VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
“The Psychosocial Portrait of Immigration through the Medium of Reading”: Leisure Reading and Its Role in the Lives of Russian-speaking Immigrants in Toronto
Keywords: leisure reading
books and reading
readers
immigrants
acculturation
adaptation
Canada
North America
Russia
Soviet Union

This doctoral study investigates the nature and role of leisure reading in the lives of avid immigrant readers. Guided by hermeneutic phenomenology and conducted by means of surveys and in-depth interviews, it uses a sample of Russian-speaking immigrants in Toronto, Canada, as a case study. The overarching research problem is divided into three research questions (RQ): RQ1: Who are the readers? RQ2: What are the main characteristics of reading behavior and habits of participants after immigration? RQ3: What role does leisure reading play in participants’ lives in immigration? Answering RQ1, the study paints demographic and socio-cultural portraits of participants; recreates a variety of contexts shaping their reading; and unfolds their reader histories. In response to RQ2, it traces immediate post-immigration fluctuations in reading behavior; records the most peculiar reading contents; explores participants’ self-perceptions as readers; outlines the major areas of post-immigration changes in leisure reading; and presents the analysis of acculturation stress in the area of leisure reading. It is concluded that leisure reading can be a more sensitive indicator of acculturation than more utilitarian measures, because it can open a window to the cultural and psychological intricacies of acculturation. Finally, RQ3 generates a theoretical discussion of the concept of ‘the role of reading’ and determines the study focus on immigration-specific, emotional and instrumental, roles. Leisure reading is found important in coping with the culture shock; sharing the experience of others and assessing personal immigration paths; re-evaluating the history of the fatherland and gaining a new perspective on the national heritage; stabilizing identity; learning about the new country; improving English-language proficiency; and compensating for the deficiencies of a transitional period. In addition, leisure reading emerges as a powerful force cementing ethnic and transnational reading communities. The study expands the selected acculturation models and theories; introduces clarity to the concepts of the role and appeal of reading; highlights the dual and self-reinforcing function of reading as a measure and a determinant of acculturation. Finally, it presents a systematic examination of the ethnic readership that has escaped the attention of reading researchers in the largest immigrant-receiving countries, Canada and the United States.
The Roles of Far Field Stress and Mantle Downwelling In Intraplate Deformation: The Michigan Basin
Keywords: Michigan
Subsidence

The Michigan basin has long been established as the type example of an intracratonic basin due to its near circular geometry and gently inward-dipping Paleozoic formations. The backstripping of major formations within the basin reveals that its geometry varied over the duration of the Paleozoic, displaying two distinct subsidence signals consisting of quasi-circular basin-centered subsidence interspaced with periods of irregular basin geometry. The quasi-circular basin-centred subsidence is thought to represent the surface expression of a driving mechanism located beneath the Michigan basin, which persisted for the duration of the Paleozoic. An irregular subsidence geometry periodically interrupts the quasi - circular basin-centred pattern and is contemporaneous with the Ordovician Taconic and Devonian Acadian orogenies. Through the use of scaled analogue experiments, the effects of convective mantle downwelling and long wavelength folding are explored as potential driving mechanisms to explain the subsidence patterns of the Michigan basin. Convective mantle downwelling is hypothesized as the process responsible for the quasi-circular basin-centered subsidence patterns and the relationship between mantle flow velocities and a variety of continental strength profiles is explored. A series of scaled analogue vice experiments explore the effects of regional orogeny on a continental hinterland, with some experiments containing a strong lower crustal strength heterogeneity, designed to test the possible influence of the Mid Continental rift beneath the Michigan basin. The results of both types of experiment demonstrate that quasi-circular subsidence patterns within the Michigan basin may have been formed due to convective mantle downwelling, while the effects of regional orogeny and long wavelength folding dramatically influenced subsidence patterns during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies.
Elucidating the Role of Endothelin-2 (ET-2) in Inherited Photoreceptor Degenerations and the Indirect Effects of Systemic ET-2 Loss
Keywords: Retina
Endothelin

Inherited photoreceptor degenerations (IPDs) are the most common monogenic cause of blindness in humans. To discover genes that may influence the risk of death in IPDs, microarray studies were used, and ET-2 was identified as the most differentially expressed transcript. ET-2 mRNA was 32-fold (p< 0.004), 70-fold (p< 0.009) and 72-fold (p<0.0009) increased in the Rds+/- , Tg(RHO P347S) and Rd1-/- mouse models of IPD, respectively, and the ET-2 peptide was minimally three-fold upregulated in Rds+/- retinas. The increased ET-2 transcript was detected solely in the photoreceptors (PRs) of Rds+/- and Tg(RHO P347S) retinas, but not in wild-type (wt) retinas by in situ hybridization. To determine the biological role of ET-2 in IPDs, mouse IPD models were crossed to ET-2-null mice. At age 40 and 15 days, ET-2-/-; Tg(RHO P347S) and ET-2-/-;Rd1-/- retinas showed, respectively, a 41% (n=6;p<0.003) and 49% rescue of PR degeneration (n=5;p<0.007). Unexpectedly, however, the PRs in ET-2-/- Rd1-/-retinal explants were not rescued (n=6;p>0.05), suggesting that the rescue observed in vivo might be due to extraocular mechanisms. Additionally, the expression of ET-2 mRNA from an rAAV5-CBA-ET-2 vector in ET-2-/-; Rd1-/- retinas did not restore PR degeneration (n=6;p>0.05). A survey of the extraocular phenotypes of ET-2 null mice showed them to be hypoxic owing to aberrant lung development, with a loss of normal alveolarization of the lung. Erythropoietin (EPO) levels were 11-fold elevated in the serum of ET-2 null mice (n=7;p<0.05) and retinal vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was increased 4-fold (n=4;p<0.05). To examine the role of hypoxia in PR degeneration and to exclude increased EPO levels as the sole factor accounting for the rescue of mutant PRs in ET-2-/-; Tg(RHO P347S) and ET-2-/-;Rd1-/- mice in vivo, the effect of hypoxia on PR death in Rd1-/- retinal explants was examined. Rd1-/- explants cultured in 6% O2 from PN10 to PN17 showed a 32% rescue of PR death (n=5;p<0.05). Although ET-2 may mediate PR death through a direct role in mutant PRs, the PR rescue observed in ET-2-/-; Tg(RHO P347S) and ET-2-/-;Rd1-/-retinas may also result from systemic hypoxia due to poor lung function in ET-2-/- animals.
Geometric Control of Cardiomyogenic Induction from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Keywords: Human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Cardiomyocytes
embryonic stem cells
microfabrication

Pluripotent stem cells provide the opportunity to study human cardiogenesis in vitro, and are a renewable source of tissue for drug testing and disease models, including replacement cardiomyocytes that may be a useful treatment for heart failure. Typically, differentiation is initiated by forming spherical cell aggregates wherein an extraembryonic endoderm (ExE) layer develops on the surface. Given that interactions between endoderm and mesoderm influence embryonic cardiogenesis, we examined the impact of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) aggregate size on endoderm and cardiac development. We first demonstrated aggregate size control by micropatterning hESC colonies at defined diameters and transferring the colonies to suspension. The ratio of endoderm (GATA-6) to neural (PAX6) gene and protein expression increased with decreasing colony size. Subsequently, maximum mesoderm and cardiac induction occurred in larger aggregates when initiated with endoderm-biased hESCs (high GATA-6:PAX6), and in smaller aggregates when initiated with neural-biased hESCs (low GATA-6:PAX6). Additionally, incorporating micropatterned aggregates in a stirred suspension bioreactor increased cell yields and contracting aggregate frequency. We next interrogated the relationship between aggregate size and endoderm and cardiac differentiation efficiency in size-controlled aggregates, generated using forced aggregation, in defined cardiogenic medium. An inverse relationship between endoderm cell frequency (FoxA2+ and GATA6+) and aggregate size was observed, and cardiogenesis was maximized in mid-size aggregates (1000 cells) based on frequency of cardiac progenitors (~50% KDRlow/C-KITneg) on day 5 and cardiomyocytes (~24% cTnT+) on day 16. To elucidate a relationship between endoderm frequency and cardiac differentiation efficiency, aggregates were initiated with varying frequencies of ExE progenitors (SOX7-overexpressing hESCs). Maximum cardiomyocyte frequencies (~27%) occurred in aggregates formed with 10 to 25% ExE progenitors. These findings suggest a geometric relationship between aggregate size and ExE differentiation efficiency subsequently impacts cardiomyocyte yield, elucidating a mechanism for endogenous control of cell fate through cell-cell interactions in the aggregate.
Financial Engineering of the Stochastic Correlation in Credit Risk Models
Keywords: Financial Engineering
Mathematics

The main objective of this thesis is to implement stochastic correlation into the existing structural credit risk models. There are two stochastic models suggested for the covariance matrix of the assets' prices. In our first model, to induce the stochasticity into the structure of the correlation, we assume that the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix are constant but the eigenvalues are driven by independent Cox-Ingersoll-Ross processes. To price equity options on this framework we first transform the calculations from the pricing domain to the frequency domain. Then we derive a closed formula for the Fourier transform of the Green's function of the pricing PDE. Finally we use the method of images to find the price of the equity options. The same method is used to find closed formulas for marginal probabilities of defaults and CDS prices. In our second model, the covariance of the assets follows a Wishart process, which is an extension of the CIR model to dimensions greater than one. The popularity of the Heston model, which uses the CIR process to model the stochastic volatility, could be a promising point for using Wishart process to model stochastic correlation. We give closed form solutions for equity options, marginal probabilities of defaults, and some other major financial derivatives. For the calculation of our pricing formulas we make a bridge between two recent trends in pricing theory; from one side, pricing of barrier options by Lipton (2001) and Sepp (2006) and from other side the development of Wishart processes by Bru (1991), Gourieroux (2005) and Fonseca et al. (2006, 2007a, 2007b). After obtaining the mathematical results above, we then estimate the parameters of the two models we have developed by an evolutionary algorithm. We prove a theorem which guarantees the convergence of the evolutionary algorithm to the set of optimizing parameters. After estimating the parameters of the two stochastic correlation models, we conduct a comparative analysis of our stochastic correlation models. We give an approximation formula for the joint and marginal probabilities of default for General Motors and Ford. For the marginal probabilities of default, a closed formula is given and for the joint probabilities of default an approximation formula is suggested. To show the convergence properties of this approximation method, we perform the Monte Carlo simulation in two forms: a full and a partial Monte Carlo simulation. At the end, we compare the marginal and joint probabilities with full and partial Monte Carlo simulations.
Learning Land and Life: An Institutional Ethnography of Land Use Planning and Development in a Northern Ontario First Nation
Keywords: Institutional Ethnography
First Nation
Mushkego
Mushkegowuk
Ininowuk
Swampy Cree
Fort Albany
Peetabego
Historical Materialism
Dialectical
Community-Based Research
Participatory Research
Nature
Ecology
Ecological
Environmental
Ruling Relations
Abstraction
Land use planning
Development
Protection
Far North Act
Bill 191
Critical Education
Ideology
Land Relations
Indigenous
Aboriginal
Northern Ontario
Learning
Capitalism
Social Relations
Consciousness
Everyday life practice

This study examines intricately related questions of consciousness and learning, textually-mediated social coordination, and human relationships within nature, anchored in the everyday life practices and concerns of a remote First Nation community in the Treaty 9 region. Through the use of Institutional Ethnography, community-based research and narrative methods, the research traces how the ruling relations of land use planning unfold within the contemporary period of neoliberal development in Northern Ontario. People’s everyday experiences and access to land in the Mushkego Inninowuk (Swampy Cree) community of Fort Albany for example, are shaped in ways that become oriented to provincial ruling relations, while people also reorient these relations on their own terms through the activities of a community research project and through historically advanced Indigenous ways of being. The study examines the coordinating effects of provincially-driven land use planning on communities and territories in Treaty 9, as people in local sites are coordinated to others elsewhere in a complex process that serves to produce the legislative process called Bill 191 or the Far North Act. Examining texts, ideology and dialectical historical materialist relations, the study is an involved inquiry into the text process itself and how it comes to be put together. The textually mediated and institutional forms of organizing social relations—effectively land relations—unfold with the involvement of people from specific sites and social locations whose work is coordinated, as it centres on environmental protection and development in the region north of the 51st parallel. A critique of the textually mediated institutional process provides a rich site for exploring learning within the context of neoliberal capitalist relations and serves to illuminate ways in which people can better act to change the problematic relations that haunt settler-Indigenous history in the contemporary period. The work asks all people involved in the North how we can work to address historic injustices rooted in the relations and practices of accumulation and dispossession. The voices and modes of governance of Aboriginal people, obfuscated within the processes and relations of provincial planning, must be afforded the space and recognition to flourish on their own terms.
Agreeing to Disagree...or Not: A Multi-level Examination of Conflict Spillover in Diverse Groups
Keywords: teams
multilevel
intragroup conflict
moderated mediation
composition model
task conflict
relationship conflict
team viability

To better understand the impact of task conflict in work teams, an incremental, multi-level model is developed, which distinguishes individual-level perceptions of conflict from more overt group-level manifestations of conflict. Task conflict is conceptualized as being detrimental for teams only to the extent that it positively predicts relationship conflict. The positive relationship between task conflict and relationship conflict is referred to as conflict spillover. The composition of team members’ underlying beliefs concerning the functional value of task conflict (referred to as conflict values) is examined as a moderator of conflict spillover. It is proposed that perceptual conflict spillover is smaller among team members who hold positive conflict values, and that manifest conflict spillover is smaller among teams composed primarily of members who hold positive conflict values. Hypotheses were tested in a longitudinal study of 59 student teams (294 individuals). At the team level, the diversity of team members’ conflict values was found to moderate manifest conflict spillover, such that the association between task and relationship conflict was significantly positive for teams composed of members who held more diverse conflict values. For teams composed of members who had less diverse conflict values, there was no significant association between manifest task conflict and manifest relationship conflict. As a result of these significant differences in conflict spillover, manifest task conflict indirectly and negatively predicted the task performance and viability of teams containing more diverse conflict values, but did not significantly impact the effectiveness of teams with less diverse conflict values. At the individual level, the significant positive association between perceived task conflict and perceived relationship conflict was not moderated by individual conflict values. However, because of this perceptual conflict spillover, task conflict perceptions also indirectly and negatively predicted team members’ personal willingness to continue working in the team. Results of this dissertation highlight important differences in the ways that conflict operates at the individual and group levels. Having identified the diversity of conflict values as a moderator of manifest conflict spillover, this dissertation outlines areas for further academic and practical knowledge development concerning the prevention of dysfunctional team dynamics.
Imaging the Mechanics of Hydraulic Fracturing in Naturally-fractured Reservoirs Using Induced Seismicity and Numerical Modeling
Keywords: mechanics
hydraulic fracturing
induced seismicity
naturally-fractured reservoirs
numerical modeling
S-wave
Gaussian-beam
location

The primary objective of this study is to improve understanding of the mechanics of hydraulic fracturing in naturally-fractured reservoirs. The study focuses on enhancing the interpretation of hydraulic fracture-induced microseismic data using an S-wave Gaussian-beam method and numerical modeling techniques for interpretation. The S-wave Gaussian-beam method was comprehensively calibrated by synthetic and real data sets with different recording networks, and this showed the potential to retrieve additional microseismic data from hydraulic fracturing with linear receiver arrays. This approach could enhance current practice because a large number of induced events in these environments have very strong S-waves with P-wave amplitudes similar, or less than, background noise levels. The numerical study using the distinct element methods PFC2D and PFC3D was used to validate the understanding of the hydraulic fracturing mechanisms induced in laboratory and field fluid treatments in naturally-fractured reservoirs. This was achieved through direct comparison with the results of the geometry of hydraulic fractures and seismic source information (locations, magnitudes, and mechanisms) from both laboratory experiments and field observations. A suite of numerical models with fully-dynamic and hydro-mechanical coupling has been used to examine in detail the interaction between natural and induced fractures with the variations of the differential stresses and the orientations of the pre-fractures, and the relationship between the fluid front, the fracture tip, and the induced seismicity. The numerical results qualitatively agreed with the laboratory and field observations of the geometry of hydraulic fractures, confirmed the possible mechanics of new fracture development and their interactions with natural fractures, and illustrated the possible relationship between the fluid front and the fracture tip. The validated model could therefore help track the potential extent of induced fracturing in naturally-fractured reservoirs and the extent to which it can be detected by a microseismic monitoring array in order to assess the effectiveness of a hydraulic fracturing project.
The Role of Lymphotoxin-beta-Receptor Signaling in Dendritic Cell Function and T Cell Priming.
Keywords: immune function
dendritic cells
T cell priming
lymphotoxin

Early during an immune response, dendritic cells (DC) interact closely with CD4+ T cells, and cross-talk between these cells can come in the form of tumour necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily ligand-receptor interactions. These signals are critical for the maturation, function and survival of DC, and thereby dictate the capacity of DC to prime a robust T cell response. Among these cues, helper T cell-expressed CD40L interaction with DC-expressed CD40 is required to fully mature DC for cross-priming of help-dependent CD8+ T cell responses. The lymphotoxin-beta receptor (LTβR) is another TNF family receptor on DC, and it’s ligands LTα1β2 and LIGHT are expressed on activated T cells. Since abrogated LTβR signaling impairs T cell immunity, we have examined whether LTαβ represents another possible helper T cell-derived cue for full DC maturation. However the LT pathway controls lymphoid tissue organization and DC homeostasis, a second possible mechanism explaining the necessity of LTβR signaling for T cell immunity. Here we dissect the role of helper T cell-expressed LTβR ligands and DC-intrinsic LTβR signaling, independent of DC homeostasis or lymphoid organization, in DC function and T cell immunity. Absence of LTα1β2 and not LIGHT on helper T cells results in compromised T cell priming by DC ex vivo, and LTβ-/- CD4+ T cell responses are impaired in vivo. Ag-specific CD4+ T cell-expressed LTα1β2 and DC-intrinsic LTβR signaling are required for an optimal cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response in vivo. While CD40 induces IL-12 and is required for CTL function, DC-intrinsic LTβR signaling is necessary for CTL activation and expansion, early up-regulation of CD86 and IFNα/β production. Our results reveal non-redundant roles for distinct TNF family receptors in enabling DC to program different features in Ag-specific CD8+ T cells.