VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Legislation of Structural Violence, Inequities, and Social Injustices? An Institutional Ethnography of the social organization of HIV Healthcare and Treatment for African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) People Living with HIV in Canada
Keywords: African
Caribbean and Black people
HIV care cascade
HIV healthcare
Inequities
Social injustice
Structural violence

Biomedical HIV discourses demonstrate that people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment (ART) can achieve undetectable viral load or a state of undetectability, which is fundamental for optimizing health outcomes, decreasing mortality and morbidity, and preventing HIV transmission. Despite the biomedical breakthroughs and the global and national commitment to end HIV/AIDS, African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) people remain structurally disadvantaged, marginalized and experience disproportionate burden of HIV. The way that HIV healthcare and treatment are organized has significant implications for ACB people. This dissertation research draws on institutional ethnography (IE) to explore how ACB people access HIV healthcare and treatment given the social context and their actualities. Through the lens of structural violence, this IE illuminates invisible and taken-for-granted harmful effects of laws, policies and institutional practices organizing and regulating healthcare access and delivery in Ontario, Canada. The research explicates how laws, policies, and institutional practices shape Black people’s day-to-day lives in ways that constrain their ability to access and engage in HIV healthcare, adhere to ART, and reach undetectability. This research uses data obtained through semi-structured interviews with Black people living with HIV (n=20) and fifteen health workers (n=15), including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, frontline workers, and health policy actors, and textual analysis of biomedical HIV/AIDS discourses, and legislative and human right frameworks. The inquiry begins from the experiences of ACB people seeking HIV healthcare and explores the struggles they encounter accessing care within Canada’s healthcare system. This inquiry demonstrates that standardized biomedical HIV discourses, which are presented as “best practices,” ignore and obscure forms of structural violence that perpetuate inequities and violate individual and population right to health. The dissertation unmasks a multi-axial model of violence, inequities, social injustices, and suffering that constrain Black people’s ability to enter the healthcare system, access HIV healthcare, adhere to ART, reach undetectability, and achieve optimal health outcomes and quality life, and therefore undermining public health and global HIV response efforts of ending HIV and contributing to the pathologization of Black people. Actioning Black Health provides a human rights, equity and social justice informed operational framework for facilitating HIV healthcare and treatment interventions.
The Role of dmbx1 and pcdh15 in Zebrafish Retinal Development and Disease
Keywords: Homeobox
Photoreceptor
Protocadherin
Retina
Usher syndrome
Zebrafish

The retina is organized into layers of different retinal cells, including photoreceptors, which are responsible for vision. Precise development of the retina requires (1) the coordinated expression of genetic networks to promote the differentiation of different retinal cells from multipotent retinal progenitor cells (RPCs), and (2) the adaptation of structural features to elaborate unique cell morphologies necessary for their function. Improper development or maintenance of retinal cells are responsible for many retinal dystrophies including blinding diseases, Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and Usher syndrome (USH). In this thesis, I explore two genes that exemplify these processes including the homeobox transcription factor, dmbx1, and putative adhesion molecule and USH gene, pcdh15, in the retina. Using CRISPR genome editing technology, I created the first zebrafish mutants for the paralogs dmbx1a/b and pcdh15b that display retinopathic features. Despite previous accounts that suggest dmbx1 is required for RPC cell cycle exit, I find that although there are some early defects in RPC proliferation and cell death, the retina initially forms normally in the mutant context. However, specifically in dmbx1a mutants, I find novel phenotypes showing greater amounts of retinal cell death, failure of post-embryonic retinal growth, and progressive development of dystrophic photoreceptors. RNA-seq analysis indicates that these phenotypes can be attributed to dysregulation of a small subset of genes associated with retinal disease and ciliogenesis. Although reports of Pcdh15 mice mutants fail to mimic retinopathy, I show that zebrafish pcdh15b mutants display defects in the outer segment (OS) regions of photoreceptors, and the synapse. Zebrafish pcdh15b mutants show abnormal photoreceptor integrity, including detachment of OS from the cell body, and abnormal growth of OS discs, which are both exacerbated under bright light conditions, as well as disorganization of synaptic elements. Furthermore, the current model of USH-associated retinal disease suggests that USH is a degenerative issue, however, the detection of these defects in early developing photoreceptor cells indicates a progressive developmental pathology. Together, my work highlights new finding of these genes using zebrafish models, and the importance of establishing proper transcriptional gene networks, as well as maintaining structural molecules in the prevention of retinal dystrophies.
Legalize it? A Comparative Study of Cannabis Economies in St. Vincent and St. Lucia
Keywords: Cannabis
Plantation
Politics
St. Lucia
St. Vincent

This dissertation examines the historical origins, as well as the cultural, political and economic significance of the ganja industries of the Eastern Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and St. Lucia. The primary research question this dissertation sought to answer was, would the legalization of ganja in the Eastern Caribbean be an economically viable replacement for bananas? The additional two sub-questions were: What are the power dynamics of the illegal ganja trade? Furthermore, what is the current contribution of the ganja trade to the economies of St. Vincent and St. Lucia? The central argument of this dissertation is that the emergence, variation and importance of the ganja economies in St. Vincent and St. Lucia arise from their particular historical legacies of colonial underdevelopment and the failure of capitalism to generate a sustained, widespread improvement in living standards. The historical combination of outward-oriented economies that failed to meet the needs of the domestic majority, and weak states (themselves a product of capitalist underdevelopment) facilitated a pattern of resistance rooted in the use of illegal activities as a mode of survival employed by the rural and urban poor. This pattern of resistance has its origins in clandestine circuits of trade and production that arose during slavery. However, unlike past illegal economic activities, the ganja economy, in responding to widespread unemployment and catering to regional as well as local needs, represents a departure from the plantation model of the past. Despite data limitations, this project has established that ganja has become much more important to these economies than bananas or remittances, acting as an indispensable grassroots social safety net. However, given the power of international capitalist interests and the predisposition of domestic elites, the available evidence thus far suggests that the governments of these Eastern Caribbean countries will not pursue the policies necessary to ensure that the ganja industry develops in a way that benefits local populations and threatens to erase the lifeline that ganja has provided for so many in the region.
Universes of the Mind: the Jungian Archetype of the Self in the Works of Philip K. Dick and Valerio Evangelisti
Keywords: archetypal studies
Italian science fiction
jungian studies
Philip K Dick
science fiction
Valerio Evangelisti

This thesis examines the influence of Jungian’s analytical psychology on Philip K. Dick’s early narratives and Valerio Evangelisti’ Eymerich Saga by focusing on the central Jungian archetype of the Self. “Universes of the mind,” a concept that comes from Dick, refers to the visionary power of symbolic images, namely, what Dick and Evangelisti tried to discover and investigate through their writing. By focusing on Dick’s Ubik and Evangelisti’s Cherudek, this thesis explores how Jung’s archetype of the Self manifests within the context of physics, mythology, numerology, alchemy and the history of religions in their novels. In both novels—and select other works by Dick and Evangelisti—Jungian theories of the archetypes influence not only the narrative structures but also the character dynamics. By moreover following Campbell’s hero journey—a theoretical journey based on Jung’s process of individuation—these writers represent the inner struggle of the individual to achieve psychological integration. Despite significant variances between them, the two authors take inspiration from Jung’s concepts of synchronicity and schizophrenia in order to represent the condition of capitalist society. These similarities between Dick’s and Evangelisti’s SF make it possible to identify a shared tendency in their use of literature as a way to represent the psychological effects of capitalism in western society.
Gene Immunotherapy Against Amyloid Pathology in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease
Keywords: Adeno-associated virus (AAV)
Alzheimer's disease
Gene therapy
MRI-guided focused ultrasound
Single chain variable fragment (scFv)
TgCRND8 mice

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by progressive accumulation of amyloid-beta peptides (Aβ) in the brain and severe cognitive decline. Several anti-Aβ immunotherapies failed to efficiently slow disease progression and improve cognition in clinical trials. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) limits the bioavailability of intravenously administered antibodies to the brain, potentially contributing to reduce efficacy. I hypothesized that engineering neurons to continuously produce anti-Aβ antibodies in the brain will increase therapeutic efficacy. To evaluate this hypothesis, I developed a gene immunotherapy approach; delivering adeno-associated virus 6 (AAV6) that encoded for a recombinant anti-Aβ single-chain variable fragment (rSol), AAV6-rSol, into the brain of TgCRND8 mice, a preclinical model of amyloidosis. rSol was derived from Solanezumab, a human antibody against soluble Aβ. I tested my hypothesis by completing three objectives. Firstly, I designed, constructed, and purified rSol, and then I confirmed its high affinity for soluble Aβ. Secondly, I engineered rSol under the control of synapsin promoter into an AAV6 and demonstrated that the expression of rSol was neuronal-specific in vitro and in vivo. In TgCRND8 mice, I found that rSol had prolonged neuronal expression for over 14 months, efficiently preventing Aβ deposition into Aβ plaques, reducing associated dystrophic neurites and decreasing the activation of astrocytes and microglia at 6-month post-intracranial delivery in neonates. Thirdly, I delivered AAV6-rSol into the brain of adult TgCRND8 mice non-invasively and evaluated the impact of this treatment on mice behaviour. Focused ultrasound (FUS), guided by magnetic resonance imaging (MRIgFUS) was used to temporarily increase the permeability of the BBB, allowing AAV6-rSol to reach the brain. No amelioration was detected in nest building activity and locomotion of TgCRND8 mice. Low gene delivery in these experiments likely contributed to the lack of robust effect on behaviour. I suggest that MRIgFUS-mediated gene delivery can be optimized using higher AAV dosage or more efficient serotypes such as AAV9, guided by the methodological protocol outlined in this thesis. In conclusion, I developed a neuronal gene immunotherapy with therapeutic efficacy against Aβ deposition. Combined with promising non-invasive gene delivery to the brain, gene immunotherapy could lead to clinical benefits in the future.
Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware at Tell el-Maskhuta – Evolution, Character, and Function during the Middle Bronze Age/Second Intermediate Period
Keywords: Egypt
Hyksos
Middle Bronze Age
Second Intermediate Period
Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware
Wadi Tumilat

Tell el-Maskhuta was a major settlement in Wadi Tumilat located in eastern Nile Delta with Western Asiatic population dating to the Second Intermediate Period. It was excavated by the Wadi Tumilat Project under the direction of John S. Holladay in the late 1970s and early 80s, and despite its remote location, showed great potential in understanding of the 15th Dynasty presence in the periphery of the eastern Nile Delta. Unfortunately, after the initial excavation and land survey were completed, the site was never fully analyzed or published. This study aims to re-examine the archival material and conduct a re-evaluation of the data collected during the excavation of the site. The typological and petrographic analysis of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware found at Tell el-Maskhuta allowed to confirm the dating of the site and provided evidence of local adaptation and evolution of this vessel type. A pattern of changes in the fabric use attested for those highly specialized and standardized vessels was a sign of evolution of their sequence of production in order to accommodate locally available raw materials. It also signalled the emergence of a local ceramic tradition incorporating both Egyptian and Levantine traits. The analysis of available data showed that, contrary to previously accepted theories, Wadi Tumilat could have been involved in the long-distance, over-land trade with both southern and northern Levant. The results of this work present a better understanding of the site’s function and development during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), its place in the Hyksos trade network, and role in the local settlement system. Consequently, Wadi Tumilat was considered as a significant southern corridor leading in and out of Egypt, and a part of the southern desert route traversing the Sinai Peninsula towards the Negev Desert and the Jordan Valley. Tell el-Maskhuta, due to its size and location, could have functioned as a “gateway city” into the Wadi, and consequently into the Nile Delta. As a part of the Hyksos trade network, Tell el-Maskhuta provides invaluable clues to the logistics of the 15th Dynasty economy and its contacts with neighbouring areas beyond the reach of the maritime trade.
Unthinkable Subjects: Postmortem Poetics in Modernity
Keywords: contemporary poetry and poetics
critical race studies
experimental writing
literature and death
psychoanalysis
queer theory

“Unthinkable Subjects: Postmortem Poetics in Modernity” investigates the status of the dead in theory and the avant-garde at the limits of race and sex. Bringing together queer theory, critical race studies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary experimental writing, this thesis suggests that the dead animate these fields as a site for ethical and political inquiry. If oppressive rhetoric murders by castigating nonnormative others beyond the sphere of the common—as sick, infected, contagion, dying, or already dead—this thesis examines the risks of reclaiming such murdered and murderous bodies. Since fatality invigorates queer theory and critical race studies, the first part of the thesis considers the murderous subjectivities that compose these fields. In this section, the thesis critiques the “murderous jouissance” of the antisocial thesis in queer theory, which offers the most extreme version of self-annihilating fantasy as an ethos of being in the world. Given that the antisocial thesis is most often articulated through psychoanalysis, the thesis goes on to historicize questions of psychoanalysis and race in Frantz Fanon, arguing that for racialized subjects a condition of murderousness registers the violent logic of racism as a psychotic aberration. The rest of the thesis offers readings of contemporary experimental texts working along axes of race and sex, troubling both queer theory’s self-assured fantasy and the apparent inescapability of racialization as a psychically damaging prison. The writers in this study—Wilson Harris, Gail Scott, and Renee Gladman—paradoxically respond to the murderous language of oppressive rhetoric with texts that demonstrate how language not only murders but is itself murdered. Murdered language is registered by the experimental poetics that claim unbecoming, decay, attrition, severance, and violence as their form, resulting in narratives of “in-existence”—texts that formally dwell in and meditate on ambivalence, refuse narrative wholeness, solicit poetic enigma, and traverse the antagonisms of language. Each author’s investment in murder, self-murder, self-annihilation, or self-removal paradoxically offers nonaggressive forms of undoing, ravishment, and coming undone as that which occasions novel ways to claim ontological murder at the scintillating and ecstatic limit of fatal language.
Nuclear Export of Proteasomes in Yeast
Keywords: Nuclear export
Nuclear import
Nucleocytoplasmic transport
Proteasome
Yeast

Ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is responsible for ~90% of regulated protein turnover in eukaryotes to sustain protein homeostasis. The proteasome is the key protease of the UPS. It is composed of the catalytic core particle (CP) and regulatory particle (RP) that consists of a base and a lid. Regulation of the proteasome’s abundance, activity and localization is critical for cell survival with implications in cancer and neurodegeneration. Proteasome localization is a dynamic process prone to changes dictated by its environment. In proliferating yeast cells growing in nutrient-rich conditions proteasomes are localized primarily in the nucleus throughout the cell cycle and are involved in proteolysis. Upon carbon depletion yeast cells enter quiescence, a reversible phase characterized by cell cycle arrest and low ATP reserves. Proteasomes are then exported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm by a mechanism that seemingly is not the canonical nuclear export pathway where a nuclear export receptor (exportin) fuelled by the GTPase Ran (RanGTP) shuttles its cargo from the nucleus through the nuclear pore complex (NPC) into the cytoplasm and subsequent GTP hydrolysis dissociates the export complex. Previously, Ran (Gsp1 in yeast) but no known exportins were shown to co-purify with the proteasome. This led to the hypothesis that the proteasome could drive its own export by interacting with GTP-bound Gsp1 (Gsp1GTP) and the NPC mediated by its RP base subunits Rpn1 and/or Rpn2. Homologous Rpn1 and Rpn2 show structural similarity to transport receptors. To that end, this work demonstrates that proteasomes are exported as fully assembled holoenzymes in a Gsp1-dependent manner through the NPC. Yeast proteasome mutant strain rpn2ΔN with N-terminally truncated Rpn2 is deficient in proteasome nuclear export. Furthermore, unlike wild type, rpn2ΔN-proteasomes do not bind Gsp1 due to their structural instability. Incorporation of Rpn2 constructs into rpn2ΔN-proteasomes improves stability, rescues export and restores Gsp1 binding, resulting from the stable inclusion of Rpn2’s C-terminus within the proteasome. Gsp1GTP interacts with the RP base, likely through Rpn1 and Rpt1, also an RP base subunit. In conclusion, the proteasome’s RP base serves as the adapter for the holoenzyme’s export by promoting interactions with Gsp1GTP and the NPC.
(Re)defining Feminist Resistance, Activism and Empowerment in Rape Crisis Centres: Black Women’s Perspectives and Implications for Education
Keywords: Black Women
Feminism
Gender
Indigenous knowledges
Race
Spirituality

The anti-rape movement has largely understood issues of sexual violence, including its prevalence, prevention, and response to survivors of sexual violence, from the perspective of Eurocentric ideals of White womanhood. The theories and practices related to violence against women used by mainstream feminists are largely gender-based and do not pay sufficient attention to intersectionality – how race, culture, class, and other important social factors inform deeper understandings of violence against women. In turn, African/Black women’s experiences and contributions to feminist organizing have been overlooked, undocumented and made invisible with hegemonic feminist movements. This dissertation acknowledges, documents and amplifies African/Black women’s experiences working and volunteering in rape crisis and sexual assault centres in Ontario, Canada. Using an anti-colonial, African/Black Canadian feminist and integrative anti-racism theoretical framework to examine qualitative interviews with ten African/Black women about their experiences and perspectives on feminist organizing in rape crisis centres and sexual assault centres, this research reveals that African/Black women feel invisible and that their contributions to the anti-rape movement have been unvalued and disregarded. Based on the ten interviews, I argue that a focus on the intersectional experiences of womanhood for African/Black women within rape crisis centre work is needed to advance social justice within feminist organizing. Consequently, if the colonial and operative processes within rape crisis and sexual assault centres are not disrupted, the anti-rape movement will continue to perpetuate systemic violence with disproportionate adverse outcomes for African/Black women, whether as workers, clients or support seekers in rape crisis and sexual assault centres. This dissertation puts forth several instrumental recommendations and calls for transformative education, pedagogy, scholarship and research that centres the embodied lived experiences of African/Black women in classrooms, higher learning institutions, social services, feminist organizations and subsequent social movements within Canada and elsewhere.
Lung Repair and Regeneration after Injury: Molecular Mechanisms and Therapeutic Opportunities
Keywords: Lung injury
Regeneration
Stem cells

Introduction: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by defused alveolar damage and impaired re-epithelialization. Left lung pneumonectomy has been shown to increase lung tidal volume that leads to pneumocyte proliferation in the right lung, suggesting that mechano-transduction may support lung regeneration. This study aimed to 1) investigate the molecular mechanisms of impaired lung repair in ARDS induced by different insults, and 2) test whether mechano-transduction can leverage lung repair through activation of alveolar regenerative properties. Hypothesis: Impaired alveolar re-epithelization is common among different phenotypes of ARDS, and modulation of mechano-transduction provokes endogenous repair. Method: Mass spectrometry was used to examine the lung injury microenvironment protein profiles of 3 mouse models of ARDS (acid, endotoxin and mechanical ventilation). Mechanical transduction by continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) was applied daily to acid aspiration model in a dose-dependent manner to determine the optimal stretch to activate endogenous alveolar stem cell. Main finding: The 3 models of lung injury commonly shared epithelial injury including pulmonary edema and neutrophil recruitment. Defective repair mechanism was evidenced by diminished surfactant, antioxidant, and mechanoreceptor- Piezo1. Alveolar re-epithelialization and repair was triggered by CPAP at optimal pressure. The preservation of epithelial cells was attributed to the activation of Piezo1-YAP pathway. Conclusion: Protein profiling identified alveolar epithelial injury and impaired repair mechanisms, which can be re-activated by mechanical signal transduction via Piezo1-YAP signaling pathway as a novel therapeutic approach for lung injury.