VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Circuits for Blind ADC-based CDRs and Frequency Detectors
Keywords: Analog to Digital Converter
Clock and data recovery
Equalization
Frequency detector
SerDes
Wireline

This thesis presents three contributions in the area of clock and data recovery (CDR). Two of these three contributions focus on the design of frequency detection mechanisms for reference-less half-rate clock and data recovery circuits, while the third one focuses on the design of blind ADC-based CDRs. While conventional CDR architectures for phase and frequency detection are dual loop, the interaction between the frequency detection loop and the phase detection loop can interfere with phase locking. Furthermore, the frequency detector, typically deactivated after lock, occupies area. This thesis introduces two new architectures for reference-less CDRs which perform frequency detection by adjusting the phase error of the phase detector. This enables the phase detector to deal with frequency offset, as well as phase offset. The feasibility of these two 10Gb/s CDRs are demonstrated through chip fabrications in Fujitsu 65nm CMOS technology and measurement results. The third contribution of this thesis is in the area of blind ADC-based CDRs. While the design simplicity of these CDRs significantly reduces their time to market, their high power consumption limits their application. This thesis studies the architecture of these CDRs with the goal of minimizing their power consumption. We will show that for a given analog power consumption, the optimum oversampling ratio is 2.8 (~3). The digital CDR is also redesigned to lower the power consumption of digital equalization. A 5Gb/s CDR was fabricated in Fujitsu 65nm CMOS technology and measurement results show a factor of 2 of power reduction, with improved performance.
The Lyrics of Zhou Bangyan (1056-1121): In Between Popular and Elite Cultures
Keywords: Zhou Bangyan
song lyrics
the Song Dynasty

Successfully synthesizing all previous styles of the lyric, or ci, Zhou Bangyan’s (1056-1121) poems oscillate between contrasting qualities in regard to aesthetics (ya and su), generic development (zheng and bian), circulation (musicality and textuality), and literary value (assumed female voice and male voice, lyrical mode and narrative mode, and the explicit and the implicit). These qualities emerged during the evolution of the lyric genre from common songs to a specialized and elegant form of art. This evolution, promoted by the interaction of popular culture and elite tradition, paralleled the canonization of the lyric genre. Therefore, to investigate Zhou Bangyan’s lyrics, I situate them within these contrasting qualities; in doing so, I attempt to demonstrate the uniqueness and significance of Zhou Bangyan’s poems in the development and canonization of the lyric genre. This dissertation contains six chapters. Chapter One outlines the six pairs of contrasting qualities associated with popular culture and literati tradition that existed in the course of the development of the lyric genre. These contrasting qualities serve as the overall framework for discussing Zhou Bangyan’s lyrics in the following chapters. Chapter Two studies Zhou Bangyan’s life, with a focus on how biographical factors shaped his perspective about the lyric genre. Chapter Three examines various methods through which Zhou Bangyan’s lyrics were circulated during the Song Dynasty, including through the performance of singing girls, anthologies compiled by the literati, and prosodic manuals of lyric meters annotated by musicians. Chapter Four focuses on the issue of lyrical voice, demonstrating how Zhou Bangyan deviated from the assumed female persona tradition by writing lyrics from the viewpoint of a male. It also analyzes the absence of the lyrical self in some of Zhou Bangyan’s lyrics on objects. Chapter Five studies how Zhou Bangyan explored the narrative mode generally found in common songs and how he developed complicated narrative techniques typical of literati lyrics. The last chapter investigates Zhou Bangyan’s lyrics with a focus on lyric structure, temporal sequence, point of view, and intertextuality, revealing the emphasis of these lyrics on an implicit style.
Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland
Keywords: Arctic Archaeology
Enskilment

This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by working closely with a community in Greenland that builds kayaks and practices traditional hunting skills. Although kayaking is no longer a primary mode of subsistence, the community finds meaning in the persistence of the skill because it is an important mechanism of intergenerational experience, and because it contains types of cultural and environmental knowledge that can only exist through practice. The community is specifically focused on the physicality of enskilment – the process through which individuals develop unique capacities for awareness and response through environmentally situated practice. Through enskilment, kayakers attune their senses to subtleties and nuances of the environment which would not otherwise be apparent, and they embody a heritage of resilience and creative responsiveness in both the natural and social environment. Drawing on three field seasons of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, I document the process through which individuals become skilled kayakers and explore the constitution of the kayaking community through practice. As demonstrated in this dissertation, the acquisition of skill in kayaking is not a passive process where knowledge is simply handed from one generation to the other. This is an important observation for archaeologists who study the past through the interpretation of material culture. It will be argued that understanding the impermanence and inherent creativity through which environmentally situated knowledge is re-grown in the experiences of each generation allows for more nuanced archaeological narratives which emphasize skilled practice on the part individuals as causative agents at work in the deeper history of Inuit culture.
Il quarto libro dell'Eneide in scena: studio filologico e critico della Dido in Cartagine (1524) di Alessandro Pazzi de' Medici
Keywords: Italian
Renaissance
Theater
Tragedy
Philology

This thesis is a commented critical edition of Alessandro Pazzi de’ Medici’s Dido in Cartagine (1524). It is based on the premise that there still exists a significant lacuna in the field of Italian Renaissance tragedy. Notwithstanding the importance attributed by many critics to Italian Cinquecento tragedy, we nonetheless do not have reliable editions of many of these works. Italian Renaissance tragedy has been for the greater part perceived as a minor literary genre, particularly when compared with comic theatre or with contemporary English and French drama. Pazzi was a Florentine scholar, educated both in Latin and Greek. Most of the tragedies written in the early sixteenth century were translations or rewritings of Greek tragedies, while Dido in Cartagine is a play that deals with a Roman subject. It is an original dramatization of Dido’s suicide after Aeneas abandons her. The main source is therefore the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid. The dissertation is comprised of an introduction, four chapters, the text of Dido in Cartagine, the critical apparatus, an appendix, and a bibliography. Chapter 1 introduces Pazzi and his works. Chapter 2. a. deals with the issue of representing death on Italian Renaissance stages. Chapter 2. b. is a study of Dido’s theatrical dimension. Chapter 3 opens the philological section of the thesis: it provides the description of the original manuscript and of its printed editions, the transcription criteria according to modern methods in textual criticism, and a table of linguistic sources used for the philological footnotes of the text. Chapter 4 presents the fourth book of the Aeneid in Latin with the first full translation in vernacular on parallel page. The text of the tragedy follows, annotated with philological and critical footnotes, and accompanied by the critical apparatus, which provides the readings, accepted as original and correct, and the variants of the 16th-century proofreader as well as the ones of the Solerti printed edition of 1887. In the appendix, readers can analyze Andrea Lancia’s compendium of the fourth book of the Aeneid. The thesis closes with a works cited section.
Sheer Force of Will: A Will Theory of Contract
Keywords: contract

In the intellectual history of contract law, one enduring idea is the “will theory”: the idea that the law of contract merely reflects the will or choice of the contracting parties. In the common law (as in the civilian tradition), this idea remains both influential and controversial. Almost all lawyers, judges, and scholars accept that the will of the parties must play some role in explaining contract law. However, they debate how encompassing, and how acceptable, that role is: the extent to which the will theory “fits” the legal doctrine that it purports to explain, and whether it provides a satisfactory justification for the institution of contract. In these debates the participants often talk past each other, because in the current scholarship there is no developed conception of what a will theory should look like. Instead, the will theory has been defined in large part by implication, through the attacks of critics who assume it is susceptible to their objections. This aim of this dissertation is to show that a will theory, formulated with appropriate precision, can explain and justify the core of the common law of contract. We can understand contractual obligation as arising through the sheer force of the contracting parties’ will.
Genome-Wide Analysis of Translation in the Early Drosophila Embryo
Keywords: Smaug
mRNA
translation
Gene Regulation

Regulation of translation plays an essential role in Drosophila embryogenesis, as loss or misexpression of regulatory proteins can cause lethal development defects. As a result of its importance in these early developmental events, there has been considerable study of translation in the early embryo. Here, I complement those studies with an investigation into translation on a genome-wide scale. In chapter 2, I describe my development and optimization of polysome-gradient protocols to study translation in the mature oocyte and early embryo on a genome-wide scale. In chapter 3, I combine the protocols developed in chapter 2 with microarray analysis to study the role of Smaug, a sequence specific RNA-binding protein, in regulating translation on a genome-wide scale. Comparisons of the list of mRNAs that co-immunoprecipitate with Smaug with those that are translationally repressed by Smaug and those that are degraded by Smaug, suggests that Smaug directly regulates the translation and stability of a large number of mRNAs in the early embryo. I also developed a new algorithm to search for Smaug binding sites, which are called Smaug Recognition Elements (SREs), in mRNAs. The presence of SREs was shown to predict Smaug binding and translational regulation. Taken together these data indicate that Smaug plays a direct and global role in regulating the translation and stability of a large fraction of the mRNAs in the early Drosophila embryo.
Priming the Brain for Recovery from Stroke: The Role of Aerobic Exercise as an Adjunct to Upper-limb Therapy
Keywords: exercise
neuroscience
physiotherapy
stroke
upper-limb

Following a stroke, the majority of individuals are left with residual deficits and there is a need to continue to improve strategies to augment recovery. This dissertation explores the approach of optimizing central nervous system conditions using aerobic exercise prior to task training. In healthy individuals a single session of aerobic exercise influences arousal and attention however, it is unknown if these effects translate to a stroke population. Further, little is known about the effect of a single bout of aerobic exercise on subsequent skill adaptation. Therefore, the main objectives of this thesis were to investigate the effect of a single bout of aerobic exercise on: (1) CNS arousal and attention in a stroke population; and, (2) short-term skill adaptation in healthy individuals and those who have suffered a stroke. Overall, for individuals recovering from a stroke, CNS arousal may be augmented as indicated by faster reaction times in some conditions and consistently faster movement times across conditions following exercise. However, attention did not appear to be influenced by the exercise bout as reaction time variability was unchanged in study 1 and absolute change was comparable across tasks with differing attentional demands in study 2. While exercise positively enhanced short-term adaptation in healthy individuals, for individuals recovering from stroke the exercise bout did not appear to benefit upper-limb movement adaptation compared to a control condition. This dissertation highlights the potential for using exercise to influence CNS state after stroke, though results revealed significant between and within-subject variability in this population. Future work should progress to evaluating the longitudinal multi-session effects of pairing aerobic exercise with ecologically valid task training to determine if the observed single session benefits augment neurorehabilitation and aid long-term recovery from stroke.
Genomic Profiling of Familial Early-age of Onset Breast Cancer
Keywords: breast cancer
cancer
copy number
exome-sequencing
microarray

Familial breast cancers make up a small proportion of all breast cancer cases. Mutations in known breast cancer susceptibility genes, such as BRCA1 and BRCA2, can explain a third of familial breast cancer risk. A woman's breast cancer risk increases two-folds if she has an affected first degree relative and the risk increases if the relative was diagnosed at a young age. Thus, it is important to understand the genetic architecture and the genes involved in breast cancer pathogenesis in individuals diagnosed at a young age with a family history of breast cancer. In this thesis I took advantage of archival and frozen specimens ascertained from the Familial Breast Cancer Registry and the Toronto Axillary Node Negative (ANN) Breast Cancer Study to investigate the copy number changes in fourteen non-BRCA1/2-mutated breast cancer cases with a family history and young age of onset to examine copy number analysis using genomic microarrays. The most recurrent alterations included losses of 8p and 17p, single copy gains of 1q and 8q, and high level amplification of ERBB2 and ZNF703. My work indicates there are some genomic regions that are more frequently aberrant in copy number among young familial breast cancer cases compared to independent datasets of young age of diagnosis cases. Next-generation sequencing was also used to study the exomes of 3 tumor-normal pairs and 20 unmatched ANN tumors. Genomic analysis of the tumor-normal pairs found one case with heterozygous variants in both the germline and tumor genome in three breast cancer susceptibility genes, BRCA1, BRCA2, and RAD50. It was observed that ten of the unmatched tumors contained significantly fewer variants than the other ten unmatched samples. The cases with fewer variants had between 866-3,459 variants and the cases with a high number of variants contained 6,452-77,870 variants. The samples with more variants also had significantly more C:G>A:T transversions, evidence for defective mismatch repair that warrants investigation in future studies.
Cartographers as Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature
Keywords: Literary Map
Spatial Turn

“Cartographers as Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature” recuperates the print culture phenomenon of literary map production, which became popular in North America around 1898. A literary map can be defined as any pictorial map that depicts imaginative worlds or authorial associations across geopolitical space. While notable examples have circulated for centuries in bound books, such as Thomas More’s _Utopia_ and William Faulkner’s _Absalom, Absalom!_, the majority of twentieth-century literary maps were ephemeral productions that have not survived in great numbers. These discursive documents functioned as compelling expressions of literary taste and cultural values; they circulated in magazines and newspapers, as gas station promotional giveaways and diner placemats, and as classroom “equipment.” Extant literary maps offer new perspectives on turn-of-the-twentieth century U.S. literary nationalism and the Public Library Movement, “fiction debates” and “Great Books” curriculums, the mid-century schism between anthropological folklorists and literary folklorists, and the role of popular cartography in U.S. print culture. Though today’s critics are generally unaware of the literary maps discussed here, these documents are consequential artifacts that have consistently equated canonized writers with pioneers and conquerors; in doing so, they have formulated literature as an extractable, finite, and controllable resource found on North America’s “literary frontiers.” Importantly, discursive literary maps make claims that are both critical assessments and assertions of territorial title. In doing so, they impose a cartographic framework on Native space that simultaneously evacuates and denies both the presence and possibility of Indigenous literatures. “Cartographers as Critics” seeks to problematize this ideological equation and to explore its critical implications for the recent “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, as well as the burgeoning revitalization of literary map production and circulation now present on the Internet.
The Defence Research Board of Canada, 1947 to 1977
Keywords: Science and Technology
Research and Development
Military
National Defence
Cold War
Policy
Civil Service
Administration
Management

The Defence Research Board of Canada existed from 1947 to 1977. It was created because of the successful contribution of scientific management and specific military technologies to victory in the Second World War, and it was dismantled during a period of review and renewal of the government’s science and defence policies. The demise of the Defence Research Board demonstrated the triumph of business and public administration models over scientific management in spite of the successful defence research program. Among the successful projects of the Defence Research Board were satellites, research rockets, hydrofoils, nylon pile clothing, the wind chill factor, the strategic distinction between first and second nuclear strikes, open heart surgery, and blast trials. The strengths of the Defence Research Board were the scientific management practices that united the four Chairmen (Omond Solandt, Hartley Zimmerman, Robert Uffen and Léon L’Heureux) and the bench scientists. Over the course of its existence the Defence Research Board was shaped by six chains of events. 1. Solandt’s ability to recruit veterans from 1947 to 1953, 2. The election of John Diefenbaker and the ensuing conflict between Diefenbaker and civil servants, particularly over nuclear weapons, which led to the Royal Commission on Government Organisation and a decade of review of national defence policy (including two White Papers, integration and unification, and the Management Review Group), 3. The science policy review that followed from C.D. Howe retiring from politics and the reports of the Royal Commission on Government Organization, 4. The Defence Research Board’s brushes with francophone nationalism and separatism, 5. The criticisms leveled against the Defence Research Board by the Voice of Women, and 6. The changing of Canadian demographics and values in general. This thesis documents the story of the Defence Research Board against its international, national, scientific and historical contexts.
Printed in Perfect Harmony: Publishers of Poetry in France, 1851-1900
Keywords: book history
poetry
publishing history
publishers
France
nineteenth century

In the second half of the nineteenth century in France, there emerged a series of publishers who were intimately tied to the genre of poetry as well as to specific avant-garde literary movements. Auguste Poulet-Malassis, the publisher of Charles Baudelaire; Alphonse Lemerre, the patron of the Parnassian poets; and Léon Vanier, who shepherded the works of the Decadents and Symbolists into the book market, serve as three examples. Before analyzing their careers and their catalogues in detail, the first two chapters of this interdisciplinary thesis, drawing on the methodologies of book history, literary history, the sociology of literature and bibliography, present both an overview of the history of publishing poetry in France, as well as a quantitative analysis of all poetry books listed in the Bibliographie de la France between 1851 and 1900. Through this general survey of the period as well as the three focused case studies, it is proposed that publishers of poetry deployed specific strategies, including fine luxury edition practices, that highlighted their printed products in an era of mass production and which were in harmony with the aesthetic ideals of the poets whose works they printed. However, due to the tensions between the demands of art and those of the market place, their relations with poets, and their own place in the field of literary publishing, remained fraught with discord.
Human and Machine in Formation: An Ethnographic Study of Communication and Humanness in a Wearable Technology Laboratory in Japan
Keywords: Communication
Japan
Robotics
Technology
Value
Wearables

This dissertation reports on an ethnographic study of human-centered technology researchers, conducted in Japan between 2010 and 2012. Researchers in this field—a multidisciplinary group mostly of computer engineers, as well as complex systems scientists, biologists, and psychologists—claim that existing “machine-centered” technologies require users to behave like machines, resulting in burdensome and brittle social relations. In contrast, they attempt to create “human-centered technologies” that humans can interact with “naturally,” which they believe will facilitate the creation of resilient and comfortable societies. HCT researchers believe that the key to understanding natural human interactions lies in how humans “read ambience.” Reading ambience is the process through which a social actor identifies and acts on the aspects of its self and surroundings that inform it of what behaviors are appropriate in a given setting. They work to reverse engineer how humans read ambience to create technologies that humans can interact with naturally. This dissertation argues that HCT researchers efforts to understand humanness through reverse engineering elucidate dimensions of human relations that have been suppressed in conventional discourses on the human. Anthropological understandings of the human have been predicated on the notion that the human is a form of life. Instead, HCT researchers’ work shows that the human is a system of communication. The human is defined by how it interfaces and exchanges messages with other systems of communication. Their perspective shows the human as a system defined by the relations it maintains among its body, its social and material surroundings, including technologies and other humans. By following HCT researchers’ attempts to create human-machine interfaces, this ethnography attempts to offer an approach to the human based in communication that challenges atomistic understandings of the human still latent in anthropology.