VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Japanese Female and `Trans' Athletes: Negotiating Subjectivity and Media Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and Nation
Keywords: colonialism
gender
Japan
LGBT
nationalism
sexuality

The focus of this thesis is twofold: 1) the construction of Japanese female athletes in `masculine' sports by Japanese media in terms of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nation; and 2) Japanese female and `trans' athletes' negotiation with Japanese gender and sexuality norms in the formation of their gendered subjectivities. A theoretical framework informed by feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories is used to analyze the discursive constructions and constitution of subjectivities of Japanese female and `trans' athletes in the `masculine' sports of soccer and wrestling. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was employed to analyze Japanese mainstream newspaper and magazines published between 2001 and 2012 and in-depth interviews with twelve Japanese female and `trans' athletes in wrestling and soccer. The result of the media analysis illustrates that Japanese mainstream media used multiple normative and normalizing discursive tactics to construct Japanese female athletes within patriarchal, sexist, and heterosexist gender and sexual norms. These discourses were also mobilized in the reporting of international competitions in which the success of Japanese female athletes was appropriated to construct Japanese national identity in order to recuperate Japanese masculinity. The analysis of interviews with female and `trans' athletes illustrates their intricate processes of negotiation with male domination of their sport, Japanese gender and sexual norms, the conflicting demands of athletic careers, and the medicalized discourse of `Gender Identity Disorder (GID)'. The discursive fissures opened up by these conflicting and oppressive discourses, however, provided a `third' gender space in which `female sporting masculinity' is recognized as the `norm' and not as `queerness'. Although this `third' space may be temporary, it provided female and `trans' athletes a space to negotiate heterosexist and cisgenderist Japanese sporting spaces and the society at large.
A Quantitative Study of the Developmental Theory of Embodiment: Implications to Health and Well-Being
Keywords: Body connection
Disembodiment
Embodiment
Women's Health
Women' Well-Being

This study involved the first quantitative testing of the Developmental Theory of Embodiment (DTE), developed by Piran and colleagues, through the Embodiment Scales for Women (ESW). The ESW includes one scale that assesses the quality of a woman's experience of inhabiting her body as she engaged with the world, namely: the Experience of Embodiment (EE) scale, as well as three scales of social experiences theorized to impact embodiment: Physical Freedom (PF), Mental Freedom (MF) and Social Power (SP). Social experience scales involved a retrospective rating for Childhood and Adolescence, as well as an Adulthood rating, and EE was assessed only for Adulthood. A sample of 412 women, aged 18-45 years, completed the study. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were conducted to assess the dimensionality of the scales and correlation and regression analyses were conducted to assess the relationship and relative contribution of the social domain scales to EE. Reliability, in terms of internal consistency, as well as construct validity of the ESW was also assessed to further provide evidence of the scale's psychometric properties. As predicted, EFA for all scales demonstrated the multi-dimensional nature of the ESW, with factors similar to domains produced in previous qualitative work on the DTE. Further, as predicted, correlations between social domain scales, and each social domain scale with EE, were significant. Simultaneous multiple regression analyses found that, when each social domain scale was assessed independently by developmental periods, only the Adult scale was a significant predictor of EE. Further, as predicted, when each social domain Adult scale was assessed together in a simultaneous multiple regression, all were significant predictors of EE. Cronbach's alpha and Pearson correlations with additional measures of well-being supported the ESW's reliability and construct validity. Taken together, results generally support predictions made by the DTE. Theoretical innovations and clinical implications are discussed.
Errorless Classroom Management: Success-focused Proactive Intervention for Students with Challenging Behavior
Keywords: behavior problems
classroom management
errorless approaches

The current study investigated the use of Errorless Classroom Management (ECM), a proactive, success-focused approach to managing student challenging behavior. With this approach, we trained classroom staff in strategies for building two classroom management skill sets: on-task behavior (involving students' ability to remain focused on and complete academic work) and acquiescent behavior (involving students' ability to give in to the will of a peer when it is appropriate to do so as a means of enhancing peer relations). These behaviors were used as the focus of the intervention because they are considered keystone skills that can lead to broad improvements in other classroom behaviors that are not targeted during intervention. Three teachers from two general classrooms and one special education classroom participated. They were observed throughout baseline and after training to determine whether their classroom management skills changed as a result of the training. As a means of evaluating the effects of the intervention on child behavior, we observed 9 students who exhibited significant behavioral and learning difficulties. Baseline observations of student and teacher behavior began simultaneously for all three classrooms. Using a multiple baseline research design, the training intervention was introduced in a time-lagged manner such that intervention began first for Classroom 1, followed by Classroom 2, then by Classroom 3. Teachers were trained individually through a 1-hour workshop with performance feedback techniques and subsequent feedback sessions on a weekly basis. By the end of intervention, teachers' use of reinforcement (i.e., praise, tangible rewards) and reactive approaches (i.e., reprimands) improved; however, no changes were evident in teachers' use of antecedent approaches (i.e., building rapport, priming). All 9 students demonstrated substantial improvement in on-task and acquiescent behavior. Covariant improvement in student compliance to teacher requests was also evident. Follow-up at 3 months indicated that student treatment gains were maintained. Improvements in teachers' use of reinforcement and reactive approaches were also sustained during follow-up at 3 months.
Behind and Beyond the Ivy: How Schools Produce Elites Through the Bodies of Racial Others
Keywords: anti-racism
elites
global citizenship
humanitarianism
multiculturalism
volunteer abroad

This is a study of how the elite subject is made at Canadian secondary schools. I show how the bodies of racial others are crucial to this making. This dissertation analyzes encounters with racial others both behind and beyond elite schools' ivy-covered walls. These encounters are linked through a racial process of becoming in which whiteness and elite status are inextricable. This new Canadian elite subject is the gendered global citizen of our intensified neoliberal and racially structured world. I theorize two encounters that consolidate this subject. The first is a multicultural encounter with East Asian international students behind the ivy at three southwestern Ontario elite schools. I conduct a document analysis of archival material to consider how anxiety about increasing numbers of students of color coincided with a shift to co-education. Second, I theorize a humanitarian encounter beyond the ivy between girls of an elite private school and the South African children and staff of a school they visited for the purpose of volunteering abroad. The analysis of the multicultural encounter suggests that schools are compelled to seek further encounters with difference abroad. The analysis of the humanitarian encounter reveals the micropractices that constitute the elite subject in the making, in this case, high school girls. These historical and empirical analyses are considered together with contextual information on ten elite schools in southwestern Ontario. My approach is to track the continuities and shifts that characterize elite school encounters. I do this by following routes to elite subjectivity. I theorize moral distinction as a route to elite status, and the rhetorical, discursive, and emotional structures that facilitate this process of becoming. This is a gendered process, and I am particularly interested in the making of elite femininities. This study offers three main findings. First, the processes of becoming elite both behind and beyond the ivy share a racial logic. Second, elite schools sell whiteness. Third, the volunteer abroad encounter, as part of the business of selling whiteness, reinforces students' sense of elite, racial and moral superiority.
Quantum transport through double-dot Aharonov-Bohm interferometers
Keywords: Coherence
Inelastic effects
Influence functional
Occupation difference
Onsager-Casimir symmetry
Probes

Understanding the interplay of nonequilibrium effects, dissipation and many body interactions is a fundamental challenge in condensed matter physics. In this thesis, as a case study, we focus on the transient dynamics and the steady state characterstics of the double-dot Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer subjected to a voltage and/or temperature bias. We first consider an exactly solvable case, the noninteracting double-dot AB interferometer. The transient dynamics of this model is studied using an exact fermionic trace formula, and the analytic expressions in the long time limit are obtained using a nonequilibrium Green's function technique. We also study the effects of elastic dephasing on the occupation-flux behaviour in this noninteracting limit. Several nontrivial magnetic flux control effects are exposed, potentially useful for the design of nanoscale devices. The real time dynamics of the coherences and the charge current in an interacting interferometer is simulated using the numerically exact influence functional path integral (INFPI) technique. The temporal characterstics of the coherence in the weak-intermediate Coulomb repulsion case are qualitatively similar to those found in the noninteracting limit. In contrast, in the large Coulomb repulsion and the large bias limit, master equation simulations reveal notably different dynamics and steady state characterstics. We study the effects of many body interactions on magnetoasymmetries of nonlinear transport coefficients using phenomenological models, Buttiker's probes. Sufficient conditions for the diode functionality in Aharonov-Bohm interferometers are obtained analytically within the framework of Landauer-Buttiker scattering theory. Predictions of the phenomenological probes models are verified by studying a microscopic model with a genuine many body interaction, a double-dot interferometer capacitively coupled to a fermionic environment. These simulations are carried out using the INFPI technique. Some general comments about the suitability of INFPI to study nonlinear transport are presented. This work could be extended to explore nonlinear thermoelectric transport and diode behaviour in interacting many body systems.
Navigating the Cathexis: Mothers and Daughters and End of Life
Keywords: End of Life
Hospice
Palliative Care
Joint/Dyadic interviews
Mothers and daughters
Narrative analysis

This dissertation begins with women's lives and examines the experience of mothering (and daughtering) across the full continuum of women's lives, including the end of their lives. Specifically, my work focuses on the cathexis, the specific flow of energy that moves between mothers and daughters as they navigate the meaning, significance and context of their connection as a mother is at the end of her life. Strongly informed by a feminist epistemology, this study draws on multiple conversations with five mothers and adult daughter s (10 participants including one-in law pairing) as a mother is receiving in-patient or home based end of life care. Drawing on a narrative methodology and utilizing joint/dyadic interviews as my method, mothers and daughters were asked to share relational stories over time: when the daughter was young; when the daughter was a young-adult/adult; when illness arrived; in the present and what they hoped for one another in the future. Applying a narrative thematic and dialogic/performance analytic approach, end of life relational stories were examined to further our understanding of how and why mothers and daughters experiences of end of life are experienced and performed in particular ways. Findings across the two analytic approaches reflect interwoven processes between mothers and daughters which are individual, relational and intersubjective. Individual processes address individual knowing and individual choices; relational processes reflect relational care practices between mothers and daughters, and mothers and daughters and care providers; and intersubjective processes address mutual knowing of dying and death. Implications of this study for social work practice and education strongly encourage social work practice to expand to dyadic interviews and interventions in end of life, with an emphasis on what we can learn if we listen carefully to what, how and why people say things in particular ways. Implications for research encourage further questioning about how end of life is relational, and strongly urges researchers to explore joint/dyadic interviews as a method to explore living and dying in relationship.
Organic Molecular Thin Films: Growth, Structure and Manipulation Studied by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy
Keywords: fullerene
interface
phthalocyanine
STM
surface
thin film

Room temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (RT-STM) has been used to observe the growth modes, morphologies and crystal structures of sub-monolayer (ML) to multilayer thin films of phthalocyanines (H2Pc and CuPc), C60 fullerenes, and CuPc:C60 composites, grown on the Cu(111) surface. In addition to imaging these films, STM has been used to manipulate the various molecules via hot tunneling electron injection. At sub-ML coverage the phthalocyanines are mobile on the Cu(111) and form a diffuse 2D gas. Molecules in this mobile phase can be immobilized on the substrate through exposure to tunneling electrons at a bias voltage exceeding a threshold value. The bias threshold value and strength of the induced molecular immobilization is dependent on the particular phthalocyanine molecule/substrate combination. At approximately one ML coverage the phthalocyanine molecules become sterically confined and lie flat on the Cu(111), forming an ordered 2D lattice. As coverage is increased beyond 1ML in the Cu(111)-CuPc system, the molecule-substrate interaction diminishes in strength and the intermolecular interaction becomes dominant, causing the molecular crystal lattice parameters to evolve towards the bulk α-phase. This trend continues for the layer-by-layer growth of three complete ML, and then gives way to 3D island growth at a coverage of 4 ML. The 3D island growth mode of the pure CuPc films is dramatically suppressed by the inclusion of C60 during deposition. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and STM studies reveal that the CuPc molecular packing is altered upon C60 inclusion, producing disordered CuPc-C60 interfaces. The ordered molecular stacking of CuPc is found to be disrupted completely when C60 concentration reaches 30 wt.%. This disorder in the CuPc:C60 composites is explained in terms of the relative strengths of the intermolecular interactions. Furthermore, an understanding of these relative interaction strengths is exploited to grow ordered composite films, through selective sequential depositions.
From Integrative Omics to Improved Molecular Classification of Head and Neck Cancers
Keywords: Biomarkers
Head and neck cancer
Human papillomavirus
Mass spectrometry
Proteomics

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a highly heterogeneous disease originating in multiple subsites. Over 60% of HNSCCs are diagnosed at late stages and about 40% recur. Survival and quality of life for these patients is expected to improve upon identification of novel biomarkers, development of new therapies, and obtaining a better understanding of the molecular progression of the disease. Recently, mass spectrometry-based shotgun proteomics technologies have emerged as powerful tools for in-depth proteome characterization, thereby enabling identification of cancer-related proteoforms and surging biomarker discovery efforts. I applied shotgun proteomics towards the identification of novel HNSCC biomarkers and obtaining biologic insight into oropharyngeal carcinoma (OPC) progression. In order to identify secreted biomarker candidates, proteomic analysis of HNSCC cell line secretomes integrated with global gene expression was followed by data mining utilizing published patient tumor expression data and protein annotations. Through subsequent verifications involving IHC and ELISA against patient tissue and sera, respectively, I identified two potential biomarkers (IGFBP7 and PLAU). Their levels were significantly elevated in HNSCC patient sera vs. sera from healthy volunteers. Further evaluation of the clinical utility of these markers is warranted. To gain biologic insight into OPC subtypes, global proteomic analysis of archival patient biopsies with and without HPV was conducted. As a result, 2,633 protein groups were identified, 34 of which were differentially abundant and therefore, may play a role in the distinct clinical behavior of OPC subtypes. Genomic alterations associated with these proteins were determined using The Cancer Genome Atlas; importantly, they were not always predictive of protein abundance. Among the 34 proteins, cortactin is known to mediate radioresistance via the β1-integrin/FAK/cortactin/JNK1/AP-1 pathway. Downstream AP-1 target gene expression analysis revealed HPV-dependent regulation of this pathway, pointing to a putative mechanism for increased radioresistance in HPV-negative vs. HPV-positive OPC. The contribution of this mechanism to therapeutic response requires further evaluation.
Aqueous-phase Organic Chemistry in the Atmosphere
Keywords: Air pollution
Atmospheric Chemistry
Climate change
Cloud water chemistry
Organic Aerosol

Atmospheric aqueous phases (i.e. cloud, fog and aerosol liquid water) are important reaction media for the processing of organic compounds. Quantitative data on aqueous-phase organic chemistry under the atmospheric context are sparse compared to the data from comparable gas-phase processes. A series of studies was conducted to provide fundamental information on this topic. An online analytical technique, Aerosol Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometry (Aerosol CIMS), was employed to quantitatively monitor aqueous-phase OH oxidation of glyoxal and methylglyoxal. Quantification of all the major reaction products was achieved, permitting complete reaction mechanisms to be presented. An unexpected class of compounds, α-hydroxyhydroperoxide (α-HHP), was observed during the experiments, and the formation of this class of compounds was further quantified. Formation of α-HHP can be potentially important in aerosol liquid water, affecting aerosol toxicity and the gas-particle partitioning of small aldehydes. Aerosol CIMS was further applied to the OH oxidation of levoglucosan, using a high mass resolution CIMS. Unique reaction trends were observed, from which novel mechanism analysis frameworks were introduced. Aqueous-phase photochemical processing of a variety of light-absorbing organic compounds (Brown Carbon (BrC)) was investigated in the laboratory. The light absorptivity of BrC was significantly altered via these processes, indicating that the chemical processing of BrC species needs to be considered for a sound assessment of their atmospheric implications. Finally, cloud-partitioning of a toxic compound, isocyanic acid (HNCO), was investigated in the field, representing the first online measurement of gas-phase compounds dissolved in cloudwater. A secondary source of HNCO in the ambient air was also observed. Overall, aqueous-phase chemistry leads to reaction products which likely contribute to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. At the same time, aqueous-phase chemistry also facilitates the transformation and removal of specific species with atmospheric significance (e.g. tracer compounds, pollutants, BrC).
The Biography of a String Quartet: Mozart's String Quartet in D Minor, K.421
Keywords: D minor
K. 421
Mozart
Mozart 'Haydn' Quartets
String Quartet

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's String Quartet K. 421 in D minor remains one of his most celebrated quartets. K. 421 is the second work in a set of six quartets dedicated to Mozart's colleague and mentor, Joseph Haydn, and is the only `Haydn' Quartet in a minor key. An overview of the historical background of K. 421, the significance of D minor in Mozart's compositions, as well as the compositional relationship between Mozart and Haydn situates this work amongst Mozart's other string quartet compositions and provides context for the analysis of different editions. An outline of the historical practices and roles of editors, as well as a detailed analysis and comparison of different editions against the autograph manuscript and the first edition published by Artaria in 1785 examines the numerous discrepancies between each of the different publications of K. 421. Using the information acquired from the comparative study of selected historical editions, some possibilities for future editions of K. 421 are discussed. When undertaking the study of a new quartet, performers can learn a great deal from listening to recordings. In addition to this analysis, an outline of the evolution of string quartet performance practices is provided. The individual conclusions formed from studying the historical background, different publications and selected recordings of a specific composition can be extended beyond this quartet and applied by performers to any work they choose to undertake.