VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Copyright Legislative Impunity? How Copyright Term Extensions Violate Freedom of Expression
Keywords: Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Copyright Law
Copyright Term Extensions
Freedom of Expression

With the global trend of harmonizing intellectual property rights, there is enormous pressure on Canada to adopt a maximalist approach to copyright protection. The purpose of this paper is to assess the constitutionality of the copyright extensions for sound recordings and performances found within the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act. Although Canadian courts have been reluctant in the past to consider the effects of copyright law on freedom of expression, the time is now ripe for the courts to assert their authority under the constitution. This paper demonstrates that copyright law is indeed in conflict with freedom of expression and that any time the legislature amends or imposes new burdens on expression, the government must justify those actions. In the case of the twenty-year term extension for sound recordings and performances, a constitutional analysis reveals that the law is disproportionate and cannot be saved under s.1 of the Charter.
Class Actions Under New Zealand's Representative Rule: Ingenious Solution or Inadequate to the Task?
Keywords: Civil Procedure
Class Action
Litigation
New Zealand
Representative Rule

Unlike many common law jurisdictions, New Zealand does not have a statutory class action regime. In the absence of developed rules governing class actions it has been left to the courts to fill this gap in the procedural landscape. The courts have achieved this by refashioning the “representative rule” into something capable of facilitating a modern class action. This has required the judiciary to adopt a “no. 8 wire mentality”, drawing on their inherent jurisdiction and creative interpretation of the High Court Rules to manage the complex issues that arise during aggregate litigation. This paper assesses the extent to which the representative rule can provide for class action litigation in the absence of a statutory regime. It concludes that modern class actions are now possible in New Zealand, but that New Zealand’s lack of procedural rules will impede the effectiveness of these proceedings.
The Application of Transcranial High Intensity Focused Ultrasound to Clot Lysis
Keywords: Cavitation
Focused Ultrasound
HIFU
Stroke
Therapy

The primary method for treating acute ischemic stroke - the administration of thrombolytics - is associated with a relatively low efficacy and a large number of patients are contraindicated against the use of the drug. This research was motivated by the need to develop a new treatment modality for acute ischemic stroke that is localized, does not require the use of thrombolytics, and is capable of quickly recanalizing an occluded vessel. A simulation model was developed to investigate the feasibility of employing high intensity focused ultrasound to induce non-invasive clot lysis through the human skull at frequencies capable of producing a focus small enough to fit within the major vessels of the brain. The results suggest that an array with approximately 16,000 elements would be required to electronically treat all but the most distal sonication targets. The element numbers required for this array are over an order of magnitude higher than what currently exists today and so this study motivates the need for further research into reducing the acoustic pressures required for clot lysis and optimizing array design. The ability of intravascular droplets to lower the acoustic power required for high intensity clot lysis was explored. The application of droplet-enhanced clot lysis was investigated in an embolic rabbit model. Recanalization was demonstrated in 73% of cases at approximately 24% of the acoustic power required without droplets. The results demonstrated that red blood cell extravasations were confined to the acoustic focus, suggesting that a transducer capable of placing the entire focus within a vessel would be able to confine the bioeffect within the same volume. Transcranial focused ultrasound sparse arrays at relatively high frequencies that could produce a tighter focus than the prototypes in existence today were investigated through simulations. The results showed that a hemispherical array with a 10% population of 3 mm elements - 1588 elements in total - would be capable of steering 4 cm in each direction with acceptable grating lobes. These sparse arrays could potentially be well-suited to lower power applications, such as low intensity sonothrombolysis with thrombolytic agents or blood-brain barrier disruption.
Out-of-market Efficiencies, Two-sided Platforms and Consumer Welfare: A Legal and Economic Analysis
Keywords: Antitrust
Competition Policy
Law Economics
Two-sided platforms

This thesis analyzes the scope of out-of-market efficiencies in competition policy from a legal and economic perspective. It identifies potential shortcomings in neglecting their relevance, both in relation to the economic principles of two-sided platforms and, more generally, in the fulfillment of the consumer welfare standard. This paper tackles this issue by looking at the specific condition laid out in Article 101(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, requiring that a fair share of efficiency benefits must be passed on to consumers in order to justify an otherwise anti-competitive agreement. The implications of forbidding or allowing aggregation of efficiencies across markets are examined with reference to the two-sided market of payment card systems and the anticompetitive concerns regarding Multilateral Interchange Fees.
The Weakest Link? Evaluating Private Nuisance Liability in Ontario's Environmental Law Context
Keywords: Environmental Law
Legal Theory
Tort Law

The Court of Appeal for Ontario’s decision in Smith v Inco Ltd illustrates the degree to which the law of private nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher liability has evolved over the last hundred and fifty years from strict(ish) liability tort doctrines to fault-based means of recovery. Inco also offers an opportunity to consider whether this evolution has left some wronged landowners behind. This work considers the evolution of private nuisance and Rylands liability into the tort doctrine(s) they are today, and illustrates the Province of Ontario’s statutory response to that evolution in the environmental contamination context. Ontario’s common law and statutory environmental compensation regime is then evaluated in the context of four distinct measures of wrongfulness from two theoretical schools of liability. Where Ontario’s regime is found to permit wrongful loss without recovery, statutory changes to extend rights of compensation to all landowners suffering wrongful loss are proposed.
The Unfinished State : Territorial Status, State Creation, and United Nations Mismanagement Within the Borders of the Mandate of Palestine
Keywords: International Law
Israel
Palestine
State Borders
State Creation

The international laws and customs that decreed a right for a Jewish state to be created within the former British Mandate of Palestine provided the same in equal measure for an Arab state within the same Mandate. What they did not provide for, however, thanks in no small part to UN mismanagement and recalcitrant warring parties, were borders separating the two states to be. By chronicling the international legal situation of the territory over the last century, it becomes possible to make determinations about minimum state level territorial rights. While failing to provide instant and obvious border location, the application of international law renders certain positions beyond debate. This narrows the scope of territorial negotiations to a 'simple' determination of which lands are necessary for the creation of a viable Palestinian state, whose citizens' freedom of movement within its peaceable borders is unimpeded by even Israel's most ardent security concerns.
Collaborative Writing in a Computer-supported Classroom: Mediation and Self-assessed Beliefs and Attitudes about Writing
Keywords: collaborative writing
L2 writing development
mediation tool use
modelling process-product development
self-assessed beliefs about writing
tool-mediated writing knowledge

This classroom study investigated how computer-based writing tools and collaborative writing tasks mediated the development of individual writing competencies among 35 graduate students during a 4-week course in Taiwan focused on English tests like the TOEFL. I prepared a unique platform of writing tools for the course and then quantified the types of writing knowledge generated from students' collaborative writing (CW) and uses of these mediation tools, then associated these with the students' CW performance and then individual writing performance on 3 drafts of 4 TOEFL writing tasks over the duration of the course. Data included collaborative writers' dialogues and online browsing histories and all compositions produced during the course. Supplementary data were questionnaires and interviews on students' perceived changes in communications, reflections on CW, and self-assessed beliefs about their writing abilities. A comparison class of 26 students, which I also taught a year later, served as a control condition with the same course content, and writing tasks written individually (rather than collaboratively). Analyses identified symbolic and material mediation tools in Language-Related Episodes (LREs) in CW writers' dialogues and uses of Internet writing resources. Generalized Estimating Equation (GEE) modeling then tested the relationship between tool-mediated writing knowledge and CW performance, and then correlation analyses evaluated the relationship between CW performance and students' individual writing development. GEE modeling and interpretive analyses investigated over time the students' changes in communications, reflections on CW, and self-assessed beliefs about their writing abilities. Students in the CW course improved their English writing significantly more than comparison students did. Their symbolic and material tool use resulted in two types of writing knowledge, linguistic forms and skills of expression, which together with practice writing collaboratively, were associated with the students' writing development. The CW students expressed positive views towards the mediation tools, their abilities for verbalizing in English, and various cognitive and attitudinal indicators, whereas the control group did not change their beliefs about writing over time. The present results strengthen the claims from Sociocultural Theory about the value of mediation for writing development in a foreign language and provide insights about CW for writing teachers.
A Mass Spectrometry Approach to Identifying Novel Numb-interacting Proteins and Phosphorylation Sites
Keywords: Numb
Mass Spectrometry

Numb is an endocytic adaptor protein first identified in the Drosophila nervous system as an intrinsic regulator of cell fate that is asymmetrically localized during cell division. Vertebrate Numb homologues have been identified, and homozygous Numb deletion in mice leads to embryonic lethality. There are four isoforms of mammalian Numb generated by alternative mRNA splicing of exon 3 and exon 9 leading to the translation of 4 protein isoforms with distinct molecular masses. Exon 9 inclusion and exclusion is developmentally regulated, yet little is known about the specific functions of exon 9 included isoforms. Herein we used affinity purification and tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to identify isoform specific differences in Numb associated complexes. We identified 4 novel Numb-interacting proteins, including REPS1, BMP2K, BCR, and CENTA2, and further confirmed a direct interaction between the EH domain of REPS1 and both the NPF tripeptide motif as well as the DPF1 tripeptide motifs of Numb. We used selected reaction monitoring mass spectrometry (SRM-MS) to show that significantly more Eps15 associates with Numb p72 compared to Numb p66, a result which we confirmed in cells using a proximity ligation assay. Consistently, p72 preferential association was also observed with three subunits of the AP-2 complex. Finally, we used SRM-MS to investigate the dynamic regulation of Numb-complex association after Calyculin A induced phosphorylation and endocytosis blockade. Numb hyper-phosphorylation led to the disassociation of Numb associated complexes, while endocytosis blockade altered only the recruitment of Eps15, REPS1 and BMPK2, but not members of the AP-2 complex. Numb activity and localization are also regulated in response to phosphorylation events at several residues. In Chapter 3, we used LC-MS/MS to identify 20 novel phosphorylation sites and 4 phosphorylated regions of Numb. We then used a non- radioactive in vitro kinase assay to show that Cyclin D Kinase 5 (CDK5) and Aurora A kinase phosphorylate Numb. Finally, three peptides containing CDK5 consensus motifs that become serine/threonine phosphorylated in response to in vitro CDK5 activity. These studies provide novel insights into the regulation of Numb and Numb associated complexes in response to cellular events such as phosphorylation and endocytosis.
The Effects of ɤ-Glutamyl Hydrolase Modulation on Cancer Treatment and DNA Methylation in Human Cancer Cells
Keywords: Folate
ɤ-Glutamyl hydrolase
5-Fluorouracil
Methotrexate
Antifolates
Cancer treatment
DNA methylation
Gene expression

Folate and antifolates are retained in cells by polyglutamylation mediated by folylpolyglutamate synthase (FPGS), and are exported from cells after hydrolysis to monoglutamates by γ-glutamyl hydrolase (GGH). Polyglutamylated (anti)folates are retained in cells longer and are better substrates than their monoglutamate counterparts for intracellular folate-dependent enzymes. GGH modulation may therefore affect chemosensitivity of cancer cells to antifolates and 5-fluorouracil by altering polyglutamylation of antifolates and a specific target intracellular folate cofactor for 5-fluorouracil (5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate), respectively. We generated an in vitro model of GGH modulation in HCT116 and MDA-MB-435 cells with predictable functional consequences and investigated chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil and antifolates. Overall, GGH overexpression decreased chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil+ leucovorin and methotrexate, while GGH inhibition increased chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil +leucovorin. However, these effects appeared to depend not only on the GGH modulation-induced changes in polyglutamylation of 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate and antifolates but also on intracellular folate levels as well as adaptive and compensatory changes in other enzymes involved in intracellular folate and antifolate accumulation and metabolism in response to GGH modulation. Polyglutamylation is also important in DNA methylation as polyglutamylated folates are better substrates for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and methionine synthase involved in the generation of S-adenosylmethionine, which is a substrate for DNA methylation. We hypothesized that GGH and FPGS modulation may affect DNA methylation at global and gene-specific levels with consequent functional ramifications. GGH and FPGS modulation demonstrated the inverse relationship between GGH activity and global DNA methylation as well as was associated with differential gene expression and altered CpG promoter DNA methylation involved in important biological pathways. Some of the observed altered gene expression appear to be regulated by DNA methylation. Whether or not GGH modulation may be an important determinant of chemosensitivity to 5-fluorouracil- and antifolate-based chemotherapy, and the potential roles of GGH and FPGS modulation in DNA methylation need further exploration.
L’Identité en Question dans les Romans d’Ananda Devi
Keywords: Ananda Devi
roman mauricien
identité
postcolonial
hybridité
ambivalence
tiers espace
para-naturel

L’identité est, selon Stuart Hall, l’auteur de Questions of Cultural Identity, un des termes les plus débattus et controversés aujourd'hui. À la question «qui a besoin de l’identité?», Hall répond que l’identité fait partie de ces concepts qui ne sont plus bons à penser dans leur forme originaire et première mais que, faute d’une nouvelle ou d’une meilleure terminologie, elle demeure un concept clé et incontournable, en particulier dans le domaine des littératures postcoloniales où la question de l’identité continue à être posée de manière pressante. Pour les écrivains mauriciens, elle constitue l’une, sinon la préoccupation majeure en raison d’une prééminence de l’ethnique dans le discours identitaire mauricien. À travers une lecture de quatre romans d’Ananda Devi, Le voile de Draupadi, Moi, l’interdite, Pagli et La vie de Joséphin le fou, cette étude se propose d’examiner comment l’écriture de cette auteure parvient à problématiser la pensée binaire héritée de la colonisation et à ouvrir le débat identitaire vers une acception plus large et plus inclusive de la notion d’identité. Notre approche postcoloniale des romans nous permettra d’établir les contours d’une poétique de l’hybridité et de l’ambivalence qui, à travers l’amorce d’un mouvement vers un tiers espace non-identitaire ou a-identitaire, propose un discours alternatif au cloisonnement et au repli identitaire dans la société de référence où la tendance est aux identités fortes, distinctes ainsi qu’aux revendications identitaires prononcées et concurrentielles. À partir d’une perspective postcoloniale qui invite à réfléchir sur la situation d’entremêlement dans les ex-colonies, le caractère fictif et illusionniste d’un retour aux sources ou à une essence pure et originelle, la nécessité d’une prise de conscience sur le caractère construit et discursif de l’identité ainsi que les stratégies de sortie du schéma binaire (néo)colonial, nous proposons de suivre ce mouvement vers un devenir-imperceptible qui, loin d’aboutir à une néantisation ou abdication de soi, participe d’une réflexion en acte vers la décolonisation des imaginaires et la création de lignes de fuite hors du schéma binaire (néo)colonial où l’Autre est sans cesse ramené à une essence fixe et déterminée une fois pour toutes.
The Contributions of First and Second Language Skills to Reading Comprehension in English Language Learners
Keywords: Cross-linguistic Transfer
English Language Learners
Reading Comprehension
Simple View of Reading

This study examined the language and cognitive factors underlying the development of reading comprehension in 120 elementary school English language learners (ELLs) from typologically different language backgrounds (Chinese and Spanish). The study first examined the validity of an extended Simple View of Reading (SVR) model for ELLs that includes cognitive skills (phonological awareness, rapid naming speed) and word reading fluency in addition to decoding and oral language skills. Hierarchical linear regression was used to investigate the contributions of Grade 1 English cognitive skills, and word reading fluency, in addition to the SVR components, to Grade 4 English reading comprehension. The validity of the extended SVR framework with ELL children in both language groups was supported. The second part investigated the contribution of parallel early L1 and L2 skills to English reading comprehension. There was no cross-language transfer of skills in Chinese ELLs; however, Grade 1 cognitive skills assessed in Spanish made significant contributions to Grade 4 English reading comprehension. The results underscore the importance of complementary theoretical perspectives. The "central processing hypothesis" is clearly relevant for Spanish speakers, but for Chinese ELLs, no additional information is gained by adding the L1 measures. These differences can be attributed to typological differences and differential contribution of L1 processing skills to L2 reading comprehension. The third part examined individual growth trajectories as predictors of Grade 4 reading comprehension in English. Hierarchical linear modeling and hierarchical linear regression were used to investigate the developmental trajectories of early predictor variables and the contribution of individual differences to these trajectories. The rate of growth on the cognitive variables (phonological awareness and rapid naming speed), SVR variables (receptive vocabulary and word reading), and word reading fluency made significant contributions to reading comprehension skills in Grade 4. The final model, consisting of non-verbal ability, the initial status of cognitive skills, cluster of the SVR skills, and of word reading fluency and the rate of growth on the SVR skills, explained 59% of the variance in reading comprehension three years later. These results show that the same English cognitive and linguistic skills play critical roles in ELL's development of English reading comprehension, despite the typological differences between L1 backgrounds.
An Emergent Form of Life: Advanced Cancer Patients' Active Search for Life-extension through Treatment
Keywords: Advanced Cancer
Case Study
End of Life Treatments
Palliative Care
Poststructuralism
Subjectivity

Despite the risks of side effects or the lack of prognostic benefits, patients with advanced cancer sometimes search for biomedical treatments intended to extend life. The current literature suggests that these individuals may be in denial of their poor prognosis or passively reliant on healthcare providers for such treatments. Drawing on a Foucauldian theoretical framework, this study generated a deeper understanding of how individuals might actively generate their own therapeutic possibilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the types of discourses that constitute the search for life-extension. The second purpose was to characterize the types of subjectivities that are produced by these discourses. Using case study as a methodological approach, seven cases were collected that included 20 semi-structured interviews (with patients, family, a natural healer, nurses, and physicians), 30 documents, and observations. Four major discourses were in operation: (1) Biomedicine, (2) Self-Care, (3) Palliative Care, and (4) Self-Healing. Eight types of subjectivities were identified: (1) The Cancer Expert, (2) The Proactive, (3) The Productive, (4) The Mistrusting, (5) The Model Patient, (6) The Positive Thinking, (7) The Suffering, and (8) The Challenged Clinician. Produced by the tensions between discourses and the incompatibility between subjectivities, this study characterized an emergent "form of life" that was governed by the difficult task of prolonging life despite having an incurable disease. Participants described much suffering as a result of this elusive pursuit. More than procuring treatment, the search for life-extension became an aesthetical process of shaping the self in order to become robust subjects that survive cancer. Relying on their own curative capacities, this emerging category of the chronically dying often challenged the traditional arrangements of bio-scientific knowledge and curative treatment practices. Generating social tensions in the clinical setting, participants exercised power/knowledge relationships with healthcare providers in increasingly assertive ways.