VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Re(art)iculating Empowerment: Cooperative Explorations with Community Development Workers in Pakistan
Keywords: Empowerment
Community Development
Development Workers
Pakistan

Situated in the postcolonial modernizing discourse of development, many empowerment narratives tend to pre-identify, pre-construct and categorize community development workers/ mobilizers as empowered bodies, catalysts, and change agents. These bodies are expected to and are assumed will facilitate a transformation in oppressed peoples’ self image and belief’s about their rights and capabilities. Although feminist academics/activists have been critical of imperialist, neo-liberal and politico-religious co-optations of understandings of empowerment, limited attention seems to have been paid to the material effects of empowerment narratives on the lives of these community development workers. Nor does there appear to be sufficient analysis into how local community development workers/mobilizers who find themselves in precarious positions of employment, engage with these narratives. Provided with guidelines based on project objectives and lists of targets, many development workers/mobilizers in Pakistan tend to live with expectations of how best to ‘translate/transform’ empowerment from the abstract into the concrete while restricted in their space to critically reflect on theoretical notions that drive their practice. This thesis provides insight into the economy of empowerment narratives and the potential they have to mediate ‘encounters’ shaping ‘subject’ and ‘other’ by critically exploring how bodies of community development workers are put to work and are made to work. Drawing on feminists poststructuralist and postcolonial theory my work explores how these community workers/mobilizers located in the urban metropolis of Karachi, embedded in a web of multiple intersecting structures of oppression and power relations ‘encounter’, theorize, strategize and act upon understanding of empowerment and community development through an arts informed cooperative inquiry. Through the use of prose, creative writing, short stories, photo narratives, artwork and interactive discussions my participants and I begin to complicate these narratives. As a result empowerment narratives begin to appear as colliding discourses, multi-layered complex constructs, which may form unpredictable, messy and contradictory assemblages; as opposed to linear, universal, inevitable and easily understood outcomes and processes. I conclude that the insistence to complicate and situate such messy understandings in specific contexts is important for women’s movements if empowerment is to retain its strategic meaning and value in feminist theorizing.
The Clathrin Adaptor AP-1 and Type II Phosphatidylinositol 4-Kinase are Required for Glue Granule Biogenesis in Drosophila
Keywords: Drosophila
adaptor protein complex
clathrin
phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase
trafficking
glue granule
mucin
AP-1

Regulated secretion of hormones, digestive enzymes and other biologically active molecules requires formation of secretory granules. However, the molecular machinery required for secretory granule biogenesis is incompletely understood. I used powerful genetic approaches available in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to investigate the factors required for biogenesis of mucin-containing ‘glue granules,’ which form within epithelial cells of the third-instar larval salivary gland. I discovered that clathrin and the clathrin adaptor protein complex (AP-1), as well the enzyme type II phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4KII), are indispensable for glue granule biogenesis. Clathrin and AP-1 are necessary for maturation of exocrine, endocrine and neuroendocrine secretory granules in mammalian cells. I found that Drosophila clathrin and AP-1 colocalize at the TGN and that clathrin recruitment requires AP-1. I further showed that clathrin and AP-1 colocalize with secretory cargo at the TGN and on glue granules. Finally, I demonstrated that loss of clathrin or AP-1 leads to a profound block in secretory granule biogenesis. These findings establish a novel role for AP-1/clathrin-dependent trafficking in the formation of mucin-containing secretory granules. Type II phosphatidylinositol 4-kinase (PI4KII) generates the membrane lipid phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) at the trans-Golgi network and is required to recruit cargo to endosomes in mammalian cells. I generated null mutations in the sole Drosophila PI4KII and demonstrated a role for PI4KII in both glue granule and pigment granule biogenesis. PI4KII mutant salivary gland cells exhibit small glue granules and mislocalize glue protein to abnormally large late endosomes. Additionally, PI4KII mutants exhibit altered distribution of the granule specific SNARE, SNAP-24. These data point to a crucial role for PI4KII in sorting of regulated secretory products during granule biogenesis. Together, my results indicate that the larval salivary gland is a valuable system for investigating molecular mechanisms involved in secretory granule biogenesis, and provide a framework for future studies using this system.
The Versio Dionysii of John Scottus Eriugena. A Study of the Manuscript Tradition and Influence of Eriugena's Translation of the Corpus Areopagiticum From the 9th through the 12th century.
Keywords: Eriugena
Dionysius Areopagita
Versio Dionysii

Abstract The research presented in this dissertation is an examination of the manuscript tradition of John Scottus Eriugena’s Latin translation (the Versio Dionysii) of the Greek works of Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite. The goal of this project is fourfold: first, to establish the relationship between the extant families of the manuscripts; second, to re-examine the state of Greek studies in the 9th century based on the relationship between the manuscript families; third, to trace the continued use of these recensions through the 12th century; and, finally, to examine Eriugena’s interpretation of the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite based on the Irishman’s translations of certain philosophic ideas. The First chapter establishes the existence of three distinct recensions, rather than two, as previously thought. Two of these recensions represent attempted corrections of the third. All three recensions (together with their corrections) are attributable to Eriugena (whether directly or indirectly). The second chapter examines the level of Eriugena’s understanding of Greek, especially within the context of the state of Greek studies in the 9th century. Special attention is given to the corrections of the later recensions, which suggest an improvement in Eriugena’s Hellenism. The third chapter examines the continued use of the Versio’s during the Middle Ages through the 12th century, with special care to clarify which recensions were known to which readers. The fourth and final chapter presents the originality of Eriugena’s interpretation of the pseudo-Areopagite’s thought. This originality stems in part from his understanding of the Greek text, and in part from his attempts to harmonize his sources.
Shakespeare's Openings in Action: A Study of Four Plays from the Period 1591-c.1602
Keywords: Early Modern Drama, Shakespeare, Theory of Early Modern Drama
Openings
Beginnings
Openings in Shakespearean Dramaturgy

Regardless of genre, Shakespeare’s plays open in many different ways on the stage. Some openings come in the form of a prologue and extend from it; others in the form of a framing dialogue; some may begin in medias res; and there is also a single case of an induction in The Taming of the Shrew. My dissertation, “Shakespeare’s Openings in Action: A Study of Four Plays from the Period 1591- c.1602,” subsequently referred to as “Shakespeare’s Openings in Action,” attempts to define the construction of openings in the context of Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and to understand texts which were written in the first place to be performed on a platform stage by actors experienced in theatrical practice. By analysing the playwright’s organization of the dramatic material, as reflected in the play-texts, I attempt to gauge how an opening set out to engage original audiences in the play, an essential function of theatrical composition, and to determine to what extent the play-text may be considered as an extended stage direction for early modern actors.1 What is the present state of scholarship in the subject? Although sparse, critical interest in the openings of Shakespeare’s plays can be found as early as 1935 in the work of A. C. Sprague, Shakespeare and the Audience. In more recent years, other studies have appeared, for instance, Robert F. Willson, Jr., Shakespeare’s Opening Scenes (1977), and a number of articles included in Entering the Maze: Shakespeare’s Art of Beginning, edited by F. Willson Jr. (1995). Existing scholarship provides a good general framework for further research into the openings of Shakespeare’s plays. In addition to the studies presented above, I shall draw on analytical approaches to play-text analysis which involve theatre practice, for example in the work of André Helbo, Approaching Theatre (1991), Anne Ubersfeld, Reading Theatre (1996), and John Russell Brown, Shakespeare’s Plays in Performance (1993); John Barton, Playing Shakespeare (1984), and Cicely Berry, Text in Action. London (2001). These works provide revealing insights into the theatrical possibilities of dramatic language and actor technique. 1The analytical method presented in this dissertation supplements studies made of the complex textual histories of Shakespeare’s plays by considering the staging and characterisation information they contain. In the case of multiple-text plays, it takes account of editorial scholarship and explains the reasons for choosing to analyse the material contained in one version over the other(s).
The Nature of Working Memory: Separate, Flexible Resources for Location- vs. Feature-based Representations in Visual Short-term Memory
Keywords: visual short-term memory
attention

Working memory, or the ability to maintain and manipulate information in mind when it is no longer physically present, is a pervasive yet severely capacity-limited component of cognition. Visual working memory, also known as visual short-term memory (VSTM), is limited to three or four items on average, with individual differences that range from roughly two to up to six items. Despite agreement that capacity is functionally limited, the current literature is split with respect to the nature of VSTM representations on two key questions: (1) What information is maintained in VSTM? (2) How is information stored in VSTM? The studies presented here address these questions using an event-related potential (ERP) task and a series of behavioural experiments that incorporate attentional selection via retrospective cueing (retro-cues). Experiment 1 manipulated both the number of features and the number of locations to be remembered in a lateralized change-detection task, with differences in the amplitude and topography of the resulting contralateral delay activity (CDA) indicating separate stores for features and locations. Experiments 2a-c established the basic effects of retro-cues on change-detection tasks, showing that attentional selection operated on one system at a time, with overall shorter response times and increased capacity estimates once baseline capacity was exceeded. Experiments 3a-b demonstrated that retro-cues biased VSTM resources to the cued item at the expense of representational strength of the other, non-cued items, showing flexible reallocation of resources. Experiments 4a-b presented multiple retro-cues to further examine the flexible reallocation of resources in VSTM, showing that capacity benefits depended on spatial specificity of retro-cues and that VSTM weights could be reallocated multiple times before probe comparison. Experiment 5 discounted the potential role of a general alerting mechanism in boosting capacity estimates, showing again that the retro-cue benefit required specificity of the cue. Experiment 6 showed that flexible reallocation of resources within one system did not change the online maintenance of representations within the other system. Thus, the studies collectively address the questions of (1) what and (2) how information is stored by supporting a two-system model of VSTM in which (1) locations and features are stored (2) independently via flexibly allocated resources.
Characterization of an IL-12-driven Anticancer Response, and the CD4+ CTL Population Incited, in a Murine Model of Leukaemia
Keywords: IL-12
immunotherapy
mouse
cytotoxic

For the treatment of cancer, immunotherapy has some inherent advantages over other treatment modalities: disseminated disease can be eradicated due to the systemic nature of immunity, the immune system is effective against a wide range of targets, long-term memory can offer added protection against disease relapse, immunotherapy should be relatively non-toxic, and it can be synergistically combined with other treatment platforms such as radiation and chemotherapy. Type 1 immune responses are thought to be superior for the treatment of cancer and, as the quintessential Th1 polarizing cytokine, interleukin-12 (IL-12) holds much promise; however, optimal therapeutic protocols have yet to be developed and clinical results have fallen short of this promise. The in vivo IL-12 experiments described here highlight a characteristic of cellular therapy that has not previously been appreciated. That is, the effect of cell-mediated cytokine delivery on the immediate microenvironment and how that affects the immune response initiated. This observation has implications for the clinical application of IL-12 therapy but may also prove to be an important consideration when studying other immunostimulants. I have herein developed a novel in vitro assay system that I have used to dissect the cellular responses to IL-12 and to identify the signals that are required for activation of a cluster of differentiation 4 (CD4)+ effector population that affects leukaemia cell clearance both in vitro and in vivo. This work, and the future studies proposed, will expand our understanding of the potential of IL-12 immunotherapy and enhance our ability to manipulate therapeutic conditions to favour the desired response. Moreover, the in vitro assay system offers a method for further characterization of CD4+ effector cells and the development of protocols to initiate their potent anticancer activity.
Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis and Adverse Events: A Canadian Perspective
Keywords: adolescent idiopathic scoliosis
adverse event
wait time
icd-10
hierarchical modeling
MAWT

BACKGROUND: Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) surgery is the most common reason for elective pediatric orthopaedic surgery. Minimization of adverse events is an important goal. Institute of Medicine (IOM) outlined 6 facets of healthcare quality improvement within the acronym STEEEP. Two of these facets, Safety and Timeliness for AIS surgery in Canada, are examined in this thesis. METHODS: A three - part study, using clinical records at the largest Canadian pediatric hospital and CIHI national administrative data, determined i) the relationship between surgical wait times and rates of adverse events, along with determination of an empirically derived access target, ii) accuracy of ICD-10 coding of surgical AIS cases along with an optimal search strategy to identify surgical AIS cases, and iii) the volume – outcome relationships for scoliosis surgery using hierarchical and conventional single level multi-variate regression analysis. RESULTS: Access target of 3 months minimized the adverse events related to waiting. Optimal search strategy for AIS surgical cases using ICD-10 coding required combination of codes as each code in isolation was inaccurate due to limitations in coding definitions. There was no significant volume – outcome relationship using appropriate modeling strategies. CONCLUSIONS: Ensuring timeliness of surgical treatment of less than 3 months is important in surgical cases of AIS given the potential for curve progression in higher risk individuals who are skeletally immature with large magnitude curves at time of surgical consent. At the administrative database level, knowledge of coding accuracy and optimal search strategies are needed to capture a complete cohort for analysis. In AIS, several ICD-10 codes need to be combined. AIS surgery cases captured through this optimal search strategy, revealed no significant volume-outcome relationships with appropriate modeling. Based on these results, minimum volume thresholds and regionalization of care for AIS surgery does not appear to be justified. However, a larger sample size was needed to determine whether there was a clinically significant difference in wound infection and blood transfusion rates. Furthermore, clinical variables, not part of an administrative database such as curve pattern were not included.
Communal Relations in İzmir/Smyrna, 1826-1864: As Seen Through The Prism of Greek-Turkish Relations
Keywords: İzmir
Smyrna

This dissertation examines the level of social and cultural interaction between the Greek and Turkish communities of İzmir and the impact of the centralizing Ottoman reforms on the society of İzmir during the age of the Ottoman modernization. It focuses on the years between 1826 and 1864 that marked a turning point in the administrative history of the Ottoman Empire. Analyzing this subject requires understanding the social-cultural and economic dynamics of İzmir that played a crucial role in the formation of the social fabric of the city. Ottoman-Turkish archival material and to some extent Greek newspapers of the time are used as primary sources. The sources discussed in this dissertation demonstrate that the central authority attempted to re-integrate İzmir into its administrative and political structure in accordance with the centralizing or repressive Tanzimat reforms. However, Tanzimat reforms did not disturb the social cohesion of İzmir, which the city produced over the centuries with its local character and some peculiar dynamics. The evidence also indicates that the Empire did not aim to mold social relations in İzmir, instead benefited from city’s already existing social-cultural and economic situation, which was well suited to its modernization program. This study attempts to write a social and cultural history of İzmir, by considering the ethno-religious policies of the Ottoman state in the given period and questioning Ottoman modernity through the prism of the Greek-Turkish communal relations. Much of the conventional Turkish and Greek historiography of the post WWI years has analyzed 19th century İzmir's history in terms of two “conflicting nations.” While Turkish historiography has focused on the ethnic homogeneity of Turks and its history, modern Greek historiography has stressed the suppression of the Ottoman Greeks under the Ottoman rule. Such approaches have engendered the commonly used categories of Greek versus Turkish or Muslim versus non-Muslim. Approaching İzmir as an organic whole, instead of dividing the city according to ethno-religious criterion, this dissertation tries to uncover the dynamics of coexistence and communal relations, which marked the life of the city for centuries, but was brought to an abrupt end as a result of the modern nation state formations.
A Local Twisted Trace Formula and Twisted Orthogonality Relations
Keywords: Trace Formula
Orthogonality Relations
Twisted Reductive Groups
Elliptic Representations

Around 1990, Arthur proved a local (ordinary) trace formula for real or p-adic connected reductive groups. The local trace formula is a powerful tool in the local harmonic analysis of reductive groups. One of the aims of this thesis is to establish a local twisted trace formula for certain non-connected reductive groups, which is a twisted version of Arthur’s local trace formula. As an application of the local twisted trace formula, we will prove some twisted orthogonality relations, which are generalizations of Arthur’s results about orthogonality relations for tempered elliptic characters. To establish these relations, we will also give a classification of twisted elliptic representations.
Standing Ring Blowup Solutions for the Cubic Nonlinear Schrodinger Equation
Keywords: Nonlinear Schrodinger Equation
Blowup and Singularity Formation

The cubic focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation is a canonical model equation that arises in physics and engineering, particularly in nonlinear optics and plasma physics. Cubic NLS is an accessible venue to refine techniques for more general nonlinear partial differential equations. In this thesis, it is shown there exist solutions to the focusing cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equation in three dimensions that blowup on a circle, in the sense of L2-norm concentration on a ring, bounded H1-norm outside any surrounding toroid, and growth of the global H1-norm with the log-log rate. Analogous behaviour occurs in higher dimensions. That is, there exists data for which the corresponding evolution by the cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equation explodes on a set of co-dimension two. To simplify the exposition, the proof is presented in dimension three, with remarks to indicate the adaptations in higher dimension.
Géo/Graphies: La Poétique de l’Espace (Post)Colonial dans le Roman Sénégalais et Mauricien au Féminin
Keywords: Francopone Literature, géocritique, space, gender, postcolonialism

Notre thèse a pour objet les écritures poétiques émanant et traitant de l’espace postcolonial (les géo/graphies). Elle vise à analyser la dynamique reliant le logos et le topos, à savoir le texte littéraire et les lieux dont et d’où il parle. Nos recherches doctorales convoquent l’espace comme vecteur herméneutique donnant accès au texte et s’interroge, ce faisant, sur sa fonction signifiante, ses qualités en tant que catégorie d’écriture et de lecture. Notre dessein est de démontrer que l’espace n’est pas seulement le site anodin sur lequel s’inscrit l’intrigue mais qu’il s’impose comme enjeu diégétique et substance génératrice du récit même. À partir d’un corpus de quatre romans - Soupir d’Ananda Devi, Le Silence des Chagos de Shenaz Patel, Douceurs du bercail d’Aminata Sow Fall et Riwan ou le chemin de sable de Ken Bugul -, nous démontrerons, dans un premier temps, que les représentations spatiales dans le texte littéraire rendent « lisibles » l’organisation de la société référentielle et les relations de pouvoir existantes. Dans un deuxième temps, nous étudierons la façon dont les géo/graphies abordées retravaillent les espaces dits réels à travers l’imaginaire et le verbe. Dans un troisième temps, seront divulguées les relations entre l’espace et le texte se manifestant autant dans le langage et la structure du roman que par sa narration et son genre. Enfin, pour comparer et formaliser nos résultats, nous nous proposons d’identifier les chronotopes desquels procèdent les univers fictifs de notre corpus. Ces noyaux organisateurs mettront en lumière le pouvoir démiurgique des textes littéraires à l’étude. Ces derniers érodent les modèles spatiaux et sociaux référentiels tout en faisant émerger des espaces autres. Dans cette perspective, les romans du corpus produisent non seulement de nouvelles « géographies imaginaires » qui se veulent des métadiscours critiques sur la société mais participent également à une refiguration (discursive) du monde.