VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Politicizing Waste Collection and Discipling Waste Collectors: A critical Analysis of Waste Management Practice in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2003 - 2012)
Keywords: cooperative micro-enterprises
Discipling waste collectors
politics of waste collection
public-private partnership
waste goverance
Waste management reform

This dissertation investigates the unique approach the Addis Ababa city government (AACG) put in place to address the city’s waste collection problem. To solve the garbage problem AACG introduced major waste management reforms in 2003 and 2009. The two waste management reforms basically strived (1) to create employment opportunities for unemployed urban residents through mobilizing them to form government-initiated micro-enterprises (CMEs) and engage in door-to-door waste collection, and (2) to discipline waste in order to create a clean and livable city through increasing waste collection efficiency. The main focus of this dissertation is unpacking how the different techniques and rationalities waste governing institutions employed to discipline waste as a material politicized waste collection, define power relation between the city government and waste collectors, and disciplined waste collectors. I explore these issues through examining the specific spaces of engagement between waste collectors (formal and informal) and city government’s representatives by paying close attention to the everyday practices of waste collection between 2003 and 2012. Primary data collected included a questionnaire survey (n=423) and key informants’ interviews (n=28). Secondary data were also consulted. I use the concept of governance, everyday state, and the notion of governmentality as analytical frameworks. Empirical findings reveal that the city government’s objective of creating clean city between 2003 and 2009 was marred by the city government’s effort to tackle unemployment by securing waste collection activities for government-initiated CMEs. It is also shown that the different governing technologies the city government employed to discipline waste as a material were in fact aimed at disciplining waste collectors through reconfiguring the power relationship between waste governing institutions and waste collectors. The research also highlights the way the city government forms partnership with CMEs in the 2009 waste management reform. The research suggests that the city’s government favour of a specific arrangement of partnership that sits in the middle of the public-private spectrum where it is neither the full-scale privatization of services nor the kind of public service delivery that was prevalent before 2009. Moreover, the research raises important questions about the involvement of cooperative micro-enterprises in waste management.
Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice
Keywords: housing
"minimal living"
modernist architecture
Soviet Union
Weimar Germany

My dissertation, “Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice,” investigates the modernist production of living space by focusing on housing reform in Weimar Germany’s Berlin and Frankfurt am Main as well as on the subsequent projects of German modernist architects working in the USSR in the early 1930s. Broadly, my work addresses questions of urban politics (primarily in Germany and Soviet Union), ownership, modernist urban visions, and everyday living practices. I take as a starting point the claim that home was central to the production of modern subjectivity, and, more specifically, that suburban public housing was instrumental in the production of Weimar modernity. By surveying a range of constitutive material and discursive elements for these new forms of settlement (including new technologies and construction methods, state and civic managerial bureaucracies, struggles over finance policies, discursive, aesthetic, and propagandistic legitimizing strategies, etc.), I look at how suburban, large scale, and publicly funded housing estates (Großsiedlung) were organized, constructed, and inhabited. Informed by a conceptual model of “coproduction,” I aim to articulate how domesticity and public housing figured in the production of modern subjects and sensibilities and to re-connect discussions of policies to understandings of the sphere of the home as a site of everyday life, paying close attention to spaces that shape and produce—and are produced by—complex networks of social practices in the modern city. I investigate the ways in which different actors (Social Democratic government, city planners, municipal authorities, housewife associations, residents) involved themselves in the construction, legitimation and provision of emerging modern organizations of space. My case studies target specific and resonant sites of coproduction of the modern home: Martin Wagner’s and Bruno Taut’s housing estate Hufeisensiedlung in Berlin; the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in Frankfurt, which introduced the notion of “minimal dwelling”; such minimalist innovations as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt kitchen; and the new industrial cities of the USSR, where German architects worked to adapt concepts of “minimal living” into a different cultural context.
eLearning in Ontario: Responding to the Winds of Change
Keywords: elearning
Ontario
policy
strategy
university

This thesis examines elearning strategy and policy development in the Ontario university sector during a four-year period of heightened activity and public discourse. In particular the articulation of the goals and purposes of elearning across the upper levels of the administrative hierarchy are analysed, with attention to tensions between groups of policy actors and stakeholders active in this domain. The research was guided by the overarching question: How have symbolic models for strategic success in the shifting elearning policyscape been conceptualized and integrated across the Ontario university sector? First, historical background on the emergence of elearning in the federal and provincial context is presented, followed by analysis of the various discipline-based approaches to understanding changes to system level and institutional practice. The conceptual framework for the study is informed by this range of epistemological lenses already evident in the scholarly discourse exploring both the potential and the challenges related to elearning initiatives. In this doctoral thesis, ideal-types are used as a heuristic technique, in combination with the concept of the policyscape as a model for understanding the significance of global influencers. A vertical case-study methodology involving document analysis and interview components compares paradigmatic perspectives and sheds light on the policy negotiations among key stakeholders within the province. The findings suggest there have been significant tensions between participants in the policy development process, with the most important points of tension arising as a result of government promotion of new models aimed at economic and productivity gains borrowed from the broader policyscape. Institutions have resisted such models as they respond to their internal stakeholder concerns and navigate contextual constraints. The findings suggest that further investigation of three aspects of the policy process would be beneficial: the role of community feedback, the potential for alternative incentive structures, and further consideration of the significance of path dependencies.
Legal Adaptation to the Internet: The Emergence of Digital Rights and Internet Personhood
Keywords: Anonymity
Freedom of expression
Internet
Legal adaptation
Personhood
Privacy

Understanding how the law has adapted to technological change in the past is critical to determining how it can best respond in the future. In attempting to do so, scholars have largely examined legal adaptation to technological change only with respect to discrete doctrinal categories. While useful, these analyses may fail to grasp the underlying human interests affected by a technology in their focus on specific areas of law. This thesis demonstrates that a holistic examination of past legal adaptations to a technology across multiple doctrinal categories helps to elucidate the underlying interests affected by a technology, and better assists in addressing challenges created by similar technologies in the future. This thesis develops a substantive theory of legal adaptation to the Internet, finding that much of the lawâ s response to the Internet recognizes the personhood-expanding nature of Internet use, specifically with respect to privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.
Integrative Modelling of Clinical, Genomic, and Microenvironmental Factors for Improved Prediction of Patient Outcome in Localized Prostate Cancer
Keywords: Biomarker
Gene signature
Genomic instability
Precision medicine
Prognosis
Prostate cancer

Prostate cancer represents a major global challenge, with 1.1 million new cases in 2012. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, by 2028 prostate cancer will be the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the country. The vast majority of men will be diagnosed with localized disease and further stratified into low, intermediate and high risk groups based on clinical and pathological features. Despite patient management schemes tailored to these risk groups, significant rates of over- and under-treatment remain. To improve clinical stratification, molecular features derived from tumour and circulating DNA, RNA and proteins are being evaluated. In prostate cancer, four molecular prognostic signatures (MPS) based on information from derived from RNA and proteins are commercially-available. I hypothesized that molecular features derived from tumour DNA can also be used to develop prognostic MPS. To test this hypothesis, I investigated the ability of copy number alterations (CNAs) to inform patient management in localized prostate cancer. First, I evaluated genes involved in DNA damage sensing as markers of patient response to localized treatment. I found that copy number gains in NBN are predictive for poor outcome in patients treated with radiotherapy but not radical prostatectomy. Next, I evaluated whether combining multiple genes into MPS can improve patient risk stratification. Using an unsupervised approach, I found four molecular subtypes of localized prostate cancer with different patient prognosis. I also identified a synergistic relationship between genomic instability and tumour hypoxia in predicting patient prognosis. Finally, I developed a 100-locus MPS which can identify patients at risk of rapid failure. To ease clinical translation of this MPS, I refined the signature to 31 loci with concordant DNA-RNA changes, and developed a NanoString panel to enable consistent measurement of the MPS in future studies. These findings demonstrate that CNA-based features are informative of patient outcome and can be additive and even synergistic with micro-environmental and clinico-pathological variables. In the future, incorporating other molecular, micro-environmental, and imaging features can drive further improvements to decrease the burden of over-treatment while minimizing treatment failure rates.
Mechanisms of Reversible Sorafenib Resistance in Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Keywords: angiogenesis
hepatocellular carcinoma
liver cancer
resistance
vessel co-option
xenograft

Conventional wisdom in oncology is that drug resistance is a stable and heritable phenotype due largely to cancer cell acquisition of genetic alterations. Thus, most cancer agents are given as sequential lines of therapy since continued use of the same agent is considered futile after disease progression. The anti-angiogenic tyrosine kinase inhibitor sorafenib is the only approved treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. Its efficacy is further hindered by intrinsic (upfront) and acquired drug resistance (initial response and subsequent relapse) and a lack of alternative therapies. Our laboratory previously demonstrated using a human xenograft model of locally advanced HCC that acquired resistance to sorafenib is reversible due to re-sensitization of the tumour following transfer of resistant cancer cells to new hosts. An implication is that continued or rechallenge treatment with sorafenib could be effective strategies in HCC. The mechanistic basis of reversible sorafenib resistance was investigated and was observed to be multifactorial. First, prompted by similar findings in HCC patients, tissue and plasma sorafenib levels of sorafenib were found to gradually decline over time in drug-resistant relative to sensitive tumour-bearing mice. These changes were partially attributed to tumoural induction of the sorafenib-metabolizing enzyme CYP3A4. Escalating the dose to restore drug levels resulted in excessive toxicity and did not completely reverse drug resistance. Second, sorafenib treatment was found to effectively inhibit angiogenesis to the same extent in responding as well as resistant tumours. Rather, tumours hijacked or â co-optedâ the host liver vasculature by becoming increasingly invasive and incorporating the adjacent parenchyma. Many of the changes associated with resistance were reversed by stopping treatment. Altogether, sorafenib treatment of HCC could be improved by 1) individualizing the dosage of drug; 2) prolonging anti-angiogenic treatment after disease progression; and 3) targeting co-opted vessels in conjunction with angiogenesis. From a survey of the literature, unstable forms of drug resistance may be applicable to other classes of anti-cancer therapy, including agents that directly target cancer cells. This phenomenon appears to be highly under-appreciated as a characteristic of cancers but offers important opportunities to extend the utility of many existing cancer drugs.
Exploring the Role of Community in Online Learning
Keywords: Community
Facilitation methods
Online behaviours
Online learning

Distance education is growing rapidly at the post-secondary level in Canada. Despite the growing popularity of online learning in higher education, distance education often suffers from high dropout rates, which have been attributed to the physical separation of students. Such separation tends to give rise to feelings of isolation and disconnection. According to the literature, these feelings can be overcome by fostering a sense of community, that is a sense of belonging and interactivity among online learners. While a growing body of literature emphasizes the importance of fostering a community in online course communities, it is not clear how this is best accomplished. There is neither an accepted set of rules or strategies nor clearly defined steps in the development of a community in online course communities. In addition, the research on the effects of a community on learning is mixed. A few scholars criticize existing research for failing to demonstrate the role of community in learning through rigorous empirical studies. My research is concerned with this gap in the literature. So far, current research has made little progress in providing answers concerning the role of community. Findings from this study revealed that strong community levels were associated with instructor-facilitated online course communities, whereas weak community levels were associated with peer-facilitated online course communities. Students in the online course communities with stronger community levels, posted more notes, replied to more notes, and reread notes more often. They also spent more time revising the notes that they posted. Most interestingly, students in the online course communities with stronger community levels were more likely to link to and ‘Like’ their classmates’ notes. Furthermore, unlike their peers from online course communities with weaker community levels, students from online course communities with stronger community levels believed that they learned more because they had access to their professor and their peers’ ideas, and also expressed their enjoyment of the online course community discussions. It was also found that instructors from online course communities with stronger community levels were more hands-on than those from online course communities with weaker community levels. Considering these findings, I argue that fostering a sense of community in online course communities enhances social capital through the creation of relationships. This produces better student outcomes, deeper learning and more positive online learning experiences for students.
The Direct and Interactive Effects of Life Stressors and Dispositional Traits in the Prediction of Youth Psychopathology
Keywords: dispositional traits
personality
psychopathology
stressors
temperament
youth

Dispositional differences are likely to influence youth's adjustment to stressors; however, the potential for interactions among stressors and dispositional traits is uncertain. Prior efforts to examine these interactions have yielded mixed results: whereas some results have shown that presence of both exposure to stressors and trait vulnerabilities are needed to trigger psychopathological responses (i.e., the diathesis-stress model), other results have shown that trait vulnerabilities trigger psychopathological responses regardless of exposure to stressors (i.e., the direct vulnerability model). Moreover, variability in operationalizations of stressors and dispositional traits has made it difficult to draw conclusions across studies. The current research aims to elucidate the potential interactive effects of stressors and dispositional traits while overcoming these limitations. To enhance consistency with results from prior investigations, the direct and interactive effects of stressors and dispositional traits were examined (1) across family-level versus youth-specific stressors (i.e., to allow the evaluation of specific effects across different types of stressors) and (2) using comprehensive models of dispositional trait (i.e., five-factor model of child personality; higher- and lower-order temperament traits). To this end, two investigations using nonclinical youth samples were conducted. In the first study, the hypothesis that child personality traits moderate stress-psychopathology associations during the transition into early adolescence was examined. No systematic evidence for moderation emerged; rather, results supported an additive hypothesis. In the second study, the hypothesis that dispositional traits influence the appraisal of stressors by examining their associations with discrepancies among parent- and youth-reports of stressors was examined. Informant discrepancies for stressors were positively correlated with negative affectivity, supporting the hypothesis that negative affectivity influences appraisal of stressors. Overall, this research elucidates idiographic responses to stressors in youth, and therefore has implications for assessment, prevention, and intervention efforts in clinical child and adolescent psychology.
The Impact of Herpes Therapy on Genital and Systemic immunology
Keywords: HIV
HSV

HIV infects more than 34 million people globally. Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) has been associated with a 3-fold increase in the rate of HIV acquisition, which may be due to physical breaks in the mucosal barrier during symptomatic episodes and/or an increased number of HIV target cells being exposed in the genital tract. Although clinical trials have demonstrated that herpes suppression in HIV uninfected individuals had no impact on HIV incidence, acyclovir was associated with a decrease in plasma HIV viral load and delayed disease progression in HSV-2 co-infected individuals. In addition, many HIV infected individuals display persistent systemic immune activation, which correlates with disease progression, despite successful antiretroviral therapy (ART). It is hypothesized that HSV could be one of the drivers of this activation. To further assess these relationships, my thesis focused on examining the impact of herpes therapy on genital tract immunology and systemic immune activation in HIV uninfected women and a comparison of systemic immune activation in individuals co-infected with HIV and HSV-2 on ART randomized to valacyclovir or placebo. A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, cross-over trial was conducted in HSV-2 infected, HIV uninfected, women using valacyclovir. No differences were observed in the number of various HIV target cells in the endocervix between valacyclovir and placebo phases. Further, valacyclovir had no impact on systemic immune activation in the same cohort. In a second clinical trial, the role of herpes therapy on systemic immune activation and inflammation in HIV and HSV-2 co-infected individuals on ART was evaluated. It was concluded that valacyclovir therapy had no impact on these parameters in this population. In summary, we were unable to demonstrate that herpes therapy was able to reduce the number of HIV target cells in the endocervix of HSV-2 infected, HIV uninfected women or systemic immune activation in either HIV uninfected or HIV infected individuals. These findings demonstrate that currently available herpes therapy in standard doses does not appear to reverse the immunological changes associated with HSV-2 infection.
Modulation of p53 Family Proteins in the Treatment of Neuroblastoma
Keywords: Neuroblastoma

Neuroblastoma is the most common type of extra-cranial solid tumour in children. Additional investigation is required to fully understand the genetics and tumour biology of neuroblastoma for improvements in patient care. We explored the importance of p53 family proteins in neuroblastoma tumorigenesis and response to therapy. Despite aggressive multi-modality treatments, more than half of patients with high-risk neuroblastoma relapse, and cure after recurrence is rare. Repurposing medications already in use for other indications is a safe and expedient way to discover novel therapies for neuroblastoma. Using a high-throughput screen of FDA-approved drugs we identified the beta-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol and cardiac glycosides as candidate compounds to investigate for the treatment of neuroblastoma. Studies have demonstrated that propranolol and cardiac glycosides have anti-cancer effects in range of malignancies in both in vitro and epidiomologic studies. Propranolol has a well-documented safety profile in children and more recently is used to treat infants with large hemangiomas. Cardiac glycosides have a narrower therapeutic window therefore analogues were designed in an attempt to develop a more effective anti-proliferative cardiac glycoside without cardiotoxic side effects. While these drugs have disparate anti-cancer mechanisms in neuroblastoma, both classes of compounds are able to induce neuroblastoma cell death and may reveal new targets to further improve patient care.