VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Body as a Traitor: Feminine Schizophrenia in the novels of Calixthe Beyala, Ananda Devi and Malika Mokeddem
Keywords: Body
Language
Linguistics
Post colonialism
Trauma
Violence

Iconoclastic authors Calixthe Beyala, Ananda Devi, and Malika Mokeddem have generated a great deal of discourse on their radical feminist views through their Manichean portrayal of postcolonial societies. Relying on the female image as eroded, smothered, and dissipated, a figure gagged both by society and by her own helplessness, they describe postcolonial societies as patriarchal, corrupted, and apathetic as well as guilty of rejecting cultural recollection. In their novels, the symbolic authority held by the female body is conditional upon the desire, the gaze, the violence and the marginalized practices of the Other. The body in this case is uncoupled from the mind and experienced by the subject as an incoherent whole which brings about the presentiment of a transfigured existence. Despite the scars this rupture produces, the female protagonists still manage to redeem themselves, often by engaging in personal rebellions. Moreover, by disregarding the social torment they are forced to endure, women are able to reclaim the right to speak, to live, and to be free. This thesis advances the theory that most female protagonists are prone to schizophrenic behaviours as a means of survival. Marred by violence, anorexia, dissociation, withdrawal, anxiety, shame, self-mutilation, suicidal thoughts, sexual dysfunctions, amnesia or fragmented memory of traumatizing events, the female character has to negotiate her self-preservation. This work thus shows how such social torment is survived by resolving the affliction of physical and psychological trauma in the literary terms of schizophrenia. Consequently, this study analyses the literary manifestations of this affliction in Beyala, Devi, and Mokeddem's novels through the explosion of the corporal and the discursive modes of the female subject. By understanding survival as a "savoir-faire", we are thus able to restore an affective and powerful force to language, which ultimately allows for the reappropriation of the body to take place.
Phonetic Cues and the Perception of Gender and Sexual Orientation
Keywords: cue integration theory
gender
indexicality
phonetics
sexual orientation
speech perception

Phonetic variation is a well-established type of cue used in the construction and perception of social identities such as gender, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and sexual orientation. Less established is how cues indexed with inter-related identities are integrated or weighted relative to each other. Because the cues identifying gender and sexual orientation are potentially overlapping, (i.e., gay and lesbian speakers are often perceived as using cues indexed with the opposite gender), in this study, experimental methods are used to assess cue effects. Experimental cues used are fundamental frequency (f0), first and second vowel formants (Fn), and the center of gravity of the fricative /s/. These were chosen as all were significant in the perception of sex, gender and/or sexual orientation, or in terms of production by such groups in previous studies. In this study's experiments, three groups of participants (n=105) heard target stimuli consisting of /V/, /sV/ or /Vs/, created by combining altered and unaltered cues. Each participant heard a stimulus and chose a perceived gender and sexual orientation for that stimulus. Results indicate that the outcomes for the dependent variables of Perceived Gender, Men's Perceived Sexual Orientation (MPSO) and Women's Perceived Sexual Orientation (WPSO) result from the same cues but that cue integration strategies vary. The area of greatest overlap is for Perceived Gender and MPSO with F0 Up cues resulting in more women and gay men percepts, and FN Down cues resulting in more men and straight men percepts. For WPSO results the vocalic cues strongly affect each other, although F0 Up cues tend to result in more straight women percepts. These results suggest that listeners use experienced and stereotypic cues when determining gender and sexual orientation. The results also suggest that listeners use an androcentric template for all three dependent variables. Cue variants are not marked with specific indexical meanings such as "women" or "femininity", but are marked in terms of man-based norms. Crucially, cue integration involves both social markedness based on stereotypes and phonetic markedness based on cue ranges. Cue Integration Theory is proposed to account for the empirical results for all three dependent variables.
What Catches On? The Role of Evidence in the Promotion and Evaluation of Educational Innovations
Keywords: Evaluation
Fads
Innovation
Marketing
Research Use
Teachers

The debate about and support for innovation in education has heated up. There is hype around the possibilities novel and disruptive innovations can have on changing education practice and providing more effective learning solutions. The advent of the Internet and social media technologies allows for an abundance of innovation to be promoted and shared with and between educators, and the increasing use of technologies like iPads in the classroom results in the advertisement of innumerous new education applications. For the educator, there is the difficult challenge of knowing how to sift through this material and separate those innovations that may hold value for their classroom situation from those that have gained wide appeal. In this thesis I take an interest in how certain education innovations catch on and are adopted on a large scale, and how the marketing of these innovations in various kinds of media as well as the ways they are evaluated by teachers, contribute to this process. I separate my findings into two articles and use a set of six qualities generated from the research use and social psychology literatures as a guide (evidence, compatibility, accessibility, practicality, credibility, appeal), focusing on evidence in relation to the other five qualities. In the article on media promotion, I find the kinds of evidence used rarely came from formal research studies, but from anecdotal forms of evidence and general statistics related to use of the innovation. In the article on teacher evaluation, I find the teachers were open to trying out innovations, but had different strategies for evaluating and selecting them. Evidence was often discussed as a low priority criterion on which to base judgments. Overall, the results of this thesis show how difficult it can be to make a quick and informed judgment about these innovations where the teachers lacked tools to evaluate them consistently and effectively and where a wide range of strategies were used in their promotion. This suggests an important need that is largely not addressed in teacher training programs and professional development around providing teachers with guidance and training in their search, selection and evaluation processes.
Metal Specificity in [NiFe] Hydrogenase Maturation Proteins
Keywords: E. coli
HypA
HypB
[NiFe] hydrogenase
SlyD

The maturation of [NiFe] hydrogenase is a multistep process that requires the participation of accessory proteins to assemble the NiFe(CN)2CO metallocluster at the catalytic center. HypA and HypB are two proteins that are necessary for the efficient incorporation of nickel into the bimetallic active site. The mechanism through which these proteins specifically insert nickel into the hydrogenase metallocluster is unknown. Escherichia coli HypB contains a high-affinity metal-binding site at the N-terminus that binds nickel with a sub-picomolar affinity. We investigated the nickel selectivity of this site by using a small peptide maquette and found that while the high-affinity site binds nickel tightly, it also binds other transition metals with affinities that are in line with the Irving-Williams series. We also examined the G-domain metal-binding site of HypB, and how it is connected to the nucleotide-binding properties of the protein. We find that nickel, but not zinc, is transferred from the low-affinity site of HypB to the N-terminal metal-binding site of HypA, and that this process occurs rapidly when HypB is loaded with GDP. Nickel transfer between proteins is also dependent on a protein-protein complex forming between HypA and HypB, and when that complex is abrogated through mutagenesis, rapid GDP-dependent transfer of nickel is no longer observed. Subsequently, the molecular basis behind the increased rate of nickel transfer was explored. We found that the affinity of HypB for nickel changes based on whether the G-domain is loaded with GDP or a GTP analog, as does the oligomeric state of the protein. Furthermore, GDP-loading of HypB promotes the formation of a HypA-HypB heterodimer, which breaks apart once nickel has been transferred to HypA. These findings shed light on the mechanism of nickel transfer, and help us better understand how nickel is specifically inserted into the active site of [NiFe] hydrogenase.
Laws of Unintended Consequences: The Impacts of Anti-Foreign Bribery Laws on Developing Countries
Keywords: Bribery
Corruption
Foreign direct investment
Governance
International development
Transnational law

Over the past quarter-century, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the deleterious impacts of corruption on economic growth, governance institutions, political stability, social freedoms and opportunities, and overall equality and efficiency within and across countries, with the effects most pronounced in the developing world. Corruption's ascent as a priority on the international development agenda has led to the emergence of a global anti-corruption regime engaging governments, civil society, business, and international organizations. Among the most prominent of these multilateral anti-corruption efforts has been the agreement among most of the world's leading economic powers to create legally binding standards that criminalize the bribery of foreign public officials. However, the existing literature examining the impacts of these anti-foreign bribery (AFB) laws has focused nearly exclusively on the statutes' effects on the competitiveness, costs, and investment decisions of regulated firms and individuals, with little investigation of the consequences of the multilateral AFB regime for the countries ostensibly harmed most by corruption - those in the developing world. This dissertation fills that gap in current law and development scholarship, using theoretical, anecdotal, and empirical evidence to identify how AFB laws change the incentives of foreign investors as well as government officials and to analyze how those shifts may ultimately affect the levels, sources, sectors, and types of foreign investment flowing into developing countries. It further considers the consequences of AFB laws for governance institutions and the magnitude and forms of corruption within less-developed countries. Examining critically the range of potential effects, it concludes that, under certain conditions in certain environments, laws prohibiting foreign bribery may undermine the developmental conditions in and prospects for poorer countries.
Speciation and Species Boundaries in Black Flies (Diptera: Simuliidae)
Keywords: chromosome evolution
molecular evolution
phylogenetics
population genetics
speciation
species complex

Comparative analyses of populations at different stages of divergence can yield insights into the process of speciation. In this thesis, I use members of a black fly species complex to investigate genetic and ecological divergence along a chromosomally defined continuum of speciation. Each thesis chapter moves along this continuum, focusing on lineages at different stages of chromosome differentiation. In Chapter 2, I assess population structure, gene flow, and maternal ancestry among allopatric and sympatric members of the Simulium arcticum species complex. For this chapter, I focus on the entire continuum of chromosome divergence. Using microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers, I show that molecular divergence tends to track chromosome divergence along the continuum of speciation for black flies. In Chapter 3, I shift my attention to the intermediate stages of chromosome divergence with a case study of hybridization between two sibling species. Lineage diversification across a contact zone is investigated using both genetic and ecological tools, including microsatellites, mtDNA, and niche models. Although S. arcticum sensu stricto and S. saxosum maintain the potential to interbreed freely, I discover that habitat preferences and, perhaps, chromosome systems, prevent expansion of ranges and assimilation of lineages. In Chapter 4, I explore the role of ecology in diversification of members of the S. arcticum complex representing the entire spectrum of chromosome diversity. I find that all sibling species are ecologically unique based on niche models. At a finer geographic scale, chromosome forms show various degrees of ecological divergence, possibly associated with flow characteristics of streams. For members of the S. arcticum complex, ecological and chromosomal differences develop early in lineage formation, even before strong genetic differences at microsatellite and mtDNA loci are apparent. In Chapter 5, I shift my focus along the speciation continuum to intermediate and later stages of chromosome divergence. Using seven newly developed nuDNA markers, four mtDNA genes, and various coalescent-based methods, I investigate origins and relationships of sibling species. I find evidence for genetic divergence resulting from Pleistocene glacial cycles. However, admixture associated with geographic range expansions may be assimilating S. arcticum complex sibling species into a single genetic lineage.
Laboratory Earthquakes: Analysis of Fractures and Acoustic Emission using Functional Acoustic Networks
Keywords: Acoustic Emission and crackling noises
Complex Netwroks
Earthquakes
Fracture and Friction
Ruptures

Abstract- The central result of this thesis is the set of new algorithms for further analysis of acoustic excitations during cracking and an extension of defects in materials in particular interfaces. The key result is to transfer multiple acoustic emissions and frictional interfaces patterns to complextopological graphs and formulate the dynamic evolution of graphs regarding fast motion of microscopic cracks. This mapping led us to find that any microscopic crack evolve in three main stages corresponding to nucleation, weakening and decelerating regimes. Further investigation revealed classification of events (i.e., universal classes) in association with rupture regimes (velocity and crack-like or pulse-like) and in microscopic scales. As another result, I suggest thatweakening regime in microscopic events is strongly coupled with energy dissipation sources(toughness). The general theory of continuous phase transition -known as Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) -likely supports the findings and draws a universal power law between traversing rate to a critical zone (local ramp time per each acoustic excitation) and size of defects as well as freeze-out time. With this concept, dynamic of "static friction" is linked to KZM.
Improved Simplified Methods for Effective Seismic Analysis and Design of Isolated and Damped Bridges in Western and Eastern North America
Keywords: Design Optimization
Earthquakes
Isolated bridges
Record selection
Seismic design
seismic isolation and supplemental damping

The seismic design provisions of the CSA-S6 Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code and the AASHTO LRFD Seismic Bridge Design Specifications have been developed primarily based on historical earthquake events that have occurred along the west coast of North America. For the design of seismic isolation systems, these codes include simplified analysis and design methods. The appropriateness and range of application of these methods are investigated through extensive parametric nonlinear time history analyses in this thesis. It was found that there is a need to adjust existing design guidelines to better capture the expected nonlinear response of isolated bridges. For isolated bridges located in eastern North America, new damping coefficients are proposed. The applicability limits of the code-based simplified methods have been redefined to ensure that the modified method will lead to conservative results and that a wider range of seismically isolated bridges can be covered by this method. The possibility of further improving current simplified code methods was also examined. By transforming the quantity of allocated energy into a displacement contribution, an idealized analytical solution is proposed as a new simplified design method. This method realistically reflects the effects of ground-motion and system design parameters, including the effects of a drifted oscillation center. The proposed method is therefore more appropriate than current existing simplified methods and can be applicable to isolation systems exhibiting a wider range of properties.A multi-level-hazard performance matrix has been adopted by different seismic provisions worldwide and will be incorporated into the new edition of the Canadian CSA-S6-14 Bridge Design code. However, the combined effect and optimal use of isolation and supplemental damping devices in bridges have not been fully exploited yet to achieve enhanced performance under different levels of seismic hazard. A novel Dual Level Seismic Protection (DLSP) concept is proposed and developed in this thesis which permits to achieve optimum seismic performance with combined isolation and supplemental damping devices in bridges. This concept is shown to represent an attractive design approach for both the upgrade of existing seismically deficient bridges and the design of new isolated bridges.
Juvenile Hormone Biosynthesis in the Cockroach, Diploptera punctata: The Characterization of the Biosynthetic Pathway and the Regulatory Roles of Allatostatins and NMDA Receptor
Keywords: cockroach
Juvenile hormone
regulation
reproduction

The juvenile hormones (JH) play essential roles in regulating growth, development, metamorphosis, ageing, caste differentiation and reproduction in insects. Diploptera punctata, the only truly viviparous cockroach is a well-known model system in the study of JH biosynthesis and its regulation. The physiology of this animal is characterized by very stable and high rates of JH biosynthesis and precise and predictable reproductive events that correlate well with rates of JH production. Many studies have been performed on D. punctata to determine the function of JH. However, the pathway of JH biosynthesis has not been identified. In addition, although many factors are known to regulate JH biosynthesis, the exact mechanisms remain unclear. The aim of my research was to elucidate the JH biosynthetic pathway in D. punctata and study the mechanisms by which allatostatin (AST) and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor regulate JH production. I have (1) identified genes in the JH biosynthetic pathway, and determined their roles in JH biosynthesis; (2) investigated the mode of action of AST by determining the signaling pathway of AstR and the target of AST action; (3) determined the role of the NMDA receptor in JH biosynthesis using RNA interference and treatment with an NMDA receptor antagonist. To validate the application value of my research, AST analogs with high JH inhibitory activity were designed and their activities on JH biosynthesis were measured by in vitro and in vivo bioassays.
The Roles of Iddm30 and Iddm24 in the Immunopathogenesis of Type 1 Diabetes in BioBreeding Rats
Keywords: BioBreeding rat
Ccl11
linkage analysis
splenic macrophages
type 1 diabetes

A successful approach to gain insights into the mechanisms underlying genetic association is to map disease-related sub-phenotypes. We focused on the beta cell-overexpression of Ccl11 and the differential proportions of inhibitory splenic macrophages in BB rats. We observed a time-dependent pancreatic upregulation of Ccl11, as well as a three-fold proportional splenic macrophage increase in BBDP rats compared to T1D-resistant ACI.1u.lyp animals. Through linkage-analysis of a cross-intercross of these two parental strains, these traits mapped to a chromosome 12 region that overlaps with Iddm30. Linkage analysis was confirmed by the BB.ACI-Iddm30 congenic line, where the BBDP allele is associated with increased pancreatic expression of Ccl11, increased proportion and inhibitory function of splenic macrophages; however, the same allele confers T1D-resistance. Analysis of islet-infiltrating T cells in Iddm30 congenic animals revealed that overexpression of pancreatic Ccl11, a prototypical Th2 chemokine, is associated with an enrichment in Th2 CD4+ T cells within the insulitic lesions. We also observed differential NO release by splenic macrophages from congenic animals that correlated with the ability of these cells to inhibit T cell activation. These results indicated that in BBDP rats, Iddm30 controls T1D-susceptibility through both the regulation of Ccl11 expression in β cells and the subsequent Th1/Th2 balance within islet-infiltrating T-lymphocytes, and raises the questions as to whether the inhibitory effect of splenic macrophages on T cell activation regulates disease risk. Ccr5 is a candidate gene for Iddm24.1 and we reported on multiple SNPs within the coding and promoter regions of the BBDP allele. Compared to the wild type WF allele, the BBDP variant of Ccr5 was expressed at greater levels. In addition, coding region polymorphisms result in amino acid substitutions of 2 adjacent residues located within the second extracellular loop, necessary for ligand binding. Assessment of signal strength through calcium flux analysis revealed that these polymorphisms mediated stronger signal transduction in the BBDP variant compared to the WF in response to its ligands, Ccl4 and Ccl5. We observed T cells expressing the BBDP Ccr5 variant to be more diabetogenic than their WF Ccr5 expressing counterparts, due to their increased ability to home to the pancreatic islets.