VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Role of Methyl Group Vitamins in Hypothalamic Development of Food Intake Regulation in Wistar Rats
Keywords: vitamins
hypothalamus
obesity
DNA methylation
gestation
post-weaning

High multivitamin diets (HV, 10-fold AIN-93G) fed during pregnancy to Wistar rats produce offspring with increased food intake, obesity and characteristics of metabolic syndrome. The hypothesis that methyl group vitamins in HV gestational and pup diets modify expression of the obesogenic phenotypes in the offspring through their effects on hypothalamic feeding pathways regulating food intake was tested by four studies. In studies 1 and 2, dams were fed the AIN-93G diet with recommended vitamin (RV), HV, high methyl vitamins (10-fold folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6) (HMethyl) or HV with normal folate (HVNF) and male offspring were weaned to a high fat diet for 8 weeks. In studies 3 and 4, dams were fed RV, HV or high 10-fold folate (HFol), and male offspring were weaned to RV, HV or HFol diets for 29 weeks. The results are as follows: 1. HV and HMethyl diets increased obesogenic phenotypes and altered hypothalamic regulation of food intake and metabolism concurrent with epigenetic effects on gene expression. 2. Removing folate additions to the HV diet showed that folate contributes to the obesogenic phenotype in the offspring and epigenetic alterations in the hypothalamus that favor increased food intake. 3. Matching pup diet vitamin content with that of the HV and HFol diet fed dams prevented their increased food intake, body weight and insulin resistance when weaned to the RV diet. 4. Both HFol gestational and pup diets altered hypothalamic feeding pathways through DNA methylation showing that epigenetic effects of these vitamins occur not only in utero but also postnatally. In conclusion, methyl group vitamins in HV gestational and pup diets modify expression of the obesogenic phenotypes and hypothalamic food intake regulatory systems in the offspring.
'Ifranjalism': The (European) Other in Medieval Arabic Literature and Culture, 9th-12th Century (A.D)
Keywords: Orientalism,Ifranjalism,Muslim Views of Europe, Arabic Literature, Cultural Encounters
Edward Said, Bernard Lewis

Many western scholars of the Middle East such as Bernard Lewis have too often claimed that medieval Arabs/Muslims did not exhibit any significant desire to discover the cultures, literatures and religions of non-Muslim peoples. Perhaps no less troubling is their assertion that only Europeans are endowed with the gift of studying foreign cultures and traveling into alien lands. In the same connection, without intending to ‘add fire’ to the already fiery polemic over Edward Said’s Orientalism, it must be said that very few of Said’s critics and defenders alike have discussed the counter, or reverse, tradition of Orientalism especially as found in the rich corpus of Classical Arabic Literature. Through introducing and exploring a cross-generic selection of non-religious Arabic prose and poetic texts such as the geo-cosmographical literature, récits de voyages, diplomatic memoirs, captivity narratives, pre-Crusade and Crusade poetry, all of which were written from the 9th to the 12th century(A.D.), this dissertation will present both an argument for and a demonstration of the proposition that there was no shortage of medieval Muslims who cast curious eyes and minds towards the Other and that more than a handful of them were textually and physically interested in Europe and the Euro-Christians they encountered inside and outside dār al-Islām. Contrary to the monolithic impression left by postcolonial theories of Orientalism, this thesis also makes a strong case that Orientals did not exist solely to be gazed at. Before this came to be so, they too had directed their gaze toward the European Other(s) in a way that mirrored in reverse the subject/object relationship described as Orientalism.
Responsibility Center Budgeting and Responsibility Center Management: Implications for internal structure and strategic management of North American universities
Keywords: Budgeting
Decision-making
Governance
Internal Structure
Management Control Systems
RCB/RCM

Responsibility center budgeting and responsibility center management [RCB/M] are tools that have been applied within the higher education context for four decades. The research focussed on RCB/M to date has been predominantly descriptive and normative in nature. This study presents a three-factor model of internal structure and applies the concept of management control systems, through diagnostic and interactive control forms of governance, to provide a theoretical model that is used to further investigate the institutional outcomes of RCB/M use in four public universities. Grounded in organizational design, accounting, RCB/M, higher education and management control systems literatures this study focuses on the levels of coordination and cooperation between units, and between units and the central administration of higher education institutions. By examining the governance control form employed at four sample universities this study considers how RCB/M structures affect vertical and lateral coordination and consequently, institutional mission and goal achievement. Findings suggest that predominately interactive governance control forms encourage high levels of vertical and lateral coordination while allowing for high levels of unit autonomy. Through the use of interactive governance control forms it was found that the central administration is able to guide and direct unit-level decision making towards the achievement of both unit- and institution-level goals. Methodologically, this study employs qualitative research techniques that included comprehensive document analysis and 55 semi-structured interviews with senior academic and administrative leaders at four public universities, two in the United States, and two in Canada. The data collected provides a detailed portrait of the relationship between units, and between units and the central administration at these institutions. This study is significant because it presents a new model of internal structure that is applicable to a broad organizational set. Additionally, through the application of management control systems, it provides an innovative approach to the study and understanding of budgeting and management of modern universities. When this model is applied in conjunction with governance control forms it may provide significant value for institutions deliberating the implementation of RCB/M structures. Additionally, this model is useful for institutions undergoing a review of an existing RCB/M structure.
How Does Your Garden Grow? Or, a Poststructural Uprooting of the School Garden
Keywords: curriculum
deconstruction
environmental education
parrticipatory research
poststructuralism
school garden

A school garden is an organic emergence. A dehiscence opened as the collaborative play of the natural world and human interaction with the earth, the garden provides a motif for the opening and exploration of research and the research space. Like the garden, research and the research space is full of life, of actions, of inter-actions, of play, growing beyond, beneath, and over the boundaries and structures already in place. With deconstruction and diffĂŠrance in mind, this dissertation meditates on the school garden as both content and context for learning as well as its opening of spaces for difference in curriculum, pedagogy, research, and representation. The research space opened traces the experience of an urban elementary school garden and presents the story of a year spent with and in the City Public School community. Along with day-to-day reflections, it shares the space of research opened by a school garden-related participatory research project done with a group of grade six students in which the young researchers were actively involved in all aspects of the research, from creating research questions to collecting and analyzing data to dissemination of findings. The work highlights the unique uprooting and upsetting of taken-for-granted binaries in curriculum, education, and research.In the re-presentation of the research and the research space, I play with/in Jacques Derrida's discussion and use of the postcard. Envois - sendings, parcels, letters, dispatches - are used to share the research narrative which, illuminated through a deconstructive reading, is always already situated within philosophical, historical, methodological, cultural, social, institutional, ethical, and personal contexts. The dissertation plays as well with the linear flow of the thesis, necessarily forgoing the traditional architecture of academic representation in favour of an open text of multiplicity and difference, one of columns, insertions, marginalia, images, and quotations that is at once separate and connected, and inherently at play.
Paleoclimatology of the Paleocene/Eocene using Kimberlite-hosted Mummified Wood from the Canadian Subarctic
Keywords: Climate Cycles
Dendrochronology
Global Warming
Multi-Proxy
Pacific Decadal Oscillation
Stable Isotopes

By the end of this century, if fossil fuel emissions are not reduced atmospheric CO2 will increase to levels that have not existed for tens of millions of years. During the Paleocene/Eocene (P/E) transition (ca. 56--52 Ma), high atmospheric CO2 levels (680--1030 ppmV) caused steeply elevated global temperatures (8 °C higher than modern mean annual temperatures). Arctic and Subarctic regions were warm and humid, supporting a temperate rainforest biome rather than tundra. Although this period has been studied using ocean sediment cores with low temporal resolution, high-resolution proxies (e.g., tree rings) offer the possibility of understanding fine-scale climate variability during the P/E. Recently, mummified (non-petrified) wood (Taxodioxylon Hartig 1848, and Piceoxylon Gothan 1905) was discovered in Canadian Arctic diamondiferous kimberlites near Lac de Gras, in the Northwest Territories. Wood samples within individual kimberlites were crossdated, to produce some of the oldest floating tree-ring width (RWI) chronologies (up to 417 years in length) in history. Using the oldest verified tree-ring alpha-cellulose ever found (ca. 53.3 Ma), I constructed stable isotope records (d13C and d18O) from samples of Piceoxylon including an 86-year-long record at annual resolution, and a subannual-scale record spanning four tree rings.Mean temperatures were estimated at 11.4 °C (std. dev. = 1.8 °C), which is an average of 16°C warmer than the modern Subarctic (-4.6 °C). Subannual temperature variation ranged from 3.5--16.4 °C, with a mean of 10.9 °C (std. dev. = 3.0 °C). Spectral analysis of annual records (stable isotope and RWI) exhibited strong bidecadal oscillations (20--30 years/cycle) along with marginally significant interannual, pentadecadal, and centennial oscillations. This oscillatory pattern is similar to the modern Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), suggesting that a PDO-like phenomenon existed in the early Eocene, causing a bidecadal cloudiness regime at our study site, whereby periods of greater cloudiness and increased precipitation caused increased tree growth, alternating with decades of less moisture and decreased tree-ring growth. Results presented here will offer insights into patterns of tree growth and physiological responses to high-CO2 greenhouse climates, providing data with which paleoclimate models of the P/E may be validated.
Repetitive Disclosures in the MD & A
Keywords: financial disclosures
textual analysis

This study is the first to empirically analyze repetitive disclosures in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD) section of the 10-K filing. I define repetitive disclosures as the amount of content in the MD repeated from the notes. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) believes that repetitive disclosures are uninformative and that such disclosures decrease the informativeness of other disclosures (non-repetitive) in the MD Building on research from the communication literature, I find evidence contradicting the SEC's views. First, repetitive disclosures are informative to investors and financial analysts. Second, repetitive disclosures increase the informativeness of non-repetitive disclosures, especially forindividual investors. I further examine whether there is a variation across firms in their use of repetitive disclosures. I find that firms with greater year-to-year absolute change in earnings, less powerful CEOs and more operational uncertainty are associated with more repetitive disclosures. Overall, my results suggest that repetitive disclosures are informative and such disclosures are likely an effective tool for providing information to investors and financial analysts.
Design and Development of Broadband Vibration-based Energy Harvesters through Buckled-Beam Configurations
Keywords: Broad bandwidth
Buckled beam
Nonlinear vibration
Piezoelectric material
Vibration-based energy harvesting

Vibration-based energy harvesting has attracted considerable attention in recent years due to advances in small-scale, low-power electronic devices. Battery, although still remaining as the most commonly used power source, has many limitations such as fixed storage capacity, low energy density, and regular replacement/recharging. Vibration-based energy harvesters, on the other hand, provide a promising alternative to power and maintain low-power electronics by converting ambient vibrations into electricity. While a conventional vibration-based energy harvester has the advantage of simplicity, it suffers from a major drawback of narrow bandwidth that confines its performance to a single resonant frequency. Taking advantage of the unique nonlinear characteristic peculiar to a buckled-beam bistable oscillator, this Thesis aims to develop novel broadband energy harvesters through the use of buckled-beam configurations. To achieve this goal, the thesis is divided into three parts. The first part uses a pin-pin boundary condition to enhance the energy harvesting functionality via nonlinear inter-well motions triggered at low frequencies. A prototype harvester is fabricated and investigated through analytical modelling, numerical simulation and experimental validation. The second part exploits parametric excitation for nonlinear energy harvesting through the design of a vertically placed fixed-movable buckled-beam configuration. Softening-type nonlinearity is achieved to contribute broad bandwidth around both primary resonance and several super-harmonic resonances. The third part introduces magnetic loading into a buckled-beam system through two different methods. The first method couples a magnetic force to a fixed-movable beam as a dynamic compressive loading to trigger large-amplitude oscillation (either locally intra-well motion or globally inter-well motion); the second method introduces a magnetic force to a clamped-clamped buckled beam as a transverse midpoint loading to trigger the second buckling mode that helps activate strong snap through motion. In both methods enhanced energy harvesting capacities of large-amplitude voltage output and wide frequency bandwidth are achieved. This Thesis demonstrates that buckled-beam configurations can be successfully exploited through proper design to improve the energy harvesting effectiveness, especially under conditions of low frequencies and small accelerations. It is hoped that this work will provide a useful guideline for the future design and development of broadband vibration-based energy harvesters using buckled-beam configurations.
The Lymphotoxin/Type I IFN axis in CD8+ T cell responses
Keywords: co-stimulation
Dendritic cell
Interferon
Lymphotoxin
T cell activation
TNF

This thesis examines the role of the TNF family member Lymphotoxin-α1β2 (LTαβ) and its cognate receptor Lymphotoxin-β receptor (LTβR) in modulating DC immunogenic functions that affect the cross-priming of CD8+ T cells against protein antigen in a help-dependent manner. In non-infection related immune responses without obvious inflammatory stimulus, dendritic cells (DC) require CD4+ T cell help to cross-prime antigen for CD8+ T cell mediated immunity. Activated CD4+ T cells express the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) members CD40-ligand (CD40L) and LTαβ, which interacts with the TNF receptors CD40 and lymphotoxin-β receptor (LTβR) respectively on DC, significantly increasing DC immunogenic potential. This study demonstrates that LTβR signaling can directly induce Type I IFN expression in DC that affect CD8+ T cell expansion. We identified that LTβR signals through TNF receptor-associated factor (TRAF)-3 and can lead to interferon regulatory factor (IRF)-3 phosphorylation which are important signaling molecules that mediate Type I IFN production. Furthermore, using an inducible autoimmune disease model through the transfer of activated bone marrow derived DC, we found that LTβR signaling in DC is absolutely required for the proper priming of CD8 T cells and disease onset. We found that LTβR-induced Type I IFNs affect the expression of the adhesion molecule lymphocyte function-associated antigen-1 (LFA-1) and very-late antigen 4 (VLA-4) on antigen specific CD8 T cells which directly affects their ability to infiltrate into target tissues.
The Craniomaxillofacial Skeleton: New Approaches in Computational Biomechanics and Fracture Stabilization
Keywords: clinical biomechanical
craniofacial surgery
craniomaxillofacial surgery
facial fractures
finite element analysis
fracture fixation

The mechanical behaviour of the craniomaxillofacial skeleton (CMFS) under physiological loads is among the least understood in the field of musculoskeletal biomechanics. The highly complex structure of the CMFS defies reduction to analogous or simpler components. Its modelling demands a holistic and integrated approach in order to gain insight into its structural function. As such, the biomechanical foundations upon which the practises for open-reduction internal-fixation are developed are controversial. A systematic and quantitative biomechanical framework is needed to guide the treatment of CMFS injuries and pathologies. This research aims to address these issues on two fronts: through characterization of the loading patterns of the CMFS derived from computational modelling, as well as the development of an innovative internal stabilization device for the CMFS. This thesis first addresses the challenges through a practical and novel approach whereby a deblurring algorithm is applied to clinical CT images which restores the geometry and intensity of the thin cortical bone structures. Using these restored images a biomechanical framework was further developed to produce high fidelity subject-specific finite element models of the CMFS. Validation of this approach was demonstrated through strong correlation with multi-subject in vitro experiments (r = 0.93, regression slope of unity). These models elucidated the patterns of stress and strain on the CMFS subject to a simulated physiological masticatory bite load. The observed patterns invite a critical re-analysis of the classic CMFS buttress hypothesis. Finally, a pilot experimental investigation into the mechanical efficiency of "Bone Tape", a bioresorbable polymer-ceramic composite device for internal fixation of CMFS fractures, was conducted. In vitro experiments demonstrated an initial flexibility which conferred an ability to conform to complex 3-D bone topologies and a potential to equate the strength of commercially available bioresorbable systems. A prototype concept for its use was deployed in an in vivo rabbit model. The structural biomechanics knowledge gained based on the validated computational biomechanical framework will ultimately provide a robust platform which will enable the rational design and optimization of new treatment hardware and practises, such as Bone Tape, toward improved outcomes in reconstruction of the CMFS.
Bacterial Activation of Invariant Natural Killer T (iNKT) Cells
Keywords: Colitis
Invariant Natural Killer T cells
Microbiome
NOD1
Salmonella

Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are a set of innate T lymphocytes, whose T-cell receptor is highly conserved between humans and mice. Following activation with lipid antigens, iNKT cells can respond with a diverse array of cytokines and chemokines to direct the immune response. To this end, iNKT cells have been studied in a number of immune diseases, including bacterial infection, asthma, and cancer. iNKT cell activation can occur through different pathways, which include antigen-dependent and cytokine-dependent mechanisms. The goal of this thesis was to examine iNKT cell activation following bacterial infection and elucidate how this is modulated by tissue location and the cytosolic pattern recognition receptors NOD1 and NOD2. I investigated the role of NOD1 and NOD2, members of the NOD-like receptor (NLR) family, in iNKT cell activation using gene-knockout mice and NOD specific ligands. We demonstrated that NOD1 and NOD2 enhanced the iNKT cell IFNγ response during Toll-like receptor (TLR) stimulation, and following S. typhimurium and L. monocytogenes challenge, which are infections that can engage both the TLR and NLR innate immune receptors. This full activation was dependent on NOD1 and NOD2 synergy with TLR4 within antigen-presenting cells (APCs), which led to increased IL-12 secretion. This synergy was important in systemic tissues, but not in mucosal tissues such as the intestines.Beginning at birth the bacterial community forms a life long interaction with the human body, on our skin, and mucosal surfaces; this interaction influences our health and susceptibility to disease. The immune system mediates the host interaction with bacteria using different protective mechanisms. We further studied iNKT cells at the level of the intestine using bacterial (S. typhimurium) or chemical challenges (dextran sodium sulfate or DSS) that disrupt the intestinal environment. We demonstrated that an observed colitis susceptibility of iNKT cell-deficient mice was independent of iNKT cells and instead was mediated by altered microbiota. Taken together, this work contributes to our understanding iNKT cell function in different contexts of disease and host responses to bacterial challenge.