VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Describing the Efffect of Motor Ability on Visual-motor Skill Acquisition and Task Performance in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder
Keywords: developmental coordination disorder
children
visual-motor skills
motor skill acquisition
task performance
eye-hand coordination

Background: For children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), the acquisition and performance of everyday visual-motor activities such as buttoning, shoe tying, cutting with scissors or writing, presents a major challenge. Regardless of the activity considered, children with DCD are typically slower and less accurate than their peers. Given the well-acknowledged difficulties of children with DCD, it is surprising to find very few research studies systematically exploring visual-motor skill acquisition and performance in children with DCD. Objective: The overall objective of this study was to systematically describe visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance in children with DCD. Methods: Twenty-four children (8 years 11 months to 12 years 11 months) were recruited for this study; 12 children with DCD, 12 children developing typically with regards to their motor skills. A computer-based aiming task completed with three different cursor controls of increasing levels of difficulty (mouse, joystick, novel controller) was designed for this study. Mixed-effect modelling and visual graph analyses were performed to describe the influence of motor ability and task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Results: Motor ability modulated the impact of task difficulty on visual-motor skill acquisition and task performance. Children with DCD were as fast and as accurate as their peers in their initial performance of the simple, well-learned task (mouse). However, they were slower and less accurate when performing the complex and novel visual-motor task. Over repeated trials, the visual-motor task performance of children with DCD improved on all tasks, even for the simple. With regard to the complex, novel task, once children with DCD understood the features of the task, their performance also improved and approached that of their peers. Conclusion: While children with DCD can generally be characterized as less accurate and slower than their peers, this characterization needs to be specified and qualified; it is probably best not applied to a well-learned task.
The Use of Catellani-type Reactions for the Synthesis of Heterocycles and Stereoselective Reactions of Arynes
Keywords: Synthesis
Heterocycles
Arynes
Natural Products

This work can be separated into two parts; the first will encompass chapters one and two, which discuss the use of the Catellani reaction to access different heterocycles. The second part will encompass the remaining chapters and deals with stereoselective reactions of arynes. Chapter one outlines the development of a general and high yielding synthesis of the phenanthridine nucleus via a palladium-catalyzed domino reaction of aryl iodides with N-H or N-trimethylsilyl imines. This strategy was applied in a succinct synthesis of benzo[c]phenanthridine alkaloids nitidine and NK109. Chapter two details the development of a Catellani-type reaction of aryl iodides with 2H-azirines. Conditions were found to selectively provide access to either the indole nucleus or unusual dihydroimidazoles. The yields of the products ranged from moderate to good, however, the success of the reaction is highly dependent on the structure of the 2H-azirine. A mechanism was proposed involving oxidative addition of the azirine to generate an azaalyl intermediate. In Chapter three the foray into the area of aryne chemistry begins. A stereoselective nickel- catalyzed [2+2+2] cycloaddition of 1,6-enynes with aryne intermediates was developed. Attempts were made at the development of an asymmetric variant of the reaction, however, only low enantiomeric excess was observed. Good diastereoselectivity could be obtained when an allylic substituent was present. The yields of the products ranged from moderate to excellent. However, the yields vary greatly and in a number of cases the reactions were unsuccessful. Finally, in chapter four the development of a general and high yielding annulation strategy for the synthesis of various carbo- and heterocycles, based on an intramolecular aryne ene reaction is described. It was found that the geometry of the olefin is crucial to the success of the reaction and it that regioselective hydrogen migration occurs. Furthermore, the electronic nature of the aryne was found to be important to the success of the reaction. Deuterium labeling studies and DFT calculations provided insight into the reaction mechanism. The data suggested a concerted asynchronous transition state, resembling a nucleophilic attack on the aryne. This strategy was successfully applied to the formal synthesis of the ethanophenanthridine alkaloid (±)-crinine. In a similar vein, preliminary results demonstrating an intramolecular, formal [2+2] cycloaddition of an aryne with an S, O-ketene acetal to give interesting tricyclic benzocyclobutene products are disclosed.
Seamfulness: Nova Scotian Women Witness Depression through Zines
Keywords: depression
women
zines
narrative
Nova Scotia
self-publishing
artsinformed research
transformative learning

Seamfulness is a narrative-based and arts-informed inquiry into young women's "depression" as pedagogy. Unfolding in rural Nova Scotia, this research is rooted in my experience of depression as the most transformative event in my life story. While memoirists tell me I am not alone, there is currently a lack of research on personal understandings of depression, particularly for young adult women. Through storytelling sessions and self-publishing workshops, I explored four young Nova Scotian women's depression as a productive site for growth. Participants include four young women, including myself, who experienced depression in their early 20s, and have not had a major depressive episode for at least three years. Aged 29 to 40, we claim Métis, Scottish, Acadian, and British ancestries, and were raised and lived in rural Nova Scotian communities during this time. At the seams of adult education, disability studies, and art, I ask: How do young women narrate experiences of "depression" as education? How do handmade, self-published booklets (or “zines”) allow for exploring this topic as embodied, emotional and critical transformative learning? To address these questions, I employ arts-informed strategies and feminist, adult education, mental health, and disability studies literatures to investigate the critical and transformative learning accomplished by young women who experience depression. Through a feminist poststructuralist lens and using qualitative and arts-informed methods, I situate depression as valuable learning, labour, and gift on behalf of the societies and communities in which women live. I argue that just as zines are powerful forms for third space pedagogy, depression itself is a third space subjectivity that gives rise to the "disorienting dilemma" at the heart of transformative learning. I close with "Loose Ends," an exploration of depression as an unanswered question. This thesis engages visual and verbal strategies to disrupt epistemic and aesethetic conventions for academic texts. By foregrounding participant zines and stories, I privilege participant voices as the basis for framing their experience, rather than as material to reinforce or contest academic theories.
The Disagreement of Being, a Critique of Life and Vitality in the Meiji Era
Keywords: seimei
Meiji era
Life
Life Insurance
mujin-ko
mutual aid

My dissertation involves a critique of the concept of life or seimei as it emerged in modern use during the Meiji era (1868-1912). Specifically, I have outlined the conditions of possibility for thinking seimei at particular moments in the development of the modern, market-centered Japanese nation-state in historical and literary terms such that I can begin to use these conditions to think its impossibilities. In short, I argue that a central condition of possibility for thinking life in its modern, historical form is a process of individuation that takes hold of and shapes bodies at an ontological level. By critiquing life and its ontology of individuation, I unearth the traces of an impossible “apriori collectivism” - that is, a collectivism not merely reducible to a congregation of individuals, but originally collective – buried under the calls for individual freedom, self-help, and industrialization that were at the heart of the Meiji era’s modernization project. I track this apriori collectivism in a lineage relating (through non-relation) the mutual aid societies or mujin-kô of the Edo period to the life insurance industry of the Meiji 10s and 20s. I then use this material history of life as backdrop to my study of the literary trends in the latter decades of the Meiji era, and end with a consideration of the political and aesthetic implications seimei has for thought by taking up a study of Iwano Hômei’s Shinpiteki hanjûshugi (Mystical Demi-animalism).
In the Defence of Cities: A History of Security Planning in Canada
Keywords: Security
Planning
Urban
Liberalism

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, urban spaces have become increasingly subject to various methods of surveillance and control, especially by physical means. Yet, while 9/11 acted as a catalyst for rapid increases in security measures, the process of securitization has a much longer history. Accordingly, this research looks at how security has been planned and how this has changed over the last four decades in the context of Canada. The dissertation focuses on three Canadian case studies to explore the evolution of security planning: the October Crisis with an emphasis on Montreal (1970), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vancouver (1997), and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. Each case represents a significant moment in Canadian security planning and provides insight into the shifting structure of Canada’s security apparatus. Furthermore, these cases offer a lens into the historical transformations of the Canadian ‘security state’. While the issues and actions associated with these cases cut across local, national, and international scales, the impacts of security measures in each were mostly local and urban. To show how Canadian urban spaces have been transformed and controlled by an evolving security framework, I argue that security planning must be understood as a form of urban planning, although one that remains to be properly acknowledged by the profession or even the academic discipline of planning. Given the democratic claims of liberal planning and its professed concern for the good city, it is therefore significant that the security measures studied in these case studies were implemented without democratic scrutiny but with significant consequences for urban experience. This dissertation tells a story of security planning in Canada, demonstrating how its practices have changed over time in ways that are at odds with liberal political values cherished by mainstream planning.
Topological Methods in Galois Theory
Keywords: Topological Galois Theory

This thesis is devoted to application of topological ideas to Galois theory. In the fi rst part we obtain a characterization of branching data that guarantee that a regular mapping from a Riemann surface to the Riemann sphere having this branching data is invertible in radicals. The mappings having such branching data are then studied with emphasis on those exceptional properties of these mappings that single them out among all mappings from a Riemann surface to the Riemann sphere. These results provide a framework for understanding an earlier work of Ritt on rational functions invertible in radicals. In the second part of the thesis we apply topological methods to prove lower bounds in Klein's resolvent problem, i.e. the problem of determining whether a given algebraic function of n variables is a branch of a composition of rational functions and an algebraic function of k variables. The main topological result here is that the smallest dimension of the base-space of a covering from which a given covering over a torus can be induced is equal to the minimal number of generators of the monodromy group of the covering over the torus. This result is then applied for instance to prove the bounds k is at least n/2 in Klein's resolvent problem for the universal algebraic function of degree n and the answer k = n for generic algebraic function of n variables of degree at least 2n.
Mosaic Paths to New Knowledge: Conceptualizing Cultural Wealth from Women of Colour as They Experience the Process of becoming Doctoral Recipients
Keywords: Cultural Wealth
Women of Colour
Experiential Knowledge
Critical Cultural Capital
Navigational know-how
Academic Culture
Critical spirituality

Abstract The aim of this study is to identify the positive contributions women of colour (WOC) bring to higher education as they experience the process of becoming doctoral recipients. Their experiences are presented as a new epistemology—a theory of knowledge—as part of the larger area of cultural capital theory. The experiences of WOC in Canadian doctoral programs are conceptualized as ‘cultural wealth’ and new knowledge because evidence reveals that the intrinsic value of their contributions has evolved from unique cultural and historical resources. The discursive theoretical frameworks of Womanist theory, critical race theory (CRT) and cultural capital theory are utilized to guide the analysis of the findings. This study establishes the experiences of the participants as valuable and distinctive knowledge by emphasizing the intersectionality of race, class, gender, culture, and spirituality. The research suggests that the experiences of women of colour are informed by an inner wisdom woven from the mosaic, or uniquely diverse paths, which these women have taken toward earning their doctorate degree. The existing interpretation of cultural capital theory - originally established by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) - is considered the only social marker of wealth in socio-economical and educational research. Although previous studies have challenged this dominant perspective, this current study presents a unique interpretation of cultural capital theory by expanding the notion of cultural wealth from a Canadian perspective. This study highlights the importance of the racial/cultural context that is highly visible in Canadian culture but seldom addressed in higher education research. In addition, the aim of my study is to establish the wealth of “Mosaic Paths” found among the cultural identity of WOC, as a new epistemology in Canadian higher education. Specifically, the journey toward achieving a doctoral degree is often over-generalized in higher education. This study will reveal the realistic paths that WOC must traverse in order to realize their goals. Finally, the findings from the data reveal six major sources of cultural wealth: 1) Mother’s Influence, 2) Age Capital, 3) Mentorship, 4) Survival Strategies, 5) Negotiating Academic Culture or Know-how, and 6) Spirituality.
The Role of Chronic Inflammation in the Development of Lung Cancer
Keywords: Epidemiology
Lung Cancer

Inflammation is believed to play a pivotal role in the development of cancer and in particular lung cancer through both intrinsic and extrinsic pathways. This thesis aimed through 4 manuscripts to determine the role of lung-specific inflammation-related exposures as well as genetic variants (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNPs)) in genes related to inflammation pathways in lung cancer risk. Risk factors of particular interest were lung diseases including emphysema, chronic bronchitis, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Data were collected from a Toronto-based case-control study and combined with data from the International Lung Cancer Consortium (17 studies for the non-genetic analyses and 6 studies for the genetic analyses). For non-genetic data, methods included, but were not limited to, unconditional logistic regression within single studies, Cox proportional hazards regression, meta-analytic techniques and pooled analyses techniques. For genetic data, additive models of association across 7,650 SNPs (selected based on role in inflammation) were pooled across studies and hierarchical modeling iv (HM) was used to incorporate prior functional information from various sources concerning the SNPs of interest. Within the Toronto study (manuscript 1) associations with increased lung cancer risk were observed for occupational exposures, previous lung diseases and a family history of cancer. The meta-analysis (manuscript 2) and pooled analysis (manuscript 3) showed relatively consistent associations between previous lung diseases and lung cancer risk across histology, gender and smoking categories. Results persisted when examining lung disease diagnoses made >10 or >20 years before cancer diagnosis. Our pathway-based analysis of inflammation-related variants and lung cancer risk using HM (manuscript 4) showed that HM is applicable to SNP analysis using pooled designs where heterogeneity can be incorporated into SNP priors. After HM a previously observed variant (rs2736100) and novel variant (rs2741354) were observed to be associated with lung cancer risk at corrected levels and replicated in an independent population. Taken together these results provide further evidence of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting risk of lung cancer through inflammation.
"Managing the Muses" Musical Performance and Modernity in the Public Schools of Late-Nineteenth Century Toronto
Keywords: school music
history
modernity
sensory history

This thesis examines public school music in the making of a modern middle class in late-Victorian Toronto. Its aim is to show how this subject both shaped and was shaped by the culture of modernity which increasingly pervaded large urban centres such as Toronto during the course of the nineteenth century. In so doing, this study also examines various aspects of the acoustic soundtrack during the period under study—particularly that which witnessed the advent of industrialization—to bring additional context and perspective to the discussion. Using an approach which goes beyond pedagogic and bureaucratic justification, the overall intent is to present the evolution of school music and its public performance within a much broader acoustic framework, that is, to weave it into the increasingly-urban soundtrack of Toronto, to gain some appreciation of how it would have been heard and understood at the time. In addition to its primary historical discourse, the study also draws meaning and context from a variety of other academic disciplines (musicology, sociology and education, to name but a few). Because of this, it necessarily moves from the general to the specific in terms of its overall focus, not only to provide background, but also to help make sense of the ways in which each of these areas informed and influenced the development of Toronto’s public school system and the inclusion of music in its classrooms. It then proceeds more or less chronologically through the nineteenth century, placing particular emphasis upon the careers of prominent educators such as Egerton Ryerson and James L. Hughes, to mark significant shifts in context and philosophy. Within each, a thematic approach has been employed to highlight relevant developments that likewise informed the way in which school music was conceived and comprehended. In this way, it is hoped that a fresh perspective will emerge on the history of public school music in Toronto, and prompt further research that employs aural history as a more prominent tool of historical research.
Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Diversification in Leaf-toed Geckos (Phyllodactylidae: Phyllodactylus) throughout the Mexican Dry Forest
Keywords: landscape genetics
phylogenetics
Mexico
geckos

Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes responsible for shaping patterns of genetic variation in natural populations is a long-standing goal in molecular ecology. Although an extensive number of recent studies focus on patterns and processes throughout tropical rain forest ecosystems, substantially less effort has been placed on tropical dry forests (TDFs); a habitat known to harbour a large percentage of Earth’s diversity. In this thesis I use leaf-toed geckos of the genus Phyllodactylus to understand both the historical and contemporary processes influencing diversification throughout Mexico’s TDFs. In Chapter 2 I isolate and characterize microsatellite markers for the gecko P. tuberculosus. Chapter 3 uses these loci to conduct a landscape genetic analysis of the species near Alamos, Sonora. I find that the inclusion of landscape variables explains more genetic variance versus Euclidean distance alone. Chapter 4 examines the evolutionary history of the P. tuberculosus group throughout western Mexico. Results suggest that habitat and climate shifts during the Miocene and Pleistocene were important divers of diversification. Chapter 5 uses microsatellite and mtDNA markers to compare historical and contemporary demographic parameters in P. tuberculosus. I find evidence for low historical gene flow and high female philopatry, recent reductions in population sizes, and higher correlations between landscape and contemporary gene flow versus historical gene flow and mtDNA divergence. In Chapter 6 I examine the biogeographic and taxonomic consequences of the dynamic history of Baja California. My phylogenetic results provide evidence for a trans-peninsular seaway in the Isthmus of La Paz region and suggests that P. xanti nocticolus warrants species status. My results also suggest the possibility of a seaway near the Loreto area that needs to be evaluated further. By combining multiple molecular marker-types and analytical methods, this thesis adds to our understanding of diversification processes throughout the threatened Mexican TDF.
Naming and Identity in Henry James's "The Ambassadors"
Keywords: Henry James
periphrasis
metaphorical studies
international relations
identity studies
alterity
stylistics

In Henry James’s novel "The Ambassadors," James uses axiological language in tropes and in substantives, periphrastically replacing proper names. He also includes valuations in miscellaneous data contained in such differences as the one he makes in "The Ambassadors" between "Europe" (place) and "'Europe'" (concept). As well, James puts adjectival assessments of people and situations in the midst of these constructions and in the mouths of his characters, assessments which vary from those which contradict the value systems posited in the novel by various characters, through those which seem quizzical or ambiguous, to those whose meaning seems obvious under the circumstances. The argument of this critical work is that these attempts at naming tie in fundamentally with the ways in which James means for readers to interpret the identities of the characters and the events and are not merely ornamental. Even when James says that a character "didn’t know what to call" someone or something or when "identity" or a verbal equation for identity occurs in an odd context, James answers his own implied rhetorical question; he is not as problematic to read as is sometimes suggested. Our own valuations are encouraged to be close to the experience of Lambert Strether. Leading the reader through the maze of Strether’s experience, James gives many clear signals from the simplest elements of his complicated language even into the fabrication of his complex metaphors that he, though an explorer of the moral universe, is no relativistic iconoclast. In the examination of these issues, a choice has been made to draw eclectically upon various sources and techniques, from traditional "humanistic" modes of interpretation, rhetorical studies, structuralist and deconstructionist remarks, to existentialism, narratology, and identity studies. This choice is the result of an intention to access as many different "voices" as possible, in the attempt to be comprehensive about the voices of James and "The Ambassadors."