VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Development of Lanthanide Nanoparticles for High Sensitivity Mass Cytometry Immunoassays
Keywords: lanthanide
lipid encapsulation
mass cytometry
nanoparticles
surface modification

This thesis describes the synthesis and characterization of lanthanide nanoparticle (NP) based reagents for mass cytometry (MC) immunoassays. MC is a single cell analysis technique that uses metal-based tags and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) time-of-flight (TOF) detection. Currently, mass tags contain ~ 200 lanthanide (Ln) ions per antibody (Ab) conjugate. These conjugates are effective at detecting abundant surface markers (> 10^4 per cell). As an approach to increase the sensitivity of MC, I designed NP reagents which contain > 10^4 Ln metal ions per NP. In my research, I developed a series of uniform lanthanide NPs such as LaF3 and NaLnF4 (Ln: Y, Sm to Ho) with sizes between 5 to 30 nm. I optimized the reaction parameters such as the heating rate, temperature, heating time and solvent ratio for each lanthanide in order to obtain uniform NPs. In the second step, I developed two methods to render the NPs colloidally stable in water and in buffers: ligand exchange and lipid encapsulation. For ligand exchange, I used PEGylated phosphate/phosphonate ligands to transfer the NPs into water. However, these NPs showed poor colloidal stability in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). To understand this process, I quantified the ligand footprint of mono- and multidentate polyethylene glycol (PEG) phosphate ligands using three independent analytical techniques. The ligand density measurements obtained from each technique were in good agreement. For lipid encapsulation, I coated the NPs either with a lipid monolayer or a lipid bilayer. For the lipid monolayer coating, I encapsulated oleate-capped NPs with PEG lipids, but these NPs were stable in water but not in PBS. To improve the colloidal stability, I coated the NPs with a lipid bilayer. The hydrophobic NPs were modified with citrate and then treated with a ternary lipid mixture. The resulting NPs exhibited exceptional colloidal stability in both water and PBS for up to 1 month. Finally, secondary antibodies were conjugated to the NPs using the post-insertion method for specific binding to cells. The specific-to-nonspecific binding ratio of the Ab-NP conjugates evaluated with Ramos (CD20+) and HL60 (CD20-) cells was 10 to 20.
Essays in Dynamic Pricing of Multiple Substitutable Products
Keywords: Consumers' Consideration Sets
Consumers' Sequential Search
Dynamic Pricing
Revenue Management
Sales Milestone Constraints
Substitutable Products

I study the dynamic pricing problem of a firm selling limited inventory of multiple differentiated products over a finite planning horizon, where the firm wishes to maximize the expected revenue. I formulate the firm's optimization problem as a Markov decision process and investigate the pricing problem in the presence of a variety of operational settings. First, I integrate consumer's sequential search behavior into the pricing problem. The consumer inspects products one at a time by incurring non-zero search cost, and makes decision by comparing the utility of the best product so far versus the reservation utility, a threshold at which the consumer is indifferent between continuation and stopping of the sequential search. The firm aims at maximizing the expected revenue by offering the products in the right sequence and at the right prices. I analytically derive the optimal prices in each period. I show that under some condition it is optimal to present products in the descending order of quality. Second, I address a problem in which the firm is subject to a set of sales volume constraints required to be satisfied at different time points along the sales horizon. Due to stochastic nature of sales, I incorporate a risk measure that allows the firm to manage the total sales while the expected revenue is maximized. I formulate the problem as a chance-constrained dynamic programming and show that the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions are not only necessary but also sufficient for the optimal price. Third, I assimilate consumer's consideration sets to the dynamic pricing problem. When to make a purchase decision, consumers use a two-stage decision-making process, i.e., consumers constitute a consideration set including a subset of the available products using a screening rule (e.g., brands, quality, and budget), and they only evaluate the products in the consideration set using a utility comparison process and opt for the product with the maximum utility. I show that the first-order condition is sufficient for the optimal price of products if consumers apply a quality-based screening rule.
Across Enemy Lines: A Study of the All-party Groups in the Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom
Keywords: All-party groups
British politics
Canadian politics
Legislative behaviour
Legislative studies
Representation

The Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom are now home to a growing number of informal bodies that are formed by politicians from all parties who wish to cooperate on specific policy issues or relations with other countries. Such all-party groups (APGs), which deal with topics from the steel industry to genocide prevention, work to share information, meet with stakeholders, and conduct policy studies. Most also have partnerships with external actors who support their activities. This dissertation explores why the number of APGs is rising in each jurisdiction, but also why there are relatively fewer APGs in the two Canadian cases. Using statistical analyses of APG membership patterns as well as interviews with parliamentarians, lobbyists, and journalists, it finds three main factors behind APG expansion. First, the growth of APGs has helped both parliamentarians and external actors to continue to achieve their goals despite changes in the external political environment such as rising policy complexity and increased demands from citizens. Second, APG expansion has been facilitated by the evolution and increasing modularity of the APG format, which has allowed it to be adapted to a broader range of issues and activities. Finally, the increasing acceptance of APGs as a standard tool of political advocacy has led to the creation of groups by parliamentarians and external actors who feel it is important do so as part of broader lobbying campaigns, even if APG activity is not the most effective way to achieve their goals. The dissertation also finds that differences in APG prevalence are caused primarily by variations in levels of party discipline, with those jurisdictions that feature high discipline, such as Canada, tending to have fewer groups. Strong party discipline also limits the policy advocacy conducted by those APGs that do form in those legislatures.
The Application of 1H NMR-Based Metabolomics to Understand the Biochemical Changes of Daphnia magna Exposed to Sub-lethal Levels of Environmental Stress
Keywords: contamination
daphnia
ecotoxicology
metabolomics
nmr

Traditional tools used in aquatic toxicology are restricted to examinations of lethality and fecundity and provide little biochemical insight into toxicity. This thesis is predicated on providing this insight using metabolomics. For this, various stressors were examined with Daphnia magna as a subject. The first study examined the response of D. magna to sub-lethal levels of arsenic, copper or lithium and found that copper and lithium responded similarly, suggesting an impairment in sodium-potassium adenosine triphosphatase function. The second study optimized the extraction procedure and dry mass requirements for metabolomics experiments, using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microprobe. A D2O-based buffer provided the most comprehensive metabolite profile and the best signal to noise ratio. The third study examined the response of D. magna to a gradient of sub-lethal concentrations of an organophosphate (diazinon and malathion) or bisphenol-A (BPA). With increasing concentrations, the D. magna metabolome response was not linear and responded in a manner that corresponded with the severity of the stressor. The fourth study focused on the response of the D. magna to chronic BPA exposure. This was compared to a reproduction test and measurements of 20-hydroecdysone (20HE). While the reproduction test showed no response, the metabolome responses indicated that energy production was impaired by 14 days, though by 21 days there were signs of adaptation. 20HE levels were unaltered and therefore BPA does not act on the D. magna endocrine system. The fifth study examined the stress incurred by D. magna when carbon sources were altered. Cyanobacteria induced a toxic response, shown as a compensatory strategy to produce energy. When supplied with dissolved organic carbon, metabolome changes indicated that D. magna were undergoing starvation. The work in this thesis demonstrates that NMR-based metabolomics can provide biochemical insight into the response of D. magna to environmental stress.
Across an Open Sea. Mediterranean Networks and Italian Trade in an Era of Calamity
Keywords: Amalfi
Fatimid
Geniza
Mediterranean
merchant
Pisa

In the eleventh century, commercial dominance of the Mediterranean passed from the Muslim and Jewish traders of the House of Islam to the Italians of such maritime cities as Pisa or Amalfi. Although the outcome of this economic transition is well-known, the purpose of this study is to consider the mechanisms that motored Italian takeover. An examination of the characteristics of the trade network, both before and after the economic transition, finds that little structural change occurred; it is therefore argued that Italian merchants operated in conformity with the commercial paradigms of the existing Muslim and Jewish trade network, which are known to us from the Cairo Geniza. It was only the coincidence of major political failure in the large Mediterranean polities that enabled a realignment of Italian merchants from participants to dominant players in the existing trade network. This political failure, which I term “the great calamity,” saw the end of the Caliphate of Cordoba and left both Byzantium and the Fatimid Caliphate much reduced, a situation which rebounded to the advantage of smaller polities. Among them, the city of Pisa serves as a test case for this study’s assertions about Italian integration into the Mediterranean network of Muslim and Jewish traders Following the emphasis of the “New Mediterranean Studies” on interconnectivity, a key conclusion is that the spaces defined by trade, such as the decks of ships shared between Jewish, Muslim and Christian merchants, provided an almost neutral medium for the exchange not only of commodities, but also their conceptual, material or stylistic commensals. The final chapters of this thesis concentrate on the social mechanisms that propelled merchants, material culture and knowledge across the Mediterranean. They look at the shared visual culture that permeated the Mediterranean and its concomitant lexicon of shared symbols and motifs. This common visual culture includes architecture, the famous bacini of Pisa, and the broad category of spices, incense and materia medica. This last group, it is suggested, marked an expanding locus of practices shared across both the Christian and Muslim shores of the Mediterranean.
Fatigue Analysis of Automative Tensioner in Front End Accessory Drive Systems
Keywords: Fatigue Analysis
Front End Accessory Drives
Tensioner

Tensioners, as critical parts of automotive Front End Accessory Drive (FEAD) systems, are subjected to a significant range of dynamic loads due to engine pulsations which can lead to fatigue and operational failure. It is challenging to analytically investigate the fatigue life for powertrain components given the parameters involved. In this paper, the fatigue life assessment of a tensioner is studied through three main steps, namely stress analysis, fatigue properties estimation, and fatigue life prediction. Series of finite element analyses are carried out to investigate stress distribution in the tensioner spindle and pinpoint the critical areas. In addition, the fatigue properties of the tensioner are estimated using the experimental data. The tensioner fatigue behavior is analyzed through strain-life approach. The predicted fatigue parameters was then used to generate the cyclic stress-strain curve for the material of the selected tensioner based on Morrow theory. Finally, the fatigue estimation method was modified based on Neuberâ s rule and using the generated cyclic stress-strain curve for the die cast A380 tensioner. This model presents the Neuber parameter life data to account for plasticity correction. The possibility of using the newly developed HPDC magnesium alloys, MRI 153M and MRI 230D as alternative materials for tensioner casting parts is investigated in this study. Wohler curves for these different alloys AZ91D, MRI153M, and MRI230D are presented and then compared to current material for casting parts of the tensioner, A380 aluminum alloy. Effects of possible design variables were also investigated in the study using the response surface method. A methodology to achieve an optimal design shape for the tensioner based on the application and loading was proposed when considering life of the part. This research work presents an in-depth quantitative modeling approach to estimate the fatigue life of the automotive tensioner under real working condition by developing the stress histories. The developed modeling approach is applicable for evaluating any cases involving power train mechanical components.
Collaborative Painting Between Minds and Hands: Art Criticism, Connoisseurship, and Artistic Sodality in Early Modern Italy
Keywords: Art Theory and Practice
Collaboration
Connoisseurship
Italy
Style
Workshops

The intention of this dissertation is to open up collaborative pictures to meaningful analysis by accessing the perspectives of early modern viewers. The Italian primary sources from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries yield a surprising amount of material indicating both common and changing habits of thought when viewers looked at multiple authorial hands working on an artistic project. It will be argued in the course of this dissertation that critics of the seventeenth century were particularly attentive to the practical conditions of collaboration as the embodiment of theory. At the heart of this broad discourse was a trope extolling painters for working with what appeared to be one hand, a figurative and adaptable expression combining the notion of the united corpo and the manifold meanings of the artist’s mano. Hardly insistent on uniformity or anonymity, writers generally believed that collaboration actualized the ideals of a range of social, cultural, theoretical, and cosmological models in which variously formed types of unity were thought to be fostered by the mutual support of the artists’ minds or souls. Further theories arose in response to Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo’s hypothesis in 1590 that the greatest painting would combine the most highly regarded old masters, each contributing their particular talents towards the whole. Presented with this ideal involving inimitable hands and minds, Francesco Scannelli, Carlo Cesare Malvasia, and Marco Boschini each reflected on the practical conditions and possibilities of such a scenario. Collectors and connoisseurs, meanwhile, often discerned multiple hands in a single picture, leading to dubious attributions of collaborative authorship, particularly when the social circumstances supporting the collaboration were thought to be projected in the subject matter. The connoisseur’s fanciful tendency could even be exploited by the art market, a phenomenon that is especially observable in a group of half-length figures that was purportedly made by Giorgione, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Titian. Finally, a case study of the Venetian painters Palma Giovane and Aliense, whose families were bonded in marriage on the eve of a series of joint projects, tests the implications of those values in criticism, theory, and connoisseurship when collaboration was put into social practice.
Troubling Inclusion: The Politics of Peer Work and 'People with Lived Experience' in Mental Health Interventions
Keywords: Disability Studies
Identity
Mad Studies
Peer Support Work
Recovery
Social Movements

Abstract This thesis is a study of how some mad people come to be known as ‘people with lived experience,’ an emerging identity and strategic essentialism which attempts to valorize the knowledge of those with experiences of distress/mental health system encounters. Currently, claiming such an identity authorizes us to work professionally as peer workers within mental health research and service systems. Thus, by virtue of our ‘lived experience,’ the peer worker becomes enmeshed in the governance of ‘similar others.’ This study maps the emergence, performance, and performativity of the peer worker through the case study of the At Home/Chez Soi project (2009-2013), a national research demonstration project which both implemented services and studied their effects to learn how to best manage the ‘chronically homeless mentally ill’ in Canada. Because peer inclusion is now considered a best practice in mental health interventions, peer workers are key paraprofessionals recruited to be part of the project assemblage. Through ethnographic and interview data, I offer a critical analysis of how peer participation is mobilized and put to work within the confines of mental health governances. By demonstrating how peers actively work to self-govern our subjectivity and subject-positions to become recognizable as peers, this work denaturalizes peer identity. I argue that peer work is ‘bridge work:’ we work as informants to bridge the divides between respectable and degenerate bodies in order to help inform neoliberal governance. Key to this process is peer storytelling, a central way in which our experiences become commodities, consumed as recovery narratives which help maintain us as the problems that need to be fixed. The study elaborates two main conclusions that elucidate a paradox inherent to peer work. First, that our participation is conceived as useful when the target of our experiential knowledge is directed at managing abject populations. Secondly, that when we make attempts to deploy our knowledge to challenge the regimes of truth and practices that govern us, this work is troubled and managed. In this way, peers workers, through practice, learn the rules of engagement that govern our inclusion within the folds of systems of power.
The Korean Internet Freak Community and Its Cultural Politics, 2002–2011
Keywords: DCinside
Internet
Loser Aesthetics
Neoliberalism
Politics of Aesthetics
South Korea

In this dissertation I will shed light on the interwoven process between Internet development and neoliberalization in South Korea, and I will also examine the formation of new subjectivities of Internet users who are also becoming neoliberal subjects. In particular, I examine the culture of the South Korean Internet freak community of DCinside.com and the phenomenon I have dubbed “loser aesthetics.” Throughout the dissertation, I elaborate on the meaning-making process of self-reflexive mockery including the labels “Internet freak” and “surplus (human)” and gender politics based on sexuality focusing on gender ambiguous characters, called Nunhwa, as a means of collective identity-making, and I explore the exploitation of unpaid immaterial labor through a collective project making a review book of a TV drama Painter of the Wind. The youth of South Korea emerge as the backbone of these creative endeavors as they try to find their place in a precarious labor market that has changed so rapidly since the 1990s that only the very best succeed, leaving a large group of disenfranchised and disillusioned youth. I go on to explore the impact of late industrialization and the Asian financial crisis, and the nationalistic desire not be left behind in the age of informatization, but to be ahead of the curve. I argue that DCinside users are ambivalent subjects who try to become a desirable and successful neoliberal subject but, at the same time, are aware of their subordinated status in which they can easily become a failure and fall into a position of social loser. The culture “anything goes” of DCinside enables its users to speak out their voice and belie the consequences of neoliberalization, which makes up the politics of loser aesthetics in DCinside. As DCinside users challenged the protocols of their predecessors the netizens, so now a more extremist group has evolved to challenge the current status quo.
Discursive Formations of Community Music and the Production of Canadian Citizens in Toronto's Settlement Movement, 1900s-1930s
Keywords: citizenship
community music
Foucault
music education
music schools
settlement movement

This thesis examines the discursive formations of community music through the history of Toronto’s settlement house movement, from the opening of University Settlement House in 1910 to the onset of World War Two. Settlement houses created community-based educational and leisure programs for poor and immigrant residents with the objective of citizenship training, and music permeated settlement work, including the establishment of Canada’s first community music schools. Settlement organizers reconfigured music not as an end in itself, but as a tool in fostering ‘civic betterment’ of poor, working class, and immigrant neighborhoods. Using primarily Foucaultian archaeological methods, this study examines how settlement music practices contributed to the discursive formation of community music with two central arguments: first, the ways in which settlement organizers used and described music through its social purpose contributed to the discursive production of community music through an emerging social rationality; second, given the explicit focus on citizenship training, different kinds of musics articulated to different ideas of citizenship in a mutually conditioning relationship. The ensemble of music practices paradoxically challenged and reinforced musical and social hierarchies by emphasizing cultural uplift without social mobility. The dissertation comprises four studies that collectively explore the multiple, contingent, and often competing practices and rationales that contributed to the formation of inter-connected discourses of citizenship and community music. The first study examines how settlement movement proponents used culture and recreation as solutions to the social problems they saw emerging from Toronto’s urbanization. The second study focuses on specific music practices used within settlement democratic and social clubs to foster self-governing behaviours among participants differentiated by gender and age. The third study takes up the rationales and practices of the settlement music schools, analyzing how the trope of good music contributed to the repeatability of conservatory music training as a technique in the cultivation of citizens, while also exalting Western European Art Music within a musical hierarchy, articulated to a corresponding social hierarchy. The final study examines how settlement house workers began integrating musics of immigrant participants to construct the social rationality of music in terms of cultural difference.