VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Differential reactivity in thiamin-derived intermediates: Fragmentation, elimination and catalysis
Keywords: Chemistry, Organic

The product from the decarboxylation of 2-(2-mandelyl)thiamin (MT) is an enamine and the C2α conjugate base of 2-(1-hydroxybenzyl)thiamin (HBnT). The enamine undergoes an unexpected fragmentation to an aminopyrimidine and a phenyl thiazole ketone. We have used the fragmentation process as a "clock" reaction to calibrate the rates of competing processes. From our analysis of the reactions of the enamine formed from N1'-methyl-2-(1-hydroxybenzyl)thiamin (MHBT), we established the mechanism and rate constant for fragmentation as well as the rates of the competing protonation by Brønsted acids. The protonation and fragmentation processes were also observed in the enamine resulting from the decarboxylation of 2-(2-mandelyl)thiamin (MT). While the product-determining protonation step in the decarboxylation of MT is general-acid catalyzed, the preceding rate-determining decarboxylation is catalyzed specifically by Brønsted acids related to N-protonated pyridine. Since the catalysis is not related to the pKa of the acid, we suggest that the species associates with MT prior to decarboxylation and either reduces the energy of the transition state for carbon-carbon bond cleavage or accelerates the departure of carbon dioxide. In the reactions of MHBT and MT, which are analogues of covalent intermediates formed on benzoylformate decarboxylase, nonenzymic fragmentation of the enamine is about one hundred times faster than the enzymic turnover of substrate. Yet, fragmentation of the enzymic decarboxylation product derived from MT diphosphate does not occur. Enzymic decarboxylation of benzoylformate is also 106-times faster than the spontaneous decarboxylation of MT. Our results suggest that these differences may arise from: (1) the carbanionic intermediate formed enzymically possessing minimal enamine character compared to the fully delocalized intermediate formed in solution, making protonation fast and fragmentation impossible; (2) acid-catalyzed decarboxylation accelerating the departure of carbon dioxide and suppressing the fragmentation. We prepared p-bromomethyl-2-(2-mandelyl)thiamin and observed that its rate of decarboxylation is similar to that of MT. Furthermore, no fragmentation occurs as the carbanionic species formed from decarboxylation produced products from the elimination of bromide and protonation of the carbon-centered base. This is similar to what is observed in the reaction of benzoylformate decarboxylase with p-bromomethyl-benzoylformate. Inhibition results as elimination is faster than enzyme-facilitated protonation or spontaneous fragmentation.
Freedom of religion vs. substantive equality: Value-based resolution of conflicts in the context of the Ontario sharia law debate
Keywords: Freedom of religion, Ontario
Islamic law, Ontario
Equality before the law, Ontario
Dispute resolution (Law), Ontario

The debate in Ontario regarding religious based family arbitrations highlights the need to clarify the values that should guide the resolution of conflicts between freedom of religion and equality. Clashes involving religion are unique, as religion is both a ground upon which one may be oppressed, and a vehicle through which discrimination against others is perpetuated. Grounding rights conflicts in the value of human dignity means that where state action is concerned, the protection of freedom of religion would not permit the state to infringe on the equality rights of others. In the human rights context, private religious organizations would be given room to discriminate in certain narrow circumstances. Judgments in Charter and human rights cases have explicitly and, more often, implicitly, taken this approach. An explicit articulation of underlying values is necessary in order to avoid having the Charter working at cross purposes so that the perpetuation of inequality results.
Pendulums and paradigms: education reform in Ontario
Keywords: Education, History
Education, Ontario
Educational change, History
Educational change, Ontario
Education, Aims and objectives
Education, Ontario
Education and state, History
Education and state, Ontario

This study examines the development of a centralized, state-regulated system of education in Ontario, and explores subsequent efforts to reform schooling during the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. Considering social, political, and economic currents throughout Ontario's past provides a context through which efforts to alter the structure and purposes of schooling can be viewed and assessed. Justifications for traditional and child-centred pedagogical practices are considered in this light, along with their influence. Different times with unique circumstances demand that the 'means and ends' of schooling be continually reexamined. While initially viewed as a training ground for the social and economic elite, the system of public education expanded to combat various social ills while promoting political stability and economic prosperity. Once established, the educational mandate adjusted to the various social and economic concerns of the times, implementing pedagogical reforms to suit the altered perspectives.
La toile magique: student-artists exploring cultures, school experience and transformation
Keywords: Art, Study and teaching
Critical pedagogy
Indians of North America, Education
Indians of North America, Canada
Educational change
Education, Canada
Education, Philosophy
Teaching

Two groups of high school students, 12 rural, Grade Nine Aboriginal and 12 urban, non-Aboriginal, engaged in an extra-curricular, intercultural arts-based project. One year after the inter-school arts-based project I meet, individually, nine urban and rural student-artists and their two teachers. The student-artists each told stories of self-discovery and of their place in school, their new found awareness of the natural environment, and significant awakenings and realizations about their and the other's culture. The different locational contexts, and the multiple perspectives on similar school and cultural experiences merge to reveal the powerful and pervasive influence of formal schooling. Self-discovery, building relationships and a sense of community emerge in this qualitative, arts-informed research. Through poetic transcriptions, student narratives and poetry I explore processes and unearth the transformative possibilities of holistic, non-formal learning experiences. The transformational possibilities and realizations that emerged from this singular experience may, indeed, prove to be lasting.
Palynology of the mid-Cretaceous Mattagami Formation and correlative sediments of Ontario
Keywords: Palynology, Ontario

The Mattagami Formation, located to the southeast of Hudson Bay, consists of carbonaceous shales and siltstones, lignites and well sorted quartz sands. These sediments represent a low gradient fluvial-paludal depositional system in an isolated intracratonic basin, which was deposited over 800 kilometers from the nearest marine sediments of the western interior. The age of the deposit is palynologically determined as Middle to Late Albian. Five palynozones are erected and can be used to correlate within the formation. The depositional environment is interpreted as freshwater, low gradient fluvial wetlands in a warm temperate climate. A rich terrestrial palynoflora, including a diverse assemblage of algal palynomorphs, was recovered. The assemblage is freshwater and contains one of the earliest occurrences of freshwater dinoflagellates, represented by 2 ceratioid genera, predominantly Nyktericysta and less frequently Balmula. Zygnematacean zygospores are represented Ovoidites, Lecaniella, and cysts comparable to zygospores of recent Mougeotia. Botryococcus is ubiquitous. Freshwater algal cysts of unknown botanical affinity are represented by Schizosporis and Cymatiosphaera. Three families of freshwater algae are are recognized for the first time from pre-Tertiary sediments: Coelastraceae, Oedogoniaceae, and Sphaeropleaceae. The Mattagami Formation fulfills a rigorous set of criteria that demonstrate deposition in a freshwater paleoenvironment. The occurrence of ceratioid dinoflagellates in this freshwater deposit implies that they alone are not a positive indicator of marine conditions. The freshwater paleoecological affinities of Pediastrum, Botryococcus, Schizocystia, Tetraporina, and Cymatiosphaera, which in the past were associated, in part, with marine environments, are strengthened. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Staying on the 'straight path': a critical ethnography of Islamic schooling in Ontario
Keywords: Islamic education, Ontario
Muslim girls, Education
Muslim girls, Ontario

This study provides a critical ethnographic examination of 4 full-time Islamic schools in order to examine the social, pedagogical and ideological functions of these alternative, religiously-based educational institutions in Canada. This research is based on the following three objectives: (1) identifying the role and function of Islamic schooling in a diasporic context, (2) understanding the role of Islamic education in the development of Islamic identity, (3) examining the Islamization of knowledge and pedagogy in Islamic schools. The discursive socialization and educational practices of Islamic schools also serve to structure gender roles in the Muslim community. The socialization of Muslim girls in particular is implicated by the contested notion of gender identity in Islam. Muslim girls must negotiate various orientations and articulations of identity that both challenge and affirm traditional notions about Islamic womanhood, as well as facing situations of "gendered Islamophobia" outside of schools. For religiously oriented families, Islamic schools provide a more seamless transition between the values, beliefs and practices of the home and school environment. They also provide a space free from racism and religious discrimination that many students encounter within public schools. This study also examines the epistemological foundations for Islamically-centred education and the pedagogical strategies, including methods of discipline and socialization. These aspects of knowledge, pedagogy and practice are examined in order to better understand how they are informed by the religious and spiritual traditions of Islam. Operating as a spiritually-based alternative to the public education system, independent Islamic schools take on multiple sociological roles. For example, these schools attempt to create a "safe" environment that protects students from the "de-Islamizing" forces in public schools and society at large. Some parents choose Islamic schools for children who have become engaged in un-Islamic behaviours such as alcohol or drug use, gang activities or sexual promiscuity. In these circumstances the schools function as spaces for the re-socialization and rehabilitation of wayward youth. Islamic schools therefore also operate as sites for the social reproduction of Islamic identity.
Job loss as career growth: Predictors and outcomes of career exploration and job search during involuntary career transition
Keywords: Human resouce management
Organizational behavior
Dissertations, Academic, Canada

In this study, career exploration and job search are examined as coping strategies during involuntary career transitions. The study highlights the role of career exploration for individuals facing career transitions later in life and, most importantly, the potential of career exploration to lead to better quality of jobs upon reemployment and more perceived career growth. The focus of this study is on the three career-related predictors of job search and career exploration, referred to as career-orientation variables: (1) career identity salience, (2) career field tenure, and (3) occupational commitment. In addition, the study also includes some situational and dispositional predictors that are commonly examined in the job loss literature, namely, two types of coping resources, appraisal of job loss and personality characteristics. It is proposed here that career exploration will be of particular benefit to individuals in career transition, as they may employ exploration as a means of coping with and adjusting to a shifting set of challenges posed by unemployment. Lastly, the study examines several reemployment quality outcomes (job improvement, career growth, time unemployed and turnover intention) and posits that those who engage in career exploration possibly in addition to job search during their transition will be more likely to benefit upon reemployment.
Earnings distortion and CEO compensation
Keywords: Accounting
Dissertations, Academic, Canada

This thesis tests multitask agency theory in which the agent has multi-dimensional tasks and both an undistorted and a distorted performance measure are available for contracting. Accounting earnings is modeled as a distorted performance measure and stock returns as a relatively undistorted measure. First, I demonstrate that the marginal products of CEOs' earnings management actions with respect to accounting earnings, in general, are not equal to the marginal products of their earnings management actions with respect to stock returns. In doing so, I provide evidence in support of the hypothesis that accounting earnings is a distorted performance measure because of CEOs' earnings management actions. This distortion measure is then used to investigate cross-sectional variation in the relative sensitivity of CEO compensation to accounting earnings. I find that the weight placed on accounting earnings relative to stock returns in CEO compensation decreases as earnings distortion increases. Overall, the results provide evidence consistent with multitask agency theory, which predicts that optimal compensation contracts put less weight on the distorted performance measure as its distortion increases in order to improve the efficiency of CEOs' effort allocation across tasks.
Writing the dissertation proposal: a comparative case study of four nonnative- and two native-English-speaking doctoral students of education
Keywords: English language, Study and teaching
Dissertations, Academic
Proposal writing in education
Native language and education

The textual features of the proposals as well as the processes of producing them were influenced by the social/disciplinary contexts in which the students were situated and the personal states of the students. The processes of writing the proposal varied more among each individual student rather than between the NNS and NS speakers even though some NNS students reported that they spent more time on editing their proposals and they faced big challenges in the English language and academic writing conventions. I found, in analyzing the proposals, that differences in the students' written texts were less related to their linguistic or cultural backgrounds but more to the ideology and epistemological and methodological norms and conventions of their disciplines or programs of study. Through the lenses of 6 doctoral students of education, their dissertation proposals, and their mentors, this study describes the context, processes, and products of the students' proposal writing. It also analyzes fundamental influences on graduate students' proposal writing and areas of individual differences (besides linguistic backgrounds) among the students' writing which affected the textual features of the students' proposals and their processes of producing the proposals. Data were collected over a period of 10 months in 2 graduate programs in education in a large Canadian university from 4 nonnative-English-speaking (NNS) and 2 native-English-speaking (NS) doctoral students of education and from 5 professors who were nominated by the students and deemed most familiar with these students' thesis proposal writing. The data consist of interviews, a questionnaire completed by each student, 6 dissertation proposals, and other written documents produced by the students and their professors. The study has several implications for theory, pedagogy, and future research. The construct of NNS versus NS was problematic in practice. Both NNS and NS graduate students need ongoing support from their professors and writing instructors or services while they engage in disciplinary writing. Some NNS students may need more help with grammar, vocabulary, and styles of academic genres than their NS counterparts do. Immersion/participation in disciplinary discourse communities and explicit instructions on discipline-specific writing norms/conventions and the English language itself are of equal importance to success of the students' academic enculturation.
Hypostatin, a new small molecule inhibitor of plant cell expansion, is glyco-activated in vivo
Keywords: Molecular biology
Botany
Genetics

Natural variation in humans in the response to a bioactive or drug-like small organic molecule is defined as pharmacogenetic variation. Studies have shown that variation in both drug metabolism genes and drug target loci can cause inter-individual variation in drug response. For example, sequence differences in UDP-glucuronosyl transferases (UGTs), which glycosylate xenobiotics, can affect drug sensitivity by affecting rates of drug detoxification. Although this subject has been explored extensively in humans, the biological pervasiveness of pharmacogenetic variation had not been systematically examined. If pervasive, pharmacogenetic variation in model systems could be used for both functional studies and to gain deeper insight into the mechanisms of this important form of natural variation. To examine this question, 8 geographically diverse Arabidopsis accessions were screened on a 10,000 member chemical library. I focused on new inhibitors of cell expansion in the etiolated hypocotyl. In total, 742 chemicals (7.4%) caused greater than 20% inhibition of hypocotyl cell expansion. 11 weak polymorphic chemicals were uncovered, as well as a strong polymorphic hypocotyl cell expansion inhibitor, named hypostatin. My work has firmly established the existence of pharmacogenetic variation in Arabidopsis.
Chinese students' participation in asynchronous educational computer conferencing
Keywords: Computer conferencing in education
Chinese students, Attitudes
Chinese students, Canada

Research has inadequately explored Chinese students' participation in asynchronous computer conferencing in Western universities. Systematic theory on these issues is likewise lacking. This study explores the influences of cultural factors on Chinese students' participation in asynchronous educational computer conferencing in Western schools. It involved six Chinese graduate students in a large urban Canadian university. Semi-structured interviews in Mandarin elicited these students' perceptions about participation in on-line courses, on-line instructors' roles, sense of on-line community and its effects on learning, and the cultural factors involved. These findings prompt some suggestions for Chinese students and Western instructors in on-line courses. They also suggest some directions for future research. Generally, the participants had positive attitude towards on-line courses. They found on-line courses compatible with some of their Chinese cultural patterns of teaching, learning and social interaction, while capable of countering cultural aspects (e.g. language, reticence) that posed problems to their learning.
Intangible transfer pricing regulations in China
Keywords: Transfer pricing, Law and legislation
Transfer pricing, China
Taxation, Law and legislation
Taxation, China

Transfer pricing is an active subject of international taxation that has received widespread attention in many countries. With respect to China, the subject of transfer pricing is very much alive and China is becoming more sophisticated and consistent in enforcing this area of the law. However as to transfer pricing of intangibles, China's legislation is still on early stage. With the rapid growth of intangible trades between multinational corporations, especially after China joined WTO, China's revenue government is facing many challenges that result in tax revenue loss or unregulated intangible investment market. This thesis will talk about the challenges Chinese government is facing and discuss the sources that these problems come from. This thesis will also analyze the possible solutions to these problems by learning from other countries' legislation and experience and OECD Guidelines. It will discuss the advantages as well as disadvantages.
Two essays on the impact of goals on consumer behavior
Keywords: Marketing
Dissertations, Academic, Canada

This dissertation includes two essays on the impact of goals on consumer behavior. The first essay investigates the moderating role of regulatory focus in resolving product choice involving conflicting goals. Specifically, the results of four experiments demonstrate that when both a high-level and a low-level consumer goal are active, but cannot be satisfied by a single product, consumers with a promotion focus are more likely to choose a product that satisfies the high-level goal whereas consumers with a prevention focus are more likely to choose a product that satisfies the low-level goal. These experiments also find that these effects occur because the promotion focus and the prevention focus has different effects on the accessibility of the high-level and low-level goals, and the accessibility of goals, in turn mediates the effects on conflicting product choice. The results of five experiments show that (1) the brand-as-means is different from other brands that are perceived to be equally capable of satisfying this goal. Specifically, when the goal is activated, both its cognitive properties (e.g., activation) and its motivational properties (e.g., wanting and specific affective experience) get transferred to the brand-as-means, but not to other brands (experiment 1 to 3), and (2) when the goal is activated, the brand-as-means is more likely to be selected over other brands (experiment 4 and 5). The second essay examines situations in which there are multiple brands in a product category that consumers perceive as equally capable of satisfying an active goal. Based on the recent goal system theory in social psychology (Kruglanski et al. 2002), we propose the concept of brand-as-means and demonstrate how it differs from other brands. We conceptualize brand-as-means as a consumer's idiosyncratic way to achieve their personal goal. Others may use other brands to achieve the same goal, but these brands could vary by consumer. We further propose that the brand-as-means is a part of a consumer's goal system, whereas other brands are exclusively represented in the consumer' knowledge structure.
Early reading and writing development among Chinese kindergarten children in Montessori and traditional Chinese schools
Keywords: Language acquisition
Montessori method of education, China
Kindergarten, China
Reading (Early childhood), China

This study was conducted to discover whether Chinese children would go through a similar process of building their theories of print as their English-speaking peers, and whether different schooling (traditional Chinese schooling and Montessori schooling) in the same cultural context affect children's literacy development in different ways. 79 children of age four and age five respectively from one traditional school and one Montessori school were participated in the study. This study found that there were similarities in the early phases of reading and writing development between two languages, Chinese and English. Children from different schooling systems in the same cultural context showed different developmental performance in these tasks indicating that different schooling may have different impacts on children's development of reading and writing. Children from traditional Chinese kindergarten performed better than those from Montessori school in both tasks.