VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
"The Motive for Metaphor": Metaphor and Imagination in Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera
Keywords: Cognition and Understanding
Figurative Language and Poetry
Judeo-Arabic
Psychology
Translation

This thesis seeks to challenge assumptions that posit imagination as the opposite of intellect, and argues that the complexities of epistemology require a nuanced, rather than binary, approach to imagination. By exploring metaphor and imagination in medieval Arabic-Aristotelian and Jewish thought, my work examines how metaphoric language creates conceptual figurations that require imagination to unravel their meaning. Although imagination is a necessary contributor to abstract thought, and Andalusī thinkers writing in Arabic highlight the difference between the faculty of imagination and its functions, this aspect of human psychology has not been transmitted through translations and across borders. A metaphor is a word picture; it presents a semantic association that requires deciphering. Ibn Ezra, Halevi and Maimonides discuss the ramifications of using likenesses to describe the unknowable divine. Chapter 1 considers the cognitive aspect of metaphor in light of Arabic-Aristotelian poetics and modern metaphor studies. In order to comprehend how metaphor operates at the level of human understanding, Chapter 2 undertakes an analysis of medieval Jewish engagement with Fārābīan and Avicennan psychology. Both Halevi and Maimonides operate within the Arabic-Aristotelian paradigm; however, imagination plays different, yet vital, roles in the theology of each Jewish thinker. Chapter 3 focuses on terms used to describe imagination in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, and discusses how these terms have been translated into Hebrew, English and French. Using translation theory, this chapter calls into question the translators’ precision in transmitting the Judeo-Arabic terms into the target language. Chapter 4 draws connections between Iberian thinker and poet Falaquera and his Andalusī predecessors. Falaquera maintains a binary approach to imagination and intellect in his translation of Maimonides’ Guide. His critique of the falsity of figurative language is examined in light of the poetic theories of Christian scholastics, who advocate an ethical role for poetry. This thesis highlights the cognitive aspect of metaphoric language, rehabilitates imagination’s vital role in human psychology, and highlights a nuanced approach to imagination that is lost on Maimonides’ interpreters. Its significance lies in the examination of medieval Jewish thought in relation to both Islamo-Arabic and Christian Scholastic traditions.
Effects of Puberty and Obesity on Central Nervous System Autoimmunity in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis
Keywords: autoimmunity
diet-induced obesity
puberty

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neuroinflammatory disease that is characterized by the formation of inflammatory demyelinating lesions in the central nervous system (CNS) white matter. One of the largest risk factors for developing MS is being female. The female preponderance of MS only manifests post-puberty implicating hormonal factors in this biology. Several other MS risk factors including obesity only impact MS risk when experienced post-puberty. The mechanisms of how puberty and obesity enhance MS risk are unknown. This thesis aimed to investigate how puberty in females (Chapter 2) and adolescent obesity (Chapter 3) increase autoimmune susceptibility in the mouse model of MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). First, EAE development was compared between age-matched SJL/J mice that differed only by pubertal status. It was observed that puberty in females, but not males, was associated with increased susceptibility to EAE. Additional studies performed in female mice revealed that myelin-specific T helper (Th) cell responses were more robust post-puberty as a result of more efficient antigen-presenting cell (APC) function. These findings suggest that the female adaptive immune system matures with puberty. In Chapter 3, we evaluated the effect of diet-induced obesity (DIO) on the development of EAE in adolescent female and male C57BL/6J mice. We observed that short-term (3-4 weeks) exposure to high-fat diet starting at 6 weeks of age resulted in modest weight gain in both sexes. Upon induction of EAE, mice on high-fat diet developed more severe EAE; this effect was particularly striking in female mice. Further studies performed in diseased mice revealed that DIO increased the number of myelin-specific and CD44hi Th cells in mice of both sexes but had the unique effect of enhancing Th1 responses in females. DIO also increased the potential of naïve CD4+ T cells from non-immunized mice to secrete IFN-γ in response to anti-CD3 and anti-CD28. This effect was more prominent in female CD4+ T cells and was associated with upregulation of IFN-γ-induced STAT1 signaling. Together, these studies contribute to the understanding of how puberty and adolescent obesity enhance CNS autoimmune susceptibility in females.
Molecular Parameters of Crumbs Surface Stability and Cytoplasmic Interactions in Epithelial Polarity
Keywords: aPKC
Crumbs
Drosophila
Epithelial Polarity
Phosphorylation
Yurt

Epithelial integrity is essential for development and morphogenesis and relies critically on the polar organization of individual epithelial cells. The Crumbs (Crb) complex of proteins is a key regulator of epithelial apical-basal polarity, apical membrane size, and assembly of adherens junctions. The apical transmembrane protein Crb has two conserved cytoplasmic protein interaction motifs, a FERM domain binding motif (FDB) and a PDZ binding motif (PDB), which are crucial for its function. Crb FDB can be phosphorylated by the apical kinase aPKC, but the consequences of Crb phosphorylation remain largely unknown. Moreover, increasing evidence suggest that the large extracellular region of Crb plays a role in Crb surface stability and distribution. In developing and analyzing a new set of Crb mutant constructs I found that Crb surface stability requires both its extra- and intracellular regions. Furthermore, both Crb FDB and PDB motifs contribute to surface stability and Crb function. Also, mutations of potential ubiquitination sites in the Crb cytoplasmic tail cause a dramatic increase in Crb accumulation, suggesting that Crb turnover requires ubiquitination-dependent endocytosis. I also investigated Crb phosphomutant constructs. My findings suggest that lack of phosphorylation of the Crb FDB is compatible with normal development confirming published findings. However, I also show that phosphorylation of the Crb FDB enhances Crb membrane accumulation and activity. In studying the effects of Crb phosphorylation on two FERM proteins Crb FDB binding partners, Moesin and Yurt, I found that any modification in Crb phosphorylation strongly reduces cortical Moesin, and dramatically decreases its sensitivity to the negative regulatory effects of Yurt as well as reduces the levels of active Yurt. Additionally, Crb phosphorylation causes a reduction of aPKC as a potential negative feedback mechanism. Taken together, I developed new insight into how Crb levels and activity are regulated at the apical membrane, and the complex relationships between, Crb, Yurt, aPKC, and Moesin.
Examining Social Exclusion by ‘Race’/Ethnicity in Toronto’s Health Care System: A Scientific Realist-inspired Concept Mapping Study
Keywords: Health care
Health inequities
Policy
Racism
Realism
Social determinants of health

With widening health inequities, developing an effective policy of action requires a better understanding of the mechanisms through which health inequities are distributed. The purpose of this doctoral research is to understand the effect of current hospital policies and practices on racial/ethnic groups at the level of the individual in Toronto’s health care system. The overall goal is to provide the explanatory power necessary to change policies and practices. Using concept mapping, a semi-qualitative study design, participants identified experiences of social exclusion when receiving health care in Toronto’s health care system. A political economy theory with a scientific realist philosophy of science was used to identify social causal mechanisms and explain how and why everyday racism occurs in Toronto’s health care setting. From the brainstorming activity, participants generated 35 unique statements of ways in which patients feel disrespect and mistreatment when receiving health care. From the sorting and mapping activity, statements were grouped into five clusters: ‘Racial/ethnic and class discrimination’, ‘Dehumanizing the patient’, ‘Negligent communication’, ‘Professional misconduct’, and ‘Unequal access to health and health services’. Two distinct conceptual regions of social exclusion were identified: ‘Viewed as inferior’ and ‘Unequal medical access’. Clusters rated highly for ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination were ‘Racial/ethnic and class discrimination’ and ‘Dehumanizing the patient’. Racialized health care users reported ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination or everyday racism as largely contributing to the challenges experienced when receiving health care. From the go-zone data, statements rated high for ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination and taking action/change were ‘when the patient's symptoms are ignored or not taken seriously’, ‘when the health care provider does not provide the requested information’, and ‘when the health care provider belittles or talks down to the patient’. To eliminate institutional racism, political will is needed to eliminate the ideology of racial inferiority often used for the purpose of justifying racist actions/unequal treatment. Anti-racist policies are needed to move beyond cultural competence polices and towards addressing the centrality of unequal power relations and everyday racism in health care. This has implications for nursing leadership, health care provider education, health care organizations, and health care practice.
Children's Attitudinal and Behavioural Explicit Racial Bias and Its Reduction
Keywords: explicit bias
intergroup bias
outgroup bias
racial bias
resource allocation

This thesis explored the reduction of children’s intergroup bias. Part one of the thesis tested whether a multiethnic sample of Canadian children aged 4-12 years showed explicit preference for white over black race in their trait attributions and hypothetical interactions. Results showed evidence for pro-white preference, with younger children and nonwhite children showing higher pro-white bias. Part two of the thesis showed that explicit racial bias was the most consistent predictor of children’s prosocial sharing with recipients of both races as compared to age, gender and contact measures, and was a likely indicator of general prosocial development. Children across ages prioritized self-interest over sharing with others. Part three demonstrated that exposure to positive counterstereotypical black exemplars reduced children’s overall pro-white preferences but had no effect in increasing prosocial behaviour. Results suggest that information-based interventions can be successful at reducing explicit intergroup bias when contact opportunities are limited or insufficient.
Periodicals, Portables, and the Reading Public: The Short Fiction of Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, and William Faulkner in the Literary Marketplace
Keywords: American modernism
book history and print culture
digital humanities
literary marketplace
periodical studies
short fiction

This dissertation examines the effects of the literary marketplace on the production, dissemination, and reception of American short fiction between 1914 and 1945, a period that experienced both an explosion in print culture and increased anxiety about the adverse effects of the literary marketplace on artistic and textual autonomy. Combining book history, cultural studies, and literary analysis, I argue that reading short fiction of this period in multiple contexts of its publication history reveals how the literary marketplace enabled the genre’s complex “portability” – a term that evokes the materiality of the text itself, the interpretive mobility of the literary work from one publication context to another, and the movement of the work within the hierarchy of literary “brows.” Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, and William Faulkner, all successful and prolific writers of short fiction, demonstrate the range and the surprising coherence of the hermeneutic questions raised by short fiction’s portability. Chapter one examines the interpretive shifts in Parker’s satirical fiction as her stories move from The New Yorker to The Portable Dorothy Parker (1944), revealing that Parker’s satire seeks new targets as relentlessly as publishers seek new markets. Chapter two highlights how racial prejudice operated on portability within the literary marketplace by analyzing a little-known episode in Hughes’s career when Esquire asked its readers to vote on whether one of his stories should be published in the magazine. Following this publicity stunt through Esquire’s “letters to the editor,” I demonstrate the magazine’s tactical consolidation of its readers through exploitation of divergent interpretations of Hughes’s story. Chapter three probes Faulkner’s anxious engagement with the mass-market magazine by examining the publication history of the generically ambiguous Go Down, Moses (1942). I argue that Faulkner seized upon the portability of his stories and repurposed them in a higher-brow, more authorially controlled form—the novel. I conclude the dissertation by demonstrating how recent periodical digitization initiatives, like the Modernist Journals Project, facilitate the study of short fiction in its various versions and contexts, and how integrating my theory of portability and its methodology into our pedagogy invigorates teaching practices of American short fiction.
Impact of Hyperglycemia on Rat Cortical Bone Microstructure and Osteoprogenitor Cell Exhaustion
Keywords: Bone Biology
bone formation
cellular exhaustion
cortical porosity
Hyperglycemia
Synchrotron radiation micro-CT

Uncontrolled diabetes has been associated with an increased risk of bone fracture and implant failure. However, the underlying reasons have yet to be entirely understood. Our group previously reported that osteocyte number appeared increased in the peri-implant bone of hyperglycemic rats, which might increase cellular level cortical porosity. In this context, since there are examples of increased proliferation of cells in hyperglycemia from other tissues, we hypothesized that increased osteocyte cell number due to the excessive proliferation of osteoprogenitors increases osteocyte lacunar density in hyperglycemic bone. To address the hypothesis, changes in bone porosity, due to osteocyte lacunar density and vascular canal volume, in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced hyperglycemic Wistar Albino rat bone were quantitatively assessed with synchrotron radiation (SR) micro-CT. Additionally, the effects of hyperglycemia on bone formation in osteogenic cultures of rat bone marrow stromal cells (rBMSCs) was quantified. To elucidate the mechanism by which hyperglycemia affects progenitor cells, colony forming capacity, glucose consumption, motility, and whole transcriptome of rBMSCs were compared with euglycemic controls. As opposed to the hypothesis, lacunar density was significantly higher in STZ than euglycemic group (67,195±3,206 vs. 61,126±1,457, lacuna number/mm3, p
NKCC1 Regulates mTORC1 and p38-MAPK
Keywords: Hyperosmotic
LAT1
mTORC1
NKCC1
p38
WNK kinases

The Mammalian Target Of Rapamycin Complex1 (mTORC1) is a key regulator of cell growth and survival. It is activated by growth factors and by essential amino acids such as Leu. Influx of Leu into cells is mediated by the Leu transporter LAT1-4F2hc (LAT1). Here I show that the Na-K-2Cl cotransporter NKCC1 (SLC12A2), a known regulator of cell volume, is present in complex with LAT1. I further show that NKCC1 suppresses mTORC1 by independently inhibiting its key activating signaling pathways: (i) Leu influx via LAT1; and (ii) growth factor signaling pathways (PI3K/Akt and Erk1/2). Moreover, I found that suppression of mTORC1 by NKCC1 leads to reduced cell volume mass and increased cell proliferation. Thus, my studies implicate NKCC1 in the long-sought link between cell size (volume) and cell mass regulation. After cell shrinkage by hyperosmotic stress, NKCC1 transport ions (including Na+) into cells followed by water to restore normal cell volume, by a process called Regulatory Volume Increase (RVI). RVI is regulated by the hyperosmotic-stress response p38-MAPK. I show that NKCC1 depletion abolished RVI by reducing intracellular Na+ concentration ([Na+]i) and inhibiting p38-MAPK activity. Further, I investigate the effect of [Na+]i on the p38-MAPK in the presence of high or low [Na+]i concentrations. My data show that [Na+]i is a positive regulator of p38-MAPK activity. Further, I find that [Na+]i is sensed by the upstream activators of p38-MAPK: TRAF2/ASK1 and MEK3/6/4, thus establishing [Na+]i as a signaling ion that activates the p38-MAPK stress response pathway. Independently, I also show that WNK kinases (also activated by hyperosmotic stress) inhibit p38-MAPK, but via a distinct pathway. Together, these studies illuminate the signaling role of NKCC1, [Na+]i and WNK kinases in p38-MAPK activation and cell volume regulation.
Complicating Race in the Study of Mental and Physical Health
Keywords: Cohorts
Mental Health
Multiracial
Physical Health
Race
Skin Tone

Racial disparities in health are large and persistent. While decades of research have clearly established race-based disparities in health, less attention has been paid to the way in which race is conceptualized and measured in the study of health disparities. The three empirical studies comprising this dissertation move beyond current sociological work in this area by complicating how race is used in health disparities research. First, I consider the simultaneous effects of race and skin tone stratification in the patterning of physical health. This paper offers a new approach that better specifies the contribution of each status to health inequality, by providing a method that partitions the impact of race from skin tone in the same analysis. Second, I disaggregate combinations of mixed-race groups (i.e. Asian-White, Black-White, and Black-Asian) to better understand whether the social distribution of mental and physical health outcomes varies by specific combinations of mixed-race relative to monoracial groups. Finally, I consider whether Black-White differences in mental disorder have changed across cohorts of Black and White Americans – introducing social change into the study of racial disparities in health. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates how thinking about race in more specific and complex ways allow us to uncover new empirical realities.
Intimate Partner Violence and Gender Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis
Keywords: female empowerment
gender equality
Intimate partner violence

Introduction: Individual experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs in a socio-political context that varies internationally. This dissertation examined (1) how gender-specific policies impact women’s risk of IPV; (2) whether gender norm transgression increases women’s risk of experiencing IPV; and (3) how women’s experience of violence in the home impacts their access to pregnancy-related health care. Methods: A sample of 28 countries’ Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) were analyzed using multilevel modelling. Women’s experience of lifetime IPV and past-year IPV were examined considering national factors, such as geopolitical region, economy, and gender-based policies, while controlling for women’s sociodemographic characteristics. The final analyses used women’s experience of physical IPV to predict their use of professional prenatal care and delivery assistance during pregnancy and the immunization of their infants. Results: Women were at higher risk for violence if they were the sole income earner for the household compared to situations where the man was the primary provider. The presence of gender non-discrimination legislation was protective against physical IPV experience. Polygamy legalization was a significant risk factor of all forms of IPV experience. Women who experienced violence were less likely to receive prenatal care when pregnant and to fully vaccinate their children, even when controlling for household income. These women were more likely to experience unwanted pregnancies, which was also associated with lower use of health care services. Conclusions: Gender-specific policies aimed at protecting women from violence and discrimination are possibly having a positive impact on women’s self-reports of IPV. Further, the finding that employment differences between partners is associated with an increase in women’s risk for violence should be used to inform intervention and prevention programs. The consequences of violence experience are associated with insufficient healthcare use not only by women, but also their children.
Perversions of the Capitalist Fantasy: The Agrarian Question and Japanese Colonialism in Manchuria
Keywords: agrarian question
Chinese peasants
Chinese revolution
Japanese finance capital
Manchuria/Manchukuo studies

This dissertation analyzes the agrarian question in Manchuria during Japan’s occupation. Instead of conceptualizing Manchuria’s rural society in terms of its essentialist connotations, such as being backward and opposed to the capitalist industrialization, I analyze the articulation of the so-called feudal remnants in the countryside with Manchuria’s industrial economy, which was driven by Japanese finance capital and the expansion of the Japanese empire in the wake of the domestic and world economic crisis in the early 1930s. The unprecedented economic crisis forced Japan to export its excess capital to Manchuria under the name of the rationalization of capital. The tendency of rationalization, however, did not dismantle the social conditions of Manchuria’s countryside and replace the old, feudal economy with a modernized capitalist economic sector. Feudal conditions in the countryside disrupted the fantasy of rationalization. In the meantime, the articulation with the rationalized economy exemplified capital’s enclosure of heterogeneous, political, cultural, and social elements for the sake of the latter’s own accumulation. To this end, my project addresses the shifting discursive configurations of Chinese peasants, who were not only the main markers of the feudal economy but also targets of different agrarian programs instituted by Japanese colonial agents. These discursive changes reflected the massive social upheavals resulting from the capture of the countryside by Japanese colonial agents, and as well as the often invisible dynamics of finance capital. In my dissertation, I make visible the process of capture and accumulation by analyzing four salient and inter-related problems: the colonial industries’ reliance on rural workers (chapter 2); the institutional reforms to screen and individuate peasants through a biopolitical regime of competition mediated by rural credit programs (chapter 3); the reinvention of traditional communitarianism as an ideology instrumental to the establishment of the capitalist landownership (chapter 4); the tension between dispossessed peasants and Japanese agrarian immigrants centering around the question of landownership and its implications for Chinese revolution in Manchuria (chapter 5 and 6).