VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigation of the Function of the Meiotic Protein AHP2 in Arabidopsis thaliana
Keywords: AHP2
meiosis
HOP2
chromosome

The ultimate purpose of this study was to investigate AHP2 protein function in Arabidopsis; AHP2 protein is known to form a heterodimer with MND1. But to do this an existing chromosome spreading protocol had to be modified to reproducibly provide large numbers of well preserved chromosomes and a multi-criteria meiotic staging method was developed to accurately identify chromosome spreads at specific prophase I substages. As well a technique for combined immuno-cytochemistry and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) had to be developed. Coimmuno-localization of AHP2 and MND1 proteins, in wild type meiocytes, revealed synchronous temporal organization (signal initially peaks, for both, during zygotene) but spatially the AHP2 signal appeared exclusively as chromosome axis-associated foci whereas the MND1 signal was diffuse with some foci suggesting that MND1 may also be localizing to loop regions. This finding strongly suggests that MND1 also functions independently of AHP2 during meiosis. We coupled transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis of ultrathin sections of meiotic nuclei with light microscope (LM) analysis of chromosome spreads and demonstrated that ahp2 meiocytes fail to stabilize chromosome close alignment that normally occurs during zygotene. My method of combining 2-Bromo-5-deoxyUridine (BrdU) - determination of meiosis duration and the relative durations of each substage allowed us to calculate the absolute duration of each prophase I substage in wild type and revealed that early to mid-zygotene was prolonged in the ahp2 mutant. This finding was consistent with the ahp2 mutant’s overall lack of stabilized chromosome alignment. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that the Arabidopsis ahp2 short stamen filament was due to reduced cell elongation in filament parenchyma (epidermal) cells. Detection of illegitimate connections between chromosomes at anaphase I may trigger cell-to-cell signals that result in reduced epidermal cell elongation in the stamen filament. Finally, I report that the short arms of NOR-bearing chromosomes 2 and 4 homologously pair and synapse in the ahp2 mutant despite an overall lack of stabilized pairing. This NOR phenomenon has been observed in Drosophila but ours is the first report of the ability of NORs to locally induce pairing and synapsis in plants.
Perfecting the Law: Law Reform and Literary Forms in the 1590s and 1600s
Keywords: Shakespeare
Law
John Donne
Measure for Measure
Satyre
satire
The Winter's Tale
Gesta Grayorum
Inns of Court
Early Modern Drama
Law reform
Francis Bacon
Nicholas Bacon

This dissertation examines early modern literary engagements with the rhetorical and ethical dimensions of law reform. One of the most important mechanisms of social regulation in late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean England, law reform was a matter of, first, the “perfection” of the organization and expression of existing laws, legal instruments, and legal processes. However counter-intuitively, these officially-sponsored reforms were calculated to prevent more radical innovations that would generate “inconveniences,” systemic contradictions and uncertainties that threatened the law’s ability to produce just results. Second, law reformers generated a discourse on “execution” that targeted the character of legal representatives. This tradition of character criticism, delivered directly from the Lord Keeper’s mouth or circulated through other legal-political, literary, theatrical, didactic, and religious works, encouraged officers’ conscientious execution of their duties and alerted the English public to the signs of the abuse of authority. Law reform created a distinct critical orientation toward legal and governing activities that was reproduced throughout a system of justice in which an extraordinary number of subjects participated. It was a critical orientation, moreover, that was refracted in literature sensitive to the implications of the socio-political dominance of legal language, traditions, and officers. The principles and practices of law reform—along with the conflicts and anxieties that inspired and sprang from them—were appropriated by amateur and professional writers alike. Close readings reveal that Inns-of-Court revellers, Francis Bacon, John Donne and Shakespeare all engaged deeply with the potential, as well as the ethical and practical limitations, of law reform’s central role in local and national governance. In the Gesta Grayorum and Donne’s “Satyre V,” the reveller and the satiric speaker improvise on legal forms to compensate for the law’s imperfections that threaten the security and prosperity of the English subject. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale, the character of the legal-political officer and reformer is tested as he attempts to put policies and principles into practice.
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Secondary School Mathematics Teachers’ Use of Technology
Keywords: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Secondary Mathematics Education
Inservice Teachers
Integrating Technology in Mathematics Education

Although the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework has shown a lot of promise as a theoretical perspective, researchers find it difficult to use it in particular environments because the requirements of the framework change in specific contexts. The purpose of this study was to explore and produce more flexible ways of using the TPACK for inservice mathematics secondary teachers. Three such teachers at an urban public school were observed in their classrooms and interviewed about their experiences of teaching mathematics and integrating computer technology in their day-to-day activities. Each participant had over 10 years experience in teaching mathematics in secondary schools in Ontario, and expertise in using computers in mathematics curriculum. The research questions were: 1) How do secondary school mathematics teachers describe their ways of integrating technology? 2) What difficulties do teachers have when they try to integrate technology into mathematics classrooms? The findings from the first research question show that teachers displayed a high degree of integration of technology. Their activities were very clearly designed, conferring clear roles to the use of integrating computer technology in mathematics classes. Teachers had specific approaches to integrate computer technology: a) to allow students opportunities to learn and experiment with their mathematical knowledge; b) to help them pass the content to the students in the process of teaching mathematics; and c) to assess and evaluate students’ work, and give them feedback. The findings from the second research question reveal that teachers had difficulties in purchasing and maintaining the computer equipment. They had some difficulties in trying to integrate new technologies as these required time, preparation, and dedication. In addition, teachers had some difficulties in making students use computers in a significant way. The implication for teacher education is that inservice teachers should have opportunities to update their computer and pedagogical skills, a long term perspective in integrating technology in mathematics education, and professional and technical support from teaching colleagues and administrators. Finally, the integration of computer technology in mathematics requires more intensive teamwork and collaboration between teachers, technical support staff, and administrators.
The Diefenbaker Moment
Keywords: Canadian History
Cultural History
Intellectual History
Gender History

This thesis locates John G. Diefenbaker’s electoral triumphs in the general elections of 1957 and 1958 and his subsequent world tour within the context of the revival of Conservative nationalism in the postwar period. To make his case against a Liberal government that had been in power for twenty-two years, Diefenbaker had to engage the public in a response to political events based on an appreciation of an abstract and not quite palpable threat to democracy and a national way of life. He did so by harnessing the persuasive techniques of public relations and the new medium of television—a powerful combination that Diefenbaker knew could most effectively tell and sell a national narrative. The signature he settled on was the “New National Policy.” The choice harkened back to a discourse of Conservative nationalism that spoke of the antiquity of his party ideology and rediscovered the heroes who founded the nation. The “New National Policy” was a therapeutic ethos designed to assuage voters’ fears about mass consumption, continentalism, communism, and the end of empire: it ensured that the greatness of events and men of the past could guarantee the ideas and values of the present; it was gendered in its construction of patriotic manhood, exalted motherhood, and icons of nationalist ideology; it was transnational in scope; it told of a relation of cause-and-effect that resembled a theory of history more than a blueprint for public policy; it was fashioned to disarm critical analysis because it conformed to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that the systems of values and meanings on which Diefenbaker drew cannot be understood by analyzing his personal foibles or tracing his rise and fall through a series of events. Partisan narratives are built out of the dialectical interchange between warring political ideologies and are stories fitted to character, circumstance, and experience. Second, it suggests that Diefenbaker was a transitional figure whose vision, message, leadership style, and public relations campaign seemed to best fit the barely discernable dimensions of the political and cultural change of the immediate postwar decades. Finally, by examining resurgence of Conservative nationalism in the context of imperial decline, it seeks to show that partisan narratives in English Canada in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger transnational contexts in which they emerged.
Structural and Functional Characterization of the Soluble Cell Adhesion Molecule DdCAD-1in Dictyostelium discoideum
Keywords: Biochemistry
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology
Dictyostelium discoideum
Cell Adhesion
Unconventional Secretion
Morphogenesis
Sociomicrobiology

The cadA gene in Dictyostelium encodes a unique Ca2+-dependent cell adhesion molecule DdCAD-1. It is synthesized as a soluble protein in the cytoplasm and then transported to the plasma membrane by contractile vacuoles. The solution structures of Ca2+-free and Ca2+-bound DdCAD-1 reveals that it contains two β-sandwich domains, belonging to the βγ-crystallin and immunoglobulin fold classes, respectively. Whereas the N-terminal domain has a major role in homophilic binding, the C-terminal domain tethers the protein to the cell membrane. Although hydrophobic interactions constitute the major force for adhesion, electrostatic interactions may act as a ‘switch’ to regulate the homophilic binding by a change in electrostatic potential caused by the binding of Ca2+ to the three binding sites. To further investigate DdCAD-1 transport, DdCAD-1-GFP fusion proteins were expressed in cadA-null cells. Time-lapse microscopy revealed that DdCAD-1 was imported by invagination of the contractile vacuole membrane. The N-terminal, C-terminal domains, and two of the three Ca2+-binding site mutant forms of DdCAD-1 failed to enter the contractile vacuole, suggesting that Ca2+-binding and the integrity of DdCAD-1 are required for import. Indeed, proteins with altered conformation failed to enter the contractile vacuole, indicating that the import signal is integrated in the three-dimensional structure of DdCAD-1. Finally, we describe how the cadA gene acts as a single-gene green beard. In chimera experiments, cells expressing DdCAD-1 were more likely to form fruiting bodies than cadA-null cells on soil plates. Here cadA behaved as a single gene green beard. However, cadA exhibited anti-green beard behaviour on non-nutrient agar plates. Wild-type cells differentiated mostly into prestalk cells and eventually died, whereas the cadA-null cells survived as spores. DdCAD-1 was enriched in cell-cell contact regions of anterior cells, while it was mostly localized in the cytoplasm of posterior cells. The presence of DdCAD-1 on the cell surface of prestalk cells is crucial for cell sorting, which in turn explain the anti-green beard effect observed in chimeras containing cadA+ and cadA- cells. These observations demonstrate that DdCAD-1 plays a direct role in cell sorting through differential cell-cell adhesion which results from the differential distribution of DdCAD-1.
Activist Social Workers in Neoliberal Times: Who are We Becoming Now?
Keywords: Critical Social Work
Foucault
Governmentality
Neoliberalism
Social Service Restructuring
Health Service Restructuring

My thesis explores the knowledge, subjectivities and work performances that activist social workers bring to their practice in Ontario, Canada during a period of workplace restructuring that includes cuts to services, work intensification, increased surveillance and the evolving discourses of neoliberalism. A key aspect of my dissertation is the exploration of tensions between the attachments, desires and aspirations of the activist social work self and what that self must do every day to get by. I am interested in how it is that social workers produce and maintain their sense of identities – their integrity, ethics and responsibilities as activists – while also managing to navigate the contradictions of restructured workplaces. My aim is to understand not how power in the form of restructuring policies is imposed on people, but rather, how power acts through subjects who find themselves both implicated in, and struggling to resist neoliberal restructuring. My research lens draws on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and on feminist poststructural, critical race, and postcolonial theories. I use these theories to see neoliberal strategies of rule as working in diffuse ways through social and health service workplaces, encouraging service providers to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for particular performances that enact specific types of change. My research findings reveal that activist social workers respond to neoliberal strategies of rule in multiple ways while constituting themselves through a variety of competing discourses that exist in their lives. Social workers subjectivities appear to be produced through a range of discourses drawn from their family histories, unique biographies and the intersections of socially produced distinctions that are based on gender, race, class, sexuality, age and nationalism. My dissertation traces some of the many ways that social workers position themselves within and beyond the changing context of neoliberalism. In doing so, my research reveals tentative pathways for building critical resistance practices and suggests future social welfare measures that are based on social justice and equity.
Narrative Writing in Native English and ESL Learners: Developmental Trajectories and Predictors
Keywords: ESL Writing and Reading Development

Little is known about writing development among English as a second language (ESL) and monolingual children. The “simple view of reading” (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Juel 1988) and “component” models (Joshi & Aaron, 2000) were used as theoretical frameworks in this investigation of story writing development of ESL and monolingual children from grades 4 to 6. This longitudinal study (a) compared the narratives composed by ESLs and monolinguals and (b) examined the nature of the language, cognitive, and reading variables that predict writing in these groups. Reading and writing skills were conceptualized in terms of lower order, word-level components, and higher order, text-level components. The study involved 57 monolinguals and 121 ESLs from various language backgrounds, who had attended English speaking schools since grade 1. Based on the Test of Written Language (TOWL, Hammill & Larsen, 1996) three aspects of narrative writing were analyzed: writing mechanics, writing syntax, and overall story quality. Monolinguals and ESLs were similar on the cognitive, linguistic, word- and text-level reading and writing measures, but ESL performance was lower on vocabulary and reading comprehension across all three grades. Narrative writing in monolinguals and ESLs alike was predicted by syntactic skills, word-level skills (decoding and spelling) and text-comprehension. Nonverbal reasoning and phonological processing significantly predicted writing performance for monolinguals only. Overall, writing mechanics, writing syntax, and story quality all grew significantly across grades. However, only story quality demonstrated significantly different patterns of growth across students, but this difference was not explained by any of the predictors. Importantly, despite having weaker vocabulary and reading comprehension skills, ESLs’ narratives did not differ from monolinguals on mechanics, syntax, and overall story quality. The findings have implications for assessment and instruction of writing in both groups, provide additional evidence that reading comprehension and writing skills share common underlying processes, and suggest that skills that determine reading success can be used to flag possible writing weaknesses in both groups. Despite the effect of L2 status on vocabulary and reading comprehension, ESLs demonstrated similar narrative writing skills to monolingual peers.
Commercialization of Health Products from Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities
Keywords: health technology innovation commercialization sub-saharan africa
"health product"

Despite the global progress made in improving health of people and increasing the life expectancy, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be plagued by many health problems. Commercialization of health products from Sub-Saharan Africa presents opportunities to solve some of these health problems as well as generate economic returns. This thesis explored science based health product commercialization in sub-Saharan Africa through three studies. The objective was to identify opportunities and challenges facing health product commercialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. A qualitative case study approach was used and data collected using interviews. The first study involved looking at science based health product commercialization at a national level. Rwanda was chosen for this study. Thirty eight key informants selected from various institutions that form the health innovation system in Rwanda were interviewed. The results of the study show that opportunities exist in Rwanda for health product commercialization mainly because of the strong political will to support health innovation. However the main challenge is that there are no linkages between the actors involved in health innovation in Rwanda. The second study looked at health innovation at the level of a research institution. The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) was studied where eight key informants were interviewed. The results show that KEMRI faced many challenges in its attempt at health product development, including shifting markets, lack of infrastructure, inadequate financing, and weak human capital with respect to innovation. However, it overcame them through diversification, partnerships and changes in culture. The third study looked at health technologies that are being developed in sub-Saharan Africa but have stagnated in laboratories. Thirty nine key informants were interviewed. A total of 25 technologies were identified, the majority being traditional plant medicines; other technologies identified included diagnostic tests and medical devices. Many of these technologies require further validation. Other key challenges to commercialization of these technologies that were identified included a lack of innovative culture amoung scientists and policy makers and lack of proof of concept funds including venture capital. Overall, this thesis identified opportunities for science based health commercialization in Africa, and also provides recommendations on how to overcome major challenges.
The Soul Thinking Itself: Toward a Poetics of Subjectivity in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Keywords: American
Poetry

This thesis argues for a phenomenological reading of Dickinson’s poetics of subjectivity, ranging from perception to self-consciousness. Dickinson’s poetics is phenomenological in the sense that her poetry explores and enacts the subtle and complex experience of a subject that can never grasp itself fully. In this exploration, the Hegelian dialectical movement from sense-certainty to self-consciousness and spirit is a useful auxiliary lens for understanding Dickinson, but this lens has to include, among other things, the Christian and pagan (Neoplatonic) ethical, philosophical and mystical traditions (as in Emerson’s Essays) for a more well-rounded picture of Dickinson’s poetry. Chapter 2 examines the dialectical doubleness of perception, pervaded by pain, lack of closure and liable to distortion, an experience constitutive of subjectivity. Chapter 3 explores the ineradicable experiences of absence, desire, blank and negation that not only frame Dickinson’s poetry but constitute, even threaten to eclipse, the perceiving subject. Chapter 4 focuses on the movement from consciousness to self-consciousness, never that of a pure subjective rationality, but integrally inclusive of feeling to the point of unhappiness—a self-consciousness or developing subjectivity caught between the opposed and apparently irreconcilable poles of its experience of self and otherness. Chapter 5 analyses Dickinson’s characteristic “slants,” flashes of light, and oblique angles, all of which profoundly disorient, and cross the dialectical interval of, subjectivity, reasserting the existence of two poles bound together in both identity and difference. It then goes on to probe not only how the interval emerges but what this space is for emergent subjectivity occurring within and traversing it. Finally, Chapter 6 takes up the broader task of situating the notion of a soul within the mediating perspectives of consciousness, perception, mind, and self-replicating spirit first, to determine what soul and its functions might be and, second, to analyze the qualities of its self-limitation. In removing its own preferences and limiting or adjusting its field of interactions, the subject appears both to recapitulate, yet complete what were at earlier stages simply painful, seemingly passive moments of absence, blankness, and blindness. Each chapter identifies an important layer of Dickinson’s poetics from perception to the fuller range of subjectivity and emphasizes both the negative and the positive sides of her poetics. The thesis suggests that in Dickinson we encounter a new poetics of subjectivity, one in which many earlier features of consciousness such as body, soul, mind, spirit, the “I”, the “me,” the “we,” and even consciousness itself, are subsumed and transformed in what is effectively a very Dickinsonian phenomenology of subjectivity.