized via a twofold SMC. Despite a slow transmetallation step, this process enabled the step- and atom-economial synthesis of medium-sized heterocycles.Finally, Chapter 5 details our current approaches towards expanding the scope of electrophiles that can be used for borinic acid catalyzed diol functionalizations. Monoallylations of diols were achieved in high yields using Pd/B dual catalysis. We are currently expanding this concept towards the desymmetrization of meso-diols through the development of chiral Pd-ligands.
French Romance and English Piety: Genre and Codex in Insular Romance
Keywords: Anglo-Norman
Manuscript studies
Medieval English literature
Medieval romance
Middle English
Religious literature

This dissertation explores what the interplay of romance and religious literature in England from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries can reveal about the origins and development of medieval romance. Drawing upon codicological evidence, it favors a more fluid definition of romance that recognizes it as both a category of generic difference distinct from but also linked to the saint's life, chronicle, or chanson de geste, and as a mode of translation that has its roots in the origins of the term romanz as a marker of linguistic difference used to distinguish French from Latin. It argues that the interconnections of romance and religious literature should be viewed as part of the process of translating or adapting a text, whether into a new language or for a new audience. The first section examines how French hagiographical works adopt motifs and themes associated with romance in the translation of their Latin sources. Chapter 1 focuses on Wace's use of courtly imagery, expanded descriptions, and doubling in the Vie de Sainte Marguerite, Conception Nostre Dame, and Vie de Saint Nicolas and how these alterations to his source material anticipate qualities that would become features of the romance genre. The second chapter discusses the generic hybridity in Marie de France's Vie Seinte Audree, in which allusions to the lais cast Saint Audrey as a mal mariĂŠe, and the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, in which the emphasis on Owein's status as a knight offers a suitable alternative to the religious life. The second section assesses the use of hagiographic and religious elements in romances. The third chapter traces the use of hagiography in three Anglo-Norman romances - the Roman de Horn, Roman de Waldef, and Gui de Warewic - to contextualize the significant generic shift that occurs in the attribution of saintly qualities to the hero Guy of Warwick in the latest of the three texts. Concentrating on the role of the relics, the final chapter looks at how the Middle English adaptations of the chanson de geste Fierabras reflect developments in devotional culture, England's involvement in the Hundred Years War, and the rise of English as a literary language. The combination of codicological and literary approaches in this study foregrounds the processes of translation, adaptation, and transmission that operated in the literary networks of medieval England to broaden our understanding of medieval genres, as well as the place of French language, literature, and culture.