VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Endothelial Response to Injury: Defining the Role of Epidermal Growth Factor-like Domain 7 and Endothelial Protective Strategies
Keywords: endothelium
inflammation
neointima
heart transplantation
vascular biology
immunosuppression

Background: Currently, the optimal long-term therapy for end stage heart failure is heart transplantation. Cardiac allograft vasculopathy contributes to a significant number of deaths following transplantation. This vasculopathy is related to early endothelial injury sustained at the time of organ transplantation and to persistent endothelial injury as a result of cytotoxic immunosuppression, as well as chronic rejection. Epidermal growth factor-like domain 7 (Egfl7), is expressed in endothelial cells upon arterial injury and may have a role in maintaining vascular endothelial integrity and regeneration following injury. Similarly, novel pharmacologic agents such as Bosentan, an endothelin-1 antagonist, and Cilostazol, a phosphodiesterase 3 inhibitor, have been demonstrated to attenuate calcineurin inhibition induced endothelial dysfunction and neointimal hyperplasia, respectively. We hypothesized that, 1) Egfl7 will attenuate endothelial activation, cell adhesion molecule expression and neutrophil adhesion following simulated ischemia-reperfusion injury or exposure to calcineurin inhibition and that, 2) Bosentan and Cilostazol will inhibit neointimal hyperplasia following endothelial injury in a mouse model of vascular injury. Methods: Human coronary artery endothelial cells were subjected to hypoxia-reoxygenation injury or the calcineurin inhibitors Cyclosporine A and Tacrolimus to examine the effects of Egfl7 on these injury mechanisms. Cell adhesion molecule expression, neutrophil adhesion to endothelial cells, and NF-&kappa;B activation were measured. Cell adhesion molecule and Egfl7 expression were also examined in a mouse model of neointimal. This model was used to examine the effects of Bosentan and Cilostazol on neointimal hyperplasia. Results: Egfl7 had potent anti-inflammatory properties including inhibition of NF-&kappa;B pathway activation, ICAM-1 expression and neutrophil adhesion to injured endothelium. Within vessels exhibiting neointimal hyperplasia, Egfl7 was expressed in regions lacking ICAM-1 expression. Both cilostazol and bosentan attenuated neointimal hyperplasia in isolation as well as during co-treatment with CNI therapies. Conclusions: Egfl7 is an endothelial protective signaling protein with anti-inflammatory properties effective against simulated ischemia-reperfusion injury and calcineurin inhibition mediated injury. Cilostazol and Bosentan are pharmacologic strategies demonstrating efficacy against the development of neointimal hyperplasia. These observations provide a novel therapeutic target and strategies that may be relevant to endothelial protection and prevention of cardiac allograft vasculopathy following heart transplantation.
Interior Music: An Examination of the Sociocognitive Abilities of Fiction Writers
Keywords: Social Cognition
Fiction Writers

A two-part study was undertaken to investigate the relationship between fiction writing and social cognition: the ability to make inferences about the mental states of others. First, an online survey was administered that assessed beliefs held by the general public about the social cognition of fiction writers compared to a variety of other professions. The findings revealed that the general public believes fiction writers demonstrate above average sociocognitive abilities. Next, the possibility of an empirical relationship between social cognition and fiction writing was explored by comparing two groups of fiction writers (established/published and intermediate writers) and a control group on measures directly assessing different facets of social cognition (e.g., social perception, interpreting body language, and making inferences about interpersonal interactions on video and in written vignettes). Participants were also asked to self-report their own sociocognitive abilities via a questionnaire assessing perspective taking. Related variables to social cognition were also tested, including self-reported interpersonal/social reactivity and cognitive complexity/differentiation. Potential confounding variables, including age, level of depression, verbal IQ, and tendency to read fiction were also measured and accounted for. All participants provided a short story writing sample which was scored by three experts for quality, as well as potential textual determinants of social cognition: character transparency and point of view. The results of the study consistently revealed a lack of between-group differences on measures of social cognition as well as the related measure of cognitive complexity/differentiation. Fiction writing quality and character transparency correlated only with cognitive complexity/differentiation, but not with any variables directly assessing social cognition. Taken together, the results of the study suggest that, contrary to public perceptions, and contrary to the hypotheses of many theorists in the literature, fiction writers do not demonstrate superior sociocognitive abilities.
Martyr for Mental Health: John R Seeley and the Forest Hill Village Project, 1948-1956
Keywords: Canadian History
Mental Health
Psychoanalysis
Sociology

This is the history of a mental health project conducted in the schools of Forest Hill, Ontario during the 1950s. Its original name was the Forest Hill Village Project but it became famous in history as Crestwood Heights, the book written about the project by John R. Seeley, Alex Sim and Elizabeth Loosley. The Forest Hill Village Project was a significant event in Canadian history not only as part of the first mental health grants ever issued by the federal government; but also as the first major attempt to address the mental health needs of children in school. Hatched at the highest levels of military planning during the Second World War, the Forest Hill Village Project would involve senior government and university administrators as well as psychiatrists, social workers and teachers from across Canada in an experiment in psychoanalytic pedagogy. John R. Seeley was the only individual, however, whose fate was so inextricably linked with the project that it cannot be understood apart from him. It was because of Seeley's genius that a mental health revolution from the top-down was attempted in Canadian history, and it was because of his own psychological issues that it failed. The martyrdom of John R. Seeley did not consist simply in the irony of his own fall into mental illness while leading a mental health project in the schools of Forest Hill, but also in his being effectively banished from Canadian society because of his efforts. The admixture of Seeley's personal issues and his revolutionary commitment to mass psychoanalysis eventually brought him into irreconcilable conflict with the more conservative leadership of Canada's medical and educational establishment. Though Seeley was forced out of teaching in Canada, the history of his mental health revolution may yet open doorways for the future of mental health in Canadian schools.
Phenomenal Anglo-Saxons: Perception, Adaptation, and the Poetic Imagination
Keywords: Anglo-Saxon Literature
Poetry

This dissertation articulates a theory of adaptation for the Anglo-Saxon literature in which metaphors of embodiment mediate the reception of poetic works: when we read, our bodies get in the way. Central to my work is the understanding that the embodied situatedness of poets adapting materials from other sources informs the literature that they produce. I explore the material and textual conditions through which the writings of the period reveal themselves and seek to understand how these contexts shaped the reception of earlier writings. Poetic texts filled with sensory detail provide a framework for their own reception. My approach to textual phenomena is informed by reading in the phenomenological tradition of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as expressed by the work of philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jean-Luc Marion. Chapter One argues for a parallel relationship between the flesh of Christ and the medieval book in the reception of Prudentius. Their shared flesh allows the Word to appear in the world by taking on the animal nature of a life characterized by suffering. Chapter Two considers the suffering of the saints in Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate. This suffering constitutes a form of affective piety that provides a framework for the desirous reception of holy bodies and also of the textual corpora of early authors. Chapter Three argues that in Felix’s Vita Guthlaci, eating and reading reveal the body’s permeability. Guthlac’s ingestion of hallucinogenic mold and Felix’s reception of Aldhelm appear as a demonic attack that imbricates saint and hagiographer in the textualized landscape of the fen. Chapter Four analyzes the role of visual perception in the ekphrastic presentation of the phoenix as it appears in Lactantius’s Latin poem and its Old English translation. The interrelation of ekphrasis and translation as modes of perception grants the phoenix both literary and material forms. Chapter Five argues that crossing the Red Sea in Exodus embodies the theory of textual interpretation explicated by Moses in which the keys of the spirit reveal hidden truths. The crossing becomes a fusion of horizons, as the waters lower to reveal old foundations.
Reactivity of Lewis Acids with Coordinated Ligands of Late Transition Metal Complexes
Keywords: Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Frustrated Lewis Pairs
Organometallic Chemistry

With hundreds of papers published since 2006 on frustrated Lewis pair (FLP) chemistry the development of innovative Lewis acids and Lewis bases is a quickly expanding field. This thesis is separated into two parts. The first part investigates the incorporation of tridentate ligands on ruthenium alkylidene species and their subsequent reactivity with Lewis acids and FLPs in an attempt to synthesize innovative olefin metathesis catalysts. The second part explores the use of ligands coordinated to ruthenium metal centers as a method for expanding the Lewis acid and base functionalities in the field of FLP chemistry. Ruthenium-alkylidene complexes of the general formula ((PEP-Cy)RuX2(CHPh) (E = O, NH, NMe; X = Cl, Br)) were obtained via the reaction of Grubbs 1st generation catalysts with the tridentate ancillary ligands O(CH2CH2PCy2)2 [POP-Cy], HN(CH2CH2PCy2)2 [PN(H)P-Cy] and MeN(CH2CH2PCy2)2 [PN(Me)P-Cy]. Subsequent treatment of GaX3 with these alkylidene species resulted in the formation of cationic alkylidyne-hydride complexes, ([(PEP Cy)Ru(H)(X)(CPh)][GaX4] where E = O, NH, NMe; X = Cl, Br; however, when E = NH, a mixture of alkylidyne-hydride and cationic alkylidene species was observed. Conversely, when E = NMe, alkylidyne-hydride formation was followed by transfer of the alkylidene fragment to the Me of the ligand framework. Subsequently, Ru-acetylide complexes [LRu(PPh3)2CCPh] were reacted with the B(C6F5)3 to afford the para-attacked products [LRu(PPh3)2C=C(Ph)((C6F4)B(F)(C6F5)2)] (L = Cp, Indenyl). Further studies revealed that [IndRu(PPh3)2CCPh] and ER3 (E = B, R = C6F4H; E = Al, R = C6F5) formed FLP mixtures that effected the activation of CO2 between the nucleophilic β-acetylide carbon and the Lewis acid to form [IndRu(PPh3)2C=C(Ph)C(O)O-ER3] or [IndRu(PPh3)2C=C(Ph)C(O ER3)2] when E = Al and R = C6F5. Similarly, these FLP combinations were used to activate phenylacetylene and benzaldehyde forming the species [IndRu(PPh3)2C=C(Ph)C(Ph)=C(H)(ER3)] and [IndRu(PPh3)2C=C(Ph)C(Ph)O-ER3], respectively. Lastly, the synthesis of [((Ph2PC6H4)2BCl)(η6-Ph))RuCl] was achieved via the reaction of (Ph2PC6H4)2BPh with (Ph3P)RuCl2. Subsequent halide abstraction with K[B(C6F5)4] resulted in the formation of [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η6-Ph))RuCl][B(C6F5)4] which was used as a carbon-based Lewis acid in adduct formation with Lewis bases to yield products of the general form [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η5 C6H5 o-LB))RuCl][B(C6F5)4] (LB = PPh3, PCy3, PMe3, SIMes, etc). The activation of H2 was also achieved when combinations of [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η6-Ph))RuCl][B(C6F5)4] and bulky phosphines were employed, resulting in the products [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η5 C6H6))RuCl][B(C6F5)4], [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η6 C6H5))RuCl][B(C6F5)4] and [R3PH][B(C6F5)4] (R = Mes, tBu, Cy). Similarly, [((Ph2PC6H4)2B)(η6-Ph))RuCl][B(C6F5)4] was used to catalytically hydrogenate sterically encumbered aldimines at room temperature with catalyst loadings as low as 1 mol% via a FLP-type mechanism.
The Role of Alpha-1 Beta-1 Integrin in Extravascular Leuckoyte Migration as Revealed by Novel In-situ Pulse Labeling Technology
Keywords: Integrin
Inflammation

Leukocyte exit from peripheral tissues is fundamental to host defense, yet little is known about the role of adhesive molecules in this process. In my thesis I ask the question “can an integrin regulate leukocyte exit from inflamed peripheral tissues” and specifically investigate the leukocyte integrin α1β1. This is an important question because leukocyte exit, or persistence, at an inflammatory lesion can have a profound effect on the immune response. In addition, I present special in situ staining techniques which had to be developed in order to assay endogenous leukocyte migration in a murine model. The introductory sections review functional differences between myeloid and lymphoid leukocyte subsets, the leukocyte adhesion cascade, integrins, chemokine receptors and the essential concepts of signaling and the relationship between chemokines and integrin activation. I also discuss the pro-migratory paradigm of leukocyte integrins, in other words that integrin adhesion is equated with leukocyte migration. The current literature regarding what is known about integrin function in peripheral tissues and leukocyte migration is also discussed. Chapter 2 characterizes my inflammatory model and implicates α1β1integrin and macrophages as important molecular and cellular entities respectively, involved in sustaining the inflammatory response. Chapter 3 develops endogenous in-situ labeling in the blood compartment, establishing the fundamentals of my in-situ approach. Chapter 4 extends this and establishes in-situ pulse labeling (ISPL) to label endogenous leukocytes in peripheral tissues. Chapter 4 then goes on to combine the technological advances and conceptual framework established in the previous chapters to elucidate a role for α1β1integrin in the exit of macrophages from inflamed peripheral tissues. Finally, in Chapter 5 I discuss the implications of my results in the context of the host defense, how it might impact the immune response and future directions for this research.
Online Analysis of High Volume Social Text Streams
Keywords: social media
analytics
algorithms

Social media is one of the most disruptive developments of the past decade. The impact of this information revolution has been fundamental on our society. Information dissemination has never been cheaper and users are increasingly connected with each other. The line between content producers and consumers is blurred, leaving us with abundance of data produced in real-time by users around the world on multitude of topics. In this thesis we study techniques to aid an analyst in uncovering insights from this new media form which is modeled as a high volume social text stream. The aim is to develop practical algorithms with focus on the ability to scale, amenability to reliable operation, usability, and ease of implementation. Our work lies at the intersection of building large scale real world systems and developing theoretical foundation to support the same. We identify three key predicates to enable online methods for analysis of social data, namely : - Persistent Chatter Discovery to explore topics discussed over a period of time, - Cross-referencing Media Sources to initiate analysis using a document as the query, and - Contributor Understanding to create aggregate expertise and topic summaries of authors contributing online. The thesis defines each of the predicates in detail and covers proposed techniques, their practical applicability, and detailed experimental results to establish accuracy and scalability for each of the three predicates. We present BlogScope, the core data aggregation and management platform, developed as part of the thesis to enable implementation of the key predicates in real world setting. The system provides a web based user interface for searching social media conversations and analyzing the results in multitude of ways. BlogScope, and its modified versions, index tens to hundreds of billions of text documents while providing interactive query times. Specifically, BlogScope has been crawling 50 million active blogs with 3.25 billion blog posts. Same techniques have also been successfully tested on a Twitter stream of data, adding thousands of new Tweets every second and archiving over 30 billion documents. The social graph part of our database consists of 26 million Twitter user nodes with 17 billion follower edges. The BlogScope system has been used by over 10,000 unique visitors a day, and the commercial version of the system is used by thousands of enterprise clients globally. As social media continues to evolve at an exponential pace, there is a lot that still needs to be studied. The thesis concludes by outlining some of possible future research directions.
Competition, Innovation, and Regulation: Accounting for Productivity Differences
Keywords: macroeconomics
competition
regulation
innovation

The relationships between competition, innovation, and regulation have long been studied in an attempt to understand and evaluate the effect of regulation on the wealth and growth of nations. Recent empirical work has emerged taking advantage of the still ongoing proliferation of ever more disaggregated data to shed more light on these relationships and at the same time uncover new puzzles in need of explanations. This thesis is an attempt to address the discrepancies between some of these newly discovered phenomena and current theory. In Chapter 1 I introduce an insight of Friedrich Hayek - that competition allows a thousand flowers to bloom, and discovers the best among them - into a conventional model of Schumpeterian innovation. I show how the model can account for two seemingly contradictory empirical phenomena, a positive relationship between competition and industry-level productivity growth, and an inverted-U relationship between competition and firm-level innovation. In Chapter 2 I extend the model to investigate the effects of patent protection on competition and innovation, and to understand the interaction between patent policy and product-market regulation. I calibrate the model to show that patent protection in the U.S. is depressing competition, innovation, growth, and welfare. Using patent and citation data, I further provide empirical evidence supporting the implications of the model. In Chapter 3 I investigate the impact of regulatory entry barriers to new firms on aggregate output and total factor productivity. Following recent work by Thomas J. Holmes and John J. Stevens, I extend a standard model of monopolistic competition to account for the existence of both niche markets and mass markets within industries. Calibrating the model using U.S. manufacturing data, I show this extension goes a long way towards explaining the large gap between empirical estimates of the impact of barriers to entry and the quantitative predictions of current models.
An Investigation of Change in the Lives of Spouses of Amnestic Individuals
Keywords: Spousal Caregivers
Spouses
ABI
TBI
role transitions
stress
caregiving
narrative inquiry

The purpose of the present study was to explore the ways that spouses of persons with ABI experience a process of change in roles, routine, and overall lifestyle and the subsequent implications for their support needs. The present study used a qualitative narrative inquiry methodology to examine the process of the experiences of this population of spouses. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 spouses, each of whom was engaged in a heterosexual relationship. There were 10 female and five male participants whose ages ranged from 40 to 61. Twelve of the participants were formally married, and three were in a common law relationship. In the interviews, the participants were asked about the changes in their lives after the onset of their spouses’ brain injuries. The data analysis was informed by narrative inquiry with attention paid to the structure of the participants’ stories. A three phase trajectory of caregiving emerged from the analysis which provided details regarding the process of change in the spousal caregiving role and how various role transitions within this role were intertwined with stressors and other feelings. The research highlighted three phases of caregiving including an Embryonic, Immersed and Modified Caregiver phase. The findings were theoretically important for identifying: how these spouses situate themselves within role transitions; coping strategies; various support needs; and future directions for research in this area.
A Qualitative Examination of Career Resiliency in Professional Immigrants
Keywords: professional immigrants
resiliency
career
retraining

This qualitative study endeavored to interview professional immigrants in order to better understand the adjustment and career-related challenges that professional immigrants encounter when they immigrate to Canada and pursue educational retraining. The main purpose of the study was to explore retraining decisions and outcomes and uncover the factors that influence career resiliency amongst professional immigrants. It was discovered that most professional immigrants have a desirable pre-immigration career and come to Canada to provide a better standard of living for themselves and/or their children. Professional immigrants often expect that they will be able to continue in their vocational field after arriving in Canada with little or no retraining. Unfortunately, most professional immigrants encounter significant initial career barriers such as discrimination, a lack of social networks, and non-recognition of foreign education and work experience. These barriers often lead to issues such as unemployment, under-employment, unfair treatment, psychological distress and a reduced standard of living. To help cope with these difficulties, most professional immigrants rely on social support and personal actions. In particular, encountered career challenges often prompt professional immigrants to adopt educational retraining as a career-enhancing strategy. The specific retraining experiences and career outcomes of participants were explored and discussed in detail. In summary, some participants were able to re-establish a career in Canada that was as satisfying as their pre-immigration career, however, most participants were unable to establish a career that is equivalent to their pre-Canadian career status. A number of participants even found themselves’ unemployed or grossly under-employed despite living in Canada for at least six years and having completed retraining. Overall, participants in this study represented a wide range of experiences which served to guide the formation of a new theoretical model for career resiliency. In addition to accounting for the influence of individual, relational and contextual factors, the newly presented Relative Encompassment Model of Career Resiliency accounts for the influence of relative comparisons, which were found to influence participant’s attitudes, perceptions and coping abilities. The important implications for theory, policy and practice are discussed. Suggestions for future research on career resiliency are also made.