VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Long Non-Coding RNAs in the Endothelial Cell Response to Shear Stress
Keywords: atherosclerosis
cardiovascular
endothelial cell
epigenetics
hemodynamics
long non-coding RNA

Endothelial cells (EC) act as professional sensors of shear stress, the frictional force of blood flow. In the absence of laminar (healthy) blood flow, ECs undergo changes in gene expression of protein-coding genes that can predispose the blood vessel to cardiovascular diseases (CVD), such as atherosclerosis and aneurysms. However, whether shear stress influences the non-coding transcriptome, particularly for long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), is not well understood. LncRNAs are defined as transcripts >200 nucleotides lacking protein-coding potential that are increasingly recognized as important effectors of gene regulation. We have identified an EC-enriched lncRNA, termed STEEL, that is upregulated by the absence of laminar flow to promote angiogenesis and vessel maturation both in vitro and in vivo. To comprehensively study the effects of shear stress on EC lncRNAs, five independent HUVEC lines were subjected to static (no flow) or laminar flow (10 dynes/cm2, 48 hours) using a parallel-plate flow chamber. RNA was analyzed using a microarray to profile 30,586 lncRNAs. In brief, 394 (3.2%) and 324 (2.7%) lncRNAs were upregulated or downregulated, respectively (≥2 fold vs. static, p
Characterization of the Complex Permittivity of Planetary Regolith Analogue Materials
Keywords: Bayesian fitting
complex permeability
complex permittivity
radar
regolith

Radar has long been used as a tool for remote sensing of planetary bodies. Orbital radar systems are or have been in orbit around the Moon, Mars, and Venus, while ground-penetrating radar systems are or have been used on the Moon. Despite an abundance of radar data, a lack of information on the fundamental electromagnetic properties of the surface and near-subsurface materials of these bodies precludes detailed quantitative analysis. This includes determining the precise depth of radar-detected sub-surface features as well as refining estimates of abundance of subsurface materials, such as the mineral ilmenite. Although laboratory measurements have been made in the past in order to quantify electromagnetic properties of lunar and martian materials, these measurements provide a limited view of the parameter space of influence on these electromagnetic properties. This thesis develops a full methodology to measure the complex permittivity of planetary regolith analogue materials in vacuum over a broad range of frequencies. These methods are first demonstrated with measurements of analogue regolith materials appropriate for carbonaceous asteroids: individual and mixed components of a regolith simulant based on CI meteorite mineralogy. These measurements are the first to investigate the effect of carbonaceous material on the complex permittivity of asteroid regolith analogues and they provide new constraints on the attenuation of radar in granular carbonaceous materials. This thesis also develops a Bayesian Markov Chain Monto Carlo (MCMC) -based parameter estimation technique to determine the frequency-dependent complex electric permittivity and magnetic permeability. The technique uses a generalized dielectric response (GDR) model to simultaneously determine the complex permittivity and permeability from measured scattering parameters. The technique is able to accurately determine both of these electromagnetic parameters for low-loss, high-loss, and magnetic materials. Finally, measurements of samples with systematically varying amounts of ilmenite are presented along with Bayesian model fits using a one-pole Cole-Cole model. These results represent the first systematic laboratory measurements investigating the effect of ilmenite on radar attenuation. They demonstrate the significant frequency-dependent effect of ilmenite content on signal attenuation and show promise for the application of dielectric spectroscopy, or the identification of materials based on the physical parameters of a GDR model.
Precision Coupling Measurements of the Higgs Boson using the H->ZZ*->4l decay channel
Keywords: ATLAS detector
Coupling measurements
H4l
Higgs boson

The coupling of the Higgs boson to other particles is probed by measuring the production cross sections at the Large Hadron Collider using the ATLAS detector. The present measurement is performed using the H->ZZ*->4l decay channel, with l= electron or muon and with datasets corresponding to various integrated luminosities. The inclusive production cross section is measured to be 1.34 +/- 0.12 pb, which is in good agreement with the predicted value of 1.33 +/- 0.08 pb. The gluon-gluon fusion, the vector boson fusion, the vector boson associated and the top associated production cross sections are measured to be 1.12 +/- 0.12 pb, 110 +/- 40 fb, 75 +61 -49 fb and 27 +26 -17 fb, respectively. The differential production cross sections are also measured using the Simplified Template cross sections framework. All measurements are in good agreement with the Standard Model predictions. These results are used to measure the Higgs boson coupling to fermions and vector bosons using the kappa-framework and to derive constraints on contributions from beyond the Standard Model physics using an effective field theory approach. No significant deviations from the Standard Model are observed.
Developing Equipment-free Tools to Improve Accessibility of Diagnostics to Resource-limited Settings
Keywords: Diagnostics
Instrument-free
Low-cost
Point-of-care
Portable

Diagnostics play an important role in the management of infectious diseases, from factoring in on the treatment of patients to responding to a worldwide pandemic. Point of care diagnostics are especially important to conduct diagnoses near patients to facilitate rapid responses. This allows for early detection, treatment, surveillance and containment of infectious diseases. In order to develop diagnostics that are amendable at the point of care, they need to be less reliant on expert training and infrastructure. The goal of my thesis was to develop equipment-free tools to improve the accessibility of diagnostic assays to the point of care, specifically in resource-limited settings. My thesis focuses on building a toolkit to help conduct assays outside of centralized labs. The first project focuses on developing a tablet to provide thermal stability to diagnostic reagents, allowing for transporting and storing reagents without the need for refrigeration. The second project focuses on building a multi-layered tablet to time-programmatically release reagents to conduct a diagnostic assay, minimizing the need for manual intervention and technical expertise. The last project focuses on building an electricity-free and portable heater to provide tunable and precise temperatures for conducting multi-step assays. Together, these tools can be used in the future to conduct diagnostic assays at any location, outside of centralized labs.
Sensemaking: How is the Equitable and Inclusive Education Policy Understood, Explained, and Implemented by School Administrators in Ontario?
Keywords: Administrators
Equity
Inclusivity
Policy
Secondary Schools
Sensemaking

The Ontario Ministry of Education’s policy related to equitable and inclusive education (PPM 119) has been in existence for some 25 years, starting from what was called the Antiracism and Ethnocultural Equity Policy (1993) up to the 2013 version, which includes additional marginalized groups as well as strategies and timelines to support these groups. This study examines, from cognitive and social identity perspectives how secondary school administrators in a school board near Toronto, Ontario, make sense of their school board’s complexly-encoded policy and how it works with various stakeholders to explain and implement two areas of that policy: a) curriculum and assessment and b) school climate and the prevention of harassment and discrimination. Composed of 10 qualitative interviews with self-identifying equity-minded secondary school administrators, as well as analysis and synthesis of the policy and literature, this study investigates the interaction between these administrators’ familiarity with a school board’s version of the Ministry policy and their individual cognitive and social identities as they are situated in the sensemaking of this policy. While the findings reveal a strong commitment from all participants to engage in this work to better support and serve their communities, there are wide and varying understandings of the policy, how sense is made of it, conceptions of what the policy asks administrators to consider, and how personal and social experiences, values, and beliefs inform their work in these two areas. The findings support discussion in terms of creating specific professional development opportunities for administrators—including fostering a knowledge of the historical understandings that underlie the policy—with the goal of moving towards centering the work of equity and inclusion on improved student support in this area, as part of a social determinant of a person’s health and life outcomes.
From Knights to Captains: Nobility, Masculinity, and Martial Violence in Sixteenth-century France
Keywords: France
French Wars of Religion
Italian Wars
Masculinity
Nobility
Violence

From the 1490s into the 1630s, French military literature saw a transformation in the representation of French noblemen at war. Depictions of noblemen shifted from medieval knightly images to more modern militaristic ones of noblemen as captains. This alteration in the representation of nobility reflected not only changes in the nomenclature and the role of the nobility in combat, but also alterations in the relationships between nobility, masculinity, and martial violence in French society. At the beginning of this period, chivalric imagery and language played an important role in shaping representations of nobility. Authors portrayed noblemen as knights, with stories of noblemen competing in tournaments and fighting in single combat during battles. These images perpetuated chivalric ties between nobility, masculinity, and warfare. However, an alternative representation of noblemen as captains rather than knights was beginning to rise in prominence, even in these sources. As the trope of the French captain developed, it held on to some aspects of chivalric values and imagery but also adjusted these values to suit the specific martial conditions of the sixteenth century. This shift in representation demonstrates how the Military Revolution – with its expansion of warfare and early development of standing armies – altered how authors of sixteenth-century military literature represented gender norms for their community. The image of the French captain retained elements of chivalric ideals, but authors reimagined them to suit the nobility’s new primary role as officers in the kingdom’s army. The captain replaced the knight as the standard representation of a nobleman at war, altering the gender norms of noblemen in combat.
Sparse Activity Detection for Massive Random Access
Keywords: approximate message passing
compressed sensing
device activity detection
machine-type communications
massive random access
phase transition analysis

This thesis considers the massive random access problem in which a large number of sporadically active devices attempt to communicate with the base-station (BS) in the uplink. For device identification, each device is preassigned a unique signature sequence from a large set of non-orthogonal sequences as its identifier. In random access, all active devices transmit their sequences simultaneously, and the BS identifies the active devices by detecting which sequences are transmitted. This thesis focuses on the device activity detection, and studies two fundamentally distinct problem formulations: the compressed sensing approach, which aims to attain the activity by recovering the effective instantaneous channel; and the covariance approach, which aims to estimate the effective channel statistics for activity detection. This thesis shows the covariance approach is better suited for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), whereas the compressed sensing approach is favored with long sequences. For the compressed sensing approach, this thesis considers single-cell and multi-cell scenarios. In both cases, the device activity detection problem is formulated as a compressed sensing problem, and the computationally efficient approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm is employed. Specifically, for the single-cell scenario, this thesis studies the design of the AMP based detector to incorporate prior information of wireless channel, and also provides an analytical characterization of the probabilities of false alarm and missed detection. For the multi-cell scenario, this thesis compares two network architectures, cooperative MIMO and massive MIMO, in terms of their effectiveness in combating inter-cell interference for device activity detection. For the covariance approach, this thesis considers a single-cell massive MIMO system, under which the covariance approach has the key advantage that it is capable of detecting a much larger number of active devices. This thesis focuses on the question: given a signature sequence length and a set of non-orthogonal signature sequences, how many simultaneously active devices can be identified when the number of antennas at the BS is large. To answer this question, this thesis derives a necessary and sufficient condition on the Fisher information matrix associated with the estimation of effective channel statistics, based on which a numerical phase transition characterization is obtained.
Learning to settle: Young students learning Indigenous and Canadian histories in the figured worlds of social studies classrooms
Keywords: Canadian history
Figured Worlds
Indigenous History
Reconciliation
Settler Colonialism
Social Studies

This research study is an investigation into how children in public elementary schools are educated through social studies curricula into ways of understanding themselves and their relationships to the nation-state, the land, and people with whom they share the land. The questions that have driven this research are these: 1) How do young students construct and negotiate the figured worlds of a social studies classroom where they engage in inquiry-based learning about settler colonialism? 2) What do students connect with, and what are they doing with the stories they hear about Indigenous and Canadian history in public school classrooms? 3) How do students in public school classrooms take up or reject settler colonialism in their learning about history? Examining these questions through the theoretical frame of figured worlds and employing a post-structural ethnographic methodology, the author relies on the fields of curriculum studies and settler colonial studies to ground this study into the experiences of young students in public schools. The frame of figured worlds allows the author to examine the ways that students talk about and enact identities-in-practice as they learn stories about Canadian and Indigenous histories. This thesis sheds light on the specific ways students configure, negotiate, and enact their own subjectivities as they learn about the settlement and growth of Canada on the Indigenous territory it now occupies. Data for this study were gathered through research groups, interviews, and classroom observations at two elementary schools in Hamilton, Ontario. Analysis and discussion of these data reveal the complex ways students both take up and\or reject discourses and narratives about settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, and reconciliation. The stories and experiences of students in this research reveal ways that education works to maintain settler structures of inequality and elimination through the teaching of social studies. This work also points to ways this can be challenged, and how counter-narratives and discourses are being taken up by students as they navigate their identities-in-practice in response to what they learn, who they learn it with, and the multiple voices that they listen to for guidance.
Tribological Study of Ultrathin 2D-materials against Application Oriented Counter-surfaces under Controlled Environment
Keywords: 2D-Materials
Adhesion
Friction
Graphene
MoS2
Nano-tribology

Nanoscale tribological behavior of ultrathin 2D-materials (i.e. graphene, MoS2, and their oxidized structures) were investigated at varying humidity using application motivated counter-surfaces (SiO2, 440C-steel, oxidized-titanium, and oxidized-copper). By varying the humidity, water dependent mechanisms were identified. Significant water was observed to intercalate within graphene oxide (GO) and was identified to initiate wear once the functional groups were passivated. GO exhibited higher friction compared to ultrathin-graphene, with a more sensitive response to humidity. The less desirable tribological behavior on GO and the detrimental influence of water were attributed to the presence of functional groups. Ultrathin-MoS2 and ultrathin-graphene exhibited increasing friction and adhesion trends with humidity against SiO2 counter-surfaces. For both the materials, interfacial water adsorption dominated the tribological behavior. However, friction and adhesion on ultrathin-MoS2 increased at lower humidity and was attributed to stronger physical MoS2-water interaction. Friction on oxidized-MoS2 was found to be significantly higher and exhibited greater sensitivity to water as compared to ultrathin-MoS2. The presence of oxygen along the basal plane of ultrathin-MoS2 creates a non-uniform interfacial charge distribution resulting in higher resistance experienced by the sliding counter-surface. Comparison between ultrathin-MoS2 and oxidized-MoS2 confirms that oxygen alone increases friction and when coupled with the presence of water, both effects are additive. Against a 440C-steel counter-surface, ultrathin-graphene exhibited lower friction, interfacial-shear-strength, and adhesion than ultrathin-MoS2. This behavior was attributed to the stronger chemical interaction between 440C-steel/MoS2 as compared to the weaker physical interaction between steel/graphene. Furthermore, ultrathin-graphene and ultrathin-MoS2 exhibit contrary behavior to water, where water was seen to increase friction on ultrathin-graphene yet reduced friction on ultrathin-MoS2. The reduction in friction due to water adsorption was attributed to the suppression of the strong interfacial interaction by acting as a temporary protective film between the 440C-steel/MoS2 interface. Lastly, both oxidized-titanium and oxidized-copper counter-surfaces were found to interact chemically with ultrathin-MoS2 and ultrathin-graphene. Friction and adhesion on ultrathin-MoS2 were lower against both the counter-surfaces as compared to ultrathin-MoS2. It was identified that the charge distribution and energy variation along the interface dominated the tribological behavior. Interfaces with localized charge build-up and higher energy variation resulted in higher friction and adhesion.
Development and Initial Evaluation of a Novel Pain Competence Assessment Tool
Keywords: Competency
Education Assessments
Interpofessional
Pain

Many primary care practitioners lack the knowledge, and the interprofessional skills needed for treating chronic pain patients. Competency-based interprofessional education is currently the key educational approach, especially for continuing professional education on the topic of pain. This type of education necessitates a competency-based assessment tool to show learners’ progression and to evaluate the impact of these educational interventions. This research aimed to develop and initially evaluate the psychometric properties of a new Pain Competence Assessment Tool (PCAT) designed to assess the core competencies for pain management relevant to primary care practitioners involved in managing patients with chronic pain. To develop the PCAT, case-scenarios were created reflecting real-life chronic pain situations commonly seen in primary care. Each case was followed by key-feature questions. The tool was uploaded on a custom-designed online web interface. To assess its content, pain experts representing different professions, reviewed the PCAT, and reached consensus on the most appropriate questions using the modified Delphi technique. Then a small sample of primary care practitioners, representing the target population, completed the PCAT to assess the response process through a cognitive interview study. Finally, a representative sample of practitioners and trainees completed the PCAT to preliminary evaluate the internal structure and the relation of the PCAT scores to other variables in separate pilot studies. After a series of refinements, the PCAT consisted of five cases with 17 questions. Through preliminary evaluation, the results showed that the PCAT questions reflected the specified construct intended to be measured and their relevance to the target population. Apart from six questions, the PCAT questions demonstrated homogeneity and acceptable reliability. The PCAT showed substantial stability and excellent preliminary validity. The PCAT scores reflected the participants’ expected level of competency defined by their previous training and current practices. The PCAT is the first competency-based assessment tool that has the potential to assess the core competencies for pain management among primary care practitioners. Critical next steps are needed for further validation and adaptation for the assessment of pain educational outcomes.
Navigating Sennacherib’s Égalzagdinutukua: An Architectural Spatial Analysis Study Analyzing Movement, Access, and Art in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh
Keywords: Archaeology
Architecture
Mesopotamia
Neo-Assyrian
Palace Reliefs
Spatial Analysis

When Assyrian king Sennacherib of Nineveh ascended the throne (704-681 BC) and acquired control over the ancient Near East, he built his “Palace Without a Rival” and decorated its walls with carved relief panels showcasing his engineering projects, processions, and battles with adversaries from regions bordering Assyrian territory. Sennacherib must have had a purpose for putting particular reliefs in particular areas of his palace, however, he left no texts describing his interior decoration plan. Palace reliefs are a form of nonverbal communication that use descriptive detail and compositional devices as a substitute for speech and thought. The building structure would have been used to create both boundaries and open spaces which either allowed or prevented visitors to the palace access to specific rooms and relief content. This dissertation research employs spatial analytical computer models to create quantitative data for examining potential human movement patterns throughout the palace in order to explore access, or restriction, for viewing the content of palace relief art. The models were run from three entrance points of the palace to assess access for various types of visitors such as foreign dignitaries, servants, and the general populace. The first entrance was through the main Throneroom Courtyard H; the second was a secluded tunnel leading from the bottom of the citadel mound into a back hallway; and the last an entrance from an isolated supplemental throneroom off of the Western Terrace. The three entrances were analyzed using various models which mapped depth and accessibility including: j-graphs, gradation color-coded depth plans, axial maps, connectivity maps, isovist views, and virtual agent movement. Once the computer models were generated, each room and area of the palace was analyzed individually together with the information about history and art in order to establish and discuss potential movement patterns, accessibility, intention, and viewership.