VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Development and characterization of microfluidic platforms for endothelial cell biology
Keywords: endothelial cells
shear stress

Endothelial cells (ECs) line all blood contacting surfaces within the body and are exposed to hemodynamic shear stresses in vivo. To investigate EC biology in vitro, researchers have primarily used either conventional static systems such as well plates, or flow systems, such as parallel plate flow chambers. These macroscale platforms, although convenient, use large quantities of reagents and/or are not physiologically relevant. Recently, microfluidics has emerged as an alternative approach to study vascular biology. To demonstrate the usefulness of microfluidics in studying EC biology, four microfabricated platforms were developed and characterized. We demonstrated for the first time that primary cells, specifically multiple EC types, could be cultured and analyzed on a digital microfluidic platform. ECs patterned on a device using a fluorocarbon liftoff technique displayed both appropriate morphologies and functions. Second, a membrane microfluidic device was developed to mimic key components of the vascular microenvironment. Complex interactions between shear stress and tumour necrosis factor-α stimulation on monocyte adhesion to ECs and preferential transmigration of monocytes in response to a chemoattractant were investigated. This platform was subsequently advanced to incorporate a mural cell-laden three-dimensional gelatin methacrylate hydrogel beneath a confluent EC monolayer to more fully mimic the vascular/valvular environment. The presence of ECs suppressed valvular interstitial cell pathological differentiation to α-smooth muscle actin-expressing myofibroblasts, an effect that was enhanced when the endothelium was exposed to flow-induced shear stress. Lastly, EC phenotypes under static and flow conditions were analyzed in simple, straight, rectangular microfluidic channels to better characterize EC behaviour in microchannels. Interestingly, ECs were observed to align perpendicular to the direction of flow in microchannels of widths between 300 – 20000 µm. Vascular ECs align parallel to flow in vivo, and have never been reported to align perpendicular to flow in vitro. A comparison of EC phenotype between microchannel and macroscale culture showed differences in the arrangement of cell-cell junctions suggesting a possible role for junctional proteins in mediating perpendicular versus parallel alignment to flow. Overall, the work presented in this thesis demonstrates the utility of microfluidic platforms for EC biology and opens a discussion on potential new mechanisms of endothelial mechanotransduction.
In Search of an Imprint of Magnetization in the Balloon-borne Observations of the Polarized Dust Emission from Molecular Clouds
Keywords: ISM: magnetic fields, ISM: clouds, polarization, submillimeter

The observation of the polarization of thermal emission from dust grains is a key method in the study of the role of the magnetic fields in the star formation process. This dissertation introduces BLASTPol, a submillimeter telescope for polarization designed for mapping dust polarization in scales ranging from pre-stellar cores to sections of molecular clouds and the Histogram of Relative Orientations (HRO), a new statistical tool for the analysis of the polarization maps. The observations of BLASTPol were possible thanks to a novel light-weight carbon fiber sunshield structure and the detailed thermal modeling of the balloon-borne platform. The carbon fiber structure is based on the construction technique developed for the Spider gondola which integrates detailed Finite Element Analysis with the use of composite materials and adhesive joints. The thermal model uses 3D Computer Assisted Design allowing unprecedented control of the sun avoidance limits and detailed modeling of the gondola components. BLASTPol made observations of the Lupus I and Vela C molecular clouds, the Carina Nebula, and the Puppis Cloud Complex in two balloon-borne flights over Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. The construction of polarization maps from the BLASTPol10 observations was affected by multiple pathologies in the data. However, the preliminary maps indicate the need of a statistical tool which allows relating these observations to magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations motivating the development of HRO. Most of the problems in the BLASTPol10 data were successfully addressed in BLASTPol12 and the construction of polarization maps of the observed regions is currently in progress. The HRO is a statistical tool which assesses the relative orientation between the magnetic field and the density structures. This tool was characterized by using simulated molecular clouds with different magnetization indicating that: 1. There is an imprint of the magnetization level in the relative orientation of the projected magnetic field with respect to the column density structure. 2. This imprint of magnetization can be used to complement the current estimates of magnetic field strength provided by the Chandrasekhar-Fermi method. HRO establishes a direct link with MHD simulations providing a common tool for the analysis of polarization maps from BLASTPol.
Rebuilding St. Kunibert: Artistic Integration, Patronage, and Institutional Identities in Thirteenth-Century Cologne
Keywords: Art and identity
Artistic patronage
Germany
Cologne
Church of St. Kunibert
Architecture
Stained glass
Wall painting
Reliquaries

This dissertation examines the architecture and art of the early-thirteenth-century collegiate church of St. Kunibert in Cologne. Rebuilt completely from circa 1210 to 1247, St. Kunibert retains most of its original architectural fabric and an array of monumental images and liturgical furnishings from the time of the rebuilding. The latter include stained glass windows, frescoes, altars, a pavement, and reliquaries, all preserved in situ in the choir in the east end. One of medieval Cologne’s preeminent religious houses, St. Kunibert provides a unique opportunity to investigate both the different modalities and the significance of artistic integration in the medieval church. Taking a synthetic approach to the building and its corpus of imagery, this study probes the relationship between high clerical artistic patronage and institutional identity in Cologne in the early thirteenth century. Part I examines the extended historical background of the rebuilding project, beginning with the foundation of the church by St. Kunibert (ca. 590–663?). This examination of the institution and the predecessor churches up to the rebuilding is followed in Part II by a detailed rereading of the chronology, design, and sources of the architectural fabric of the thirteenth-century church. The concluding chapter of Part II then situates the canonical community’s architectural patronage within the institutional and ecclesiastical political context of the contemporary Church of Cologne. Part III analyzes the community’s visual construction of institutional identity through integrative readings of groups of images, objects, and furnishings in the space of the clerical choir. These final three chapters address numerous overarching topics and issues, including the staging of the past; art and the liturgy; the cult of saints and relics; pictorial narrative; materiality and spolia; and individual artistic patronage among the canons and elite members of the urban laity. But one of several renovatio projects in Cologne at this time, the enterprise at St. Kunibert illuminates art and architecture’s central role as active, integrated agents in the formation of identity among high medieval religious communities.
Orthodontic tooth movement is associated with orofacial mechanical and thermal hypersensitivities and face sensorimotor cortex neuroplasticity
Keywords: orthodontic
orthodontic tooth movement
pain
orthodontic tooth movement pain
neuroplasticity
orthodontic tooth movement neuroplasticity
sensorimotor cortex
sensorimotor cortex neuroplasticity
tooth
tooth movement neuroplasticity

This study addressed the General Hypothesis that orthodontic tooth movement (OTM) is associated with neuroplasticity of the rat’s primary face motor cortex (face-M1) and somatosensory cortex (face-S1) motor representations and with mechanical and thermal hypersensitivities in the orofacial region. Objective 1 was to develop an OTM rat model, and design and manufacture a cephalostat for standardized radiographic measurements of the amount and the rate of OTM. A constant force of 10 ± 4 cN applied for 28 days produced a uniform rate of OTM of the right three maxillary molars and maxillary incisors of 1.75 ± 0.23 mm. The well-defined force parameters correlated with clinical observations of OTM in humans. Objective 2 was to use intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) and electromyographic (EMG) recordings to test if neuroplastic changes occur in the ICMS-defined motor representations of anterior digastric (LAD, RAD), masseter (LMa, RMa), buccinator (LBu, RBu), and genioglossus (GG) muscles within the rat’s face-M1 and face-S1 during OTM; the analyses to include any alterations in the number of ICMS sites representing these muscles and in the onset latencies of ICMS-evoked responses in the muscles. OTM resulted in significant changes in LAD, RAD, and GG motor representations in face-M1 and face-S1 at days 1, 7, and 28; there were no significant difference in the onset latency for these muscles across the groups, and between face-M1 and face S1 within each group. Objective 3 was to test if orofacial mechanical and thermal hypersensitivities occur in rats during OTM. The mechanical and thermal sensitivities at ipsilateral and contralateral orofacial sites were significantly increased in the early postoperative period (1 – 5 days), with peaks reached on day 1, and then returned to preoperative levels until postoperative day 28. These findings suggest that the cortical neuroplastic changes are unlikely related to maintained OTM-induced pain, although pain may have contributed to the changes in the early postoperative period. Thus, this new OTM rat model was successfully used for neurophysiological and behavioural studies that revealed the relevance of cortical neuroplasticity to orthodontic therapy and concepts of orofacial growth and development.
Developing a Framework to Evaluate Collaborative Mental Health Services in Primary Care Systems in Latin America
Keywords: Collaborative Mental Health Care
Latin America
Addiction
Health Services Evaluation
Primary Care
Mixed Methods

Mental health, including substance and concurrent disorders, is a major public health challenge worldwide. Approaches to collaborative mental health care (CMHC) are being implemented in Latin America to strengthen the accessibility and delivery of mental health services in primary health care settings. However, there are no well-defined frameworks to evaluate CMHC. Objective: To develop a feasible and meaningful evaluation framework to support the ongoing improvement and performance measurement of services and systems in Latin America regarding CMHC. Methods: Three public health networks were selected in Mexico, Nicaragua and Chile. The study included: (1) a critical review of the literature focused on relevant health services research approaches, theory and evaluation models; (2) an environmental scan at each of the three research sites, comprising document reviews, key informant interviews with decision makers, focus groups with front line clinicians, and a survey for other key stakeholders, to better understand the local context and evaluation needs, as well as to identify some implementation challenges and opportunities; (3) a Delphi group with experts to identify the main areas of consensus, as well as disagreements about the importance and feasibility of evaluation dimensions; and (4) a final consultation in the three sites aimed at discussing preliminary results and refining the evaluation framework. Quantitative and qualitative data were integrated in the analysis. Results: A comprehensive evaluation framework for CMHC in Latin America was developed. It includes 5 levels, 28 dimensions and 40 domains, as well as examples of indicators and an implementation plan. A knowledge exchange strategy was developed aimed at reaching the research sites as well as the academic community and other stakeholders. Conclusion: The evaluation framework represents an important effort to foster accountability and quality regarding CMHC in Latin America. Recommendations to build upon current capacity and to successfully address the existing implementation challenges are further discussed.
Top-predators as structuring agents in dynamic marine environments
Keywords: Marine
Top-down
Coral reef
Sharks
Atlantic cod
Disturbance

Global declines in top-predators are occurring due established and ongoing fisheries throughout the world’s oceans. In particular, dramatic declines have been observed for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the boreal sub-arctic and for reef sharks (mostly Carcharhinidae spp.) in coral reefs. The impact of these declines on marine communities still remains largely unclear due to food web complexity, interacting factors, confounding variables, and fluctuating ecosystem states. Furthermore, as the impact of disturbances on communities can be press (e.g. fisheries), pulse (e.g. environmental variability) or combine, fisheries contribute to disturbance regimes that can generate heterogeneity in communities, meaning that their effects are likely not uniform across space and time. Determining the ecological role of top-predators, as top-down structuring agents, alongside ecosystem disturbances is fundamental to understanding baseline conditions and ultimately may help to inform conservation efforts. This thesis investigates the relative roles of top-predators and disturbances to build an understanding of how marine communities and food webs may be structured. This thesis aims to address: (i) how environmental variability may impact the role of top-predators, (ii) determine the ecological role of top-predators in coral reef environments, (iii) how top-down and bottom-up structuring agents impact variability in food webs, and (iv) how humans are modifying the role of top-down and bottom-up structuring agents. In this thesis I present three main findings: (i) top-predators have a strong top-down influence on marine communities and food webs alongside other disturbances, (ii) combined effects (between top-down and bottom-up structuring agents) can impact communities at broad and fine spatial scales, and (iii) spatial heterogeneity in structuring agents caused by human activities, impacts food web dynamics across multiple spatial scales. The findings in this thesis provide a foundation from which management decisions can be made to ultimately address restoration and conservation goals.
Framing Social Criticism in the Jesus Movement: The Ideological Project in the Sayings Gospel Q
Keywords: early Christianity
Galilee
scribes
Sayings Gospel Q
Jesus movement
social location of thought
social structure of the Roman Empire

This dissertation concerns the ideological project of the Sayings Gospel Q, a written source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Although it has become increasingly popular to understand the earliest rural Jesus movement as emerging from a peasant milieu, proponents of this model have not yet taken the time to explore the ramifications for a highly stylized written document being the earliest evidence for this movement, as this project does. The analysis takes as its starting point the problematic category of “peasant” and tries to offer some theoretical clarity into the way the term is deployed. Although the term may still be useful for thinking about the social structure of ancient Palestine, Q does not seem to be a product of that group of people. On the contrary, Q is a sophisticated literary text, which has a number of affinities with other ancient literature, as well as interesting parallels with documentary papyri. Even so, Q does not appear to the product of elites, for the text is rife with tropes of social and economic marginality. In order to access the elusive “middling stratum” from which Q’s authors may stem, this project looks cross-culturally at middling figures, using the same sorts of data that have hitherto been used to characterize the Jesus movement as a peasant movement (anthropological and sociological studies of peasants). Middling figures in similar contexts have a number of things in common, especially if such antecedent conditions as education and literacy skills are present: structural marginality, creativity and innovation, and the capacity to articulate social interests and facilitate reform. These features can be productively mapped onto Q in order to provide insight into the genesis of this text and its ideas. In fact, this comparison better explains Q’s project than the frequent appeal to its “peasant milieu.” Q’s ideological project is admittedly self-interested, but it nevertheless synthesizes a range of social experiences in ways that are fundamentally related to the middling social experience of its authors. It is thus a determined intellectual project, not the vestiges of oral traditions stemming directly from peasant villagers.
Rehabilitation of Executive Dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis: Cognitive, Behavioural and Neurophysiological Effects of Goal Management Training
Keywords: neuropsychology
rehabilitation
multiple sclerosis
executive functioning
attention
mindfulness
event-related potentials
partial least squares
cognitive impairment
information processing
randomized controlled trial
functional assessment

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, progressive central nervous system disease characterized by distributed white matter injury. Particularly prevalent in Canada, MS is a leading cause of disability with extended personal and societal costs given its early onset (on average between 20-40 years of age). Deficits in executive functioning are common and detrimental to employment, daily functioning and quality of life, however their precise nature remains underspecified. Two studies were undertaken to: (1) describe the executive processes affected in MS, including neurophysiological correlates, and (2) explore, in a double-blind randomized controlled trial, patients' response to an intervention for improving behavioural self-regulation. Study 1 described significant functional limitations and impairments in processing speed and executive control of attention, memory and working memory in MS patients, both relative to neurologically healthy controls and as a monotonic function of disease severity. Mean amplitudes for event-related potentials (ERPs) including the P3 and the error-related negativity and positivity (ERN, Pe) were linked to behavioural markers of attention control and performance monitoring. ERP amplitudes and ERP-behavioural associations appeared sensitive to the presence and severity of executive dysfunction related to disease progression. In Study 2, these impaired MS patients were randomly assigned to a modified version of Goal Management Training (GMT) or a psycho-educational control group (Brain Health Workshop, BHW). In GMT, patients learned stepwise strategies (Stop-State-Split) to keep on track in their daily activities, including mindfulness training to enhance attentional awareness and control. Rehabilitation outcomes were assessed post-training and at a 6-month follow-up using a multi-level battery. Compared to BHW, GMT was associated with greater improvement on tests of executive-attentional processes as well as functional task performance and observable functioning in daily life activities. ERP-behavioural changes provided corollary evidence of improved self-regulatory processing. This study is among the first to demonstrate improvement in executive functioning compared to an active control condition in MS patients with a range of disease severity and with effects remaining visible at six months. While replication in a larger sample size is needed, results suggest GMT as a potentially effective approach for executive and self-regulatory impairment in people with MS.
Women, Work, and Family: Estimating Married Women's Status Achievement Over Their Careers
Keywords: women, work, family

My dissertation project examines women’s family lives, career trajectories, and status attainment. I draw on the concept of the work-family interface to highlight how work and families operate as contextual layers that cross-over in shaping definitions and appraisals of mothers as workers and workers as mothers. Utilizing data on married mothers’ complete working histories, I demonstrate that job exits due to motherhood negatively impact women’s occupational status attainment (SES), but I also show that women face penalties when changing jobs involuntarily and also due to personal reasons not tied to the maternal role. Importantly, in each instance, I demonstrate that these effects operate independently of the non-employment durations they engender, offering broad support for the status characteristics framework which points to the role of employer appraisals of women’s work commitment in shaping their SES outcomes. I also bring families back into the discussion of the work-family interface via the construction of a family-level framework that draws on mothers’, fathers’ and children’s attitudes about maternal employment as a platform for the development of discrete family configurations. I reveal a wide array of family attitude configurations that underscore that maternal employment continues to be contested moral terrain in some families while it is ii supported in others. In particular, I show that in egalitarian families—where maternal employment is not seen as a risk to ‘good’ mothering—mothers report more positive experiences of family and marital relations, less housework and more paid work, and higher earnings. I argue that family contexts represent an important yet understudied contextual reality that is more than the sum of individual views and which have unique consequences for women’s family lives and status trajectories.
Dreams in Early Modern England: Frameworks of Interpretation
Keywords: Dreams
Sleep
Nightmare
History of Ideas
Visions
Culture
England
Early Modern

While dreams as visions have received much attention from historians, less work has been undertaken on understanding more commonly experienced dreams that occurred in sleep. In this dissertation I seek to begin redressing this neglect. Two overarching questions focus the dissertation: How did early modern English people understand their dreams? And did these understandings change in response to significant developments in English culture? To answer these questions I explore early modern English theories, beliefs and experiences of dreams through a close study of key medical, demonological, philosophical, spiritual, oneirocritic and private writings. I suggest that in the period 1550-1750 there were three principal frameworks used to understand dreams: (1) health of the body and mind, (2) prediction and (3) spirituality. These three frameworks coexisted, either reinforcing or contesting one another throughout the period. The framework of health saw dreams as natural products of the body and mind that revealed the overall health of the dreamer. In the model of prediction, dreams were deemed significant, yet encoded, clues to the future that required careful interpretation. Finally, in spiritual frameworks, dreams were conceived as sent by God, angels or the Devil. Since early modern English writings reveal a diversity of natural and supernatural theories about dreams that never really declined, a study of them also helps to complicate ideas about the disenchantment of the world. Finally, I also suggest that early modern English writings on dreams reveal the perceived vulnerability of the dreamer to internal and external forces. Dreams were a locus where the boundaries between the human and divine, supernatural and natural, met and merged, making the individual vulnerable to a host of external and internal forces.