VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
How Socioeconomic Status Shapes Individuals' Experiences of the Work-family Interface in Canada
Keywords: class
socioeconomic status
time pressure
work-family conflict
work-family interface

Work-family conflict and time pressure have emerged as potent and pervasive stressors in the daily lives of Canadian workers. Yet little is known about the socioeconomic distribution of these work-family outcomes, or the underlying mechanisms, because previous research has largely focused on homogeneous samples, typically consisting of well-educated managers and/or professionals. Drawing on the Stress Process Model as an overarching framework, and through statistical analyses of confidential data from Cycle 20 of the General Social Survey (2006), the dissertation at hand seeks to address this significant gap in knowledge by exploring how and why socioeconomic status (i.e., education or occupation) affects exposure to work-family conflict and time pressure. The findings of this dissertation are largely consistent with (limited) previous research, demonstrating that higher-status individuals in terms of education, occupation, or income are more exposed to work-family conflict and time pressure than their lower-status counterparts. Only in the case of work-to-family conflict do the findings diverge somewhat from this pattern, as individuals in both the highest and lowest occupational groups have the greatest and identical exposure to this work-family outcome. Further, the socioeconomic distribution of work-family conflict is invariant across gender and parental status. However, gender and parenthood jointly condition the occupational distribution of time pressure, such that mothers in managerial occupations have the greatest exposure. Job- and home-related demands and resources consistently affect work-family conflict and time pressure across socioeconomic groups. However, constellations of job- and home-related demands and resources tend to differ between socioeconomic groups, largely accounting for the observed socioeconomic distributions of work-family conflict and time pressure. This suggests that, in order to be effective, government and workplace policies and programs intended to ease earning- and caring-role combination must be designed with an understanding of the unique circumstances that give rise to work-family issues among higher- and lower-status individuals.
"Most of them, they just want someone to under them:" Gender, Generation, and Personhood among the Xhosa
Keywords: Gender
Generation
Human Rights
Kinship
Personhood
Xhosa

Drawing on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation focuses on gendered and generational conflicts about social reproduction in a rural Xhosa community in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. By exploring locally-contentious topics such as human rights, gender equality, love marriage, bridewealth, bride abduction, and the deployment of sexuality, I make several related arguments about personhood, the deployment of tradition, and the experience of modernity. The forms of personhood, tradition, and modernity that I discuss are all vernacular concepts, and are not overarching analytic tools. Firstly, I show that local people interpret these contests in generational, gendered, and also temporal terms, framing rural life and the will of elders as timeless tradition, in contrast with modern city life, and with the habits and aspirations of youth. The predilections of elders thus bear the moral authority of both imagined history, and ancestral will. Secondly, I show various ways in in which experiences of and aspirations about tradition and modernity are themselves deeply gendered, and that these divergent aspirations are sources of considerable interpersonal conflict. Thirdly, I demonstrate that inequality is intrinsic to the subject positions through which people understand their identity. Accordingly, idioms such as gender equality and (egalitarian) human rights render the meaning of these subject positions unclear. Accordingly, sociality between genders and generations is often characterized by antagonism and uncertainty. Finally, I identify a deep, ironic contradiction at the core of domestic life: worsening economic austerity means that people of all ages and genders are becoming more interdependent. However, this increasing interdependency, which has historically been central to local forms of personhood, is concurrent with the rising prominence of an ideological system which privileges autonomous, independent, choice-oriented forms of personhood as the cornerstone of a worthy self. Thus, South Africa's economic crisis is also a crisis of meaning about equality, gender, age, sexuality, and spirituality, played out through the messy intimacy of social reproduction and rural domestic life.
Understanding the Encapsulins:Prediction and Characterization of Phage Capsid-like Nanocompartments in Prokaryotes
Keywords: bacterial physiology
bacteriophage
compartmentalization
computational biology
encapsulin

Encapsulins are a distinct family of prokaryotic compartments, comprised of an icosahedral shell encapsulating a variety of enzymes. The encapsulin shell protein is similar in sequence and structure to the capsid protein of dsDNA tailed bacteriophages. Although found across diverse phyla of Bacteria and Archaea, few encapsulins were previously characterized. My thesis work utilized a bioinformatic approach to identify and investigate the functions of all encapsulins found in bacteria and Archaea. I found 590 encapsulins showing definite sequence similarity to the previously described encapsulins, which I refer to as "classical encapsulins". I identified four new enzyme families strongly predicted to be classical encapsulin cargo enzymes: ferredoxins, rubrerythrin-like, Dps-bacterioferritin-like, and hemerythrin-like proteins. While most species encode encapsulin cargo proteins adjacent to the encapsulin gene, I discovered 113 species encoding cargo proteins in genomic regions far removed from the encapsulin gene. I also found 118 genomes encoding two or three different enzymes strongly predicted to be targeted to the same encapsulin. Genes encoding three protein families, radical SAM oxidoreductases, CutA1-like proteins and metalloproteases, are highly enriched near encapsulin genes, but without targeting motifs for direct encapsulation. In addition to classical encapsulins, I discovered 1060 novel putative encapsulins related to diverse families of phage capsids. The largest family of these novel encapsulins, with 986 proteins is larger than the classical encapsulin family, and conserves a sulphur metabolism operon encoding cysteine desulfurases, acetyltransferases, and rhodaneses. These activities are predicted to relieve sulphur restriction, and toxicity of cyanide and other oxidants. Overall, novel and classical encapsulins and their encapsulated enzymes are predicted to contribute to polyvalent cation dependent catalytic activities, and relieve heavy metal and cyanide toxicity. Phylogenies predicted capsids and encapsulins share intermingled ancestry. My work shows that encapsulins perform more diverse functions and are much more widely distributed than any other prokaryotic compartment.
Artful Mediums: Women, Séance Photography, and Materialization Phenomena, 1880-1930
Keywords: mediums
photography
séances
spiritualism
women

This dissertation examines the photographic documentation of the spiritualist movement that took place during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an attempt to scrutinize and expose the claims of mediums, a number of leading scientists brought cameras into the séance in order to capture supernatural phenomena on film. The ensuing chapters explore the images that resulted from some of these experiments, with an emphasis on the documentation of several prominent female mediums, including Eva C., Eusapia Palladino, and Linda Gazzera. The investigations of Drs. Albert von Schrenck Notzing, Camille Flammarion, Gustave Geley, and Charles Richet inform the bulk of these pages. Scientific séance photography ultimately documented a wide range of "materialization phenomena" within the darkened conditions of the séance, consisting of ectoplasmic materials, ghostly faces, and spectral body parts, which appeared to emanate from the medium's body and then dissolve into nothingness. My project hinges on the premise that these mysterious apparitions were symbolic creations, much like artworks, which carried implicit cultural and aesthetic meaning. I have sought through the ensuing analysis to examine the frameworks of meaning that surrounded the art of the séance, and to situate the medium as an artist within her own right.
Anhedonia in Major Depressive Disorder: Exploration of a Predictive Clinical Phenotype
Keywords: anhedonia
deep brain stimulation
dopamine
positron emission tomography
scale development
treatment resistant depression

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a debilitating psychiatric illness that involves a complex interplay of neurobiological dysfunction. At present, the majority of MDD patients fail to remit with current antidepressants that target the serotonin and norepinephrine systems, resulting in a high prevalence of treatment resistant depression (TRD). In the last several years, emerging evidence has pointed to the role of anhedonia in predicting non-response to pharmacologic treatment. However, anhedonia scales, as measured in MDD, reflect consummatory pleasure, despite findings supporting a broader definition including interest, motivation and pleasure. Furthermore, the link between anhedonia and dopamine has not been clearly elucidated in a human MDD sample, nor has either been evaluated as a predictor of therapy in TRD. The goal of the present studies was to refine the measurement of anhedonia, explore its association with dopamine, and evaluate anhedonia and dopamine as potential biomarkers of response to Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), a neurosurgery for TRD with putative dopaminergic effects. From the present studies it has been shown that refinement in anhedonia measurement in the Dimensional Anhedonia Rating Scale (DARS) by including interest, motivation, effort and consummatory pleasure provides additional utility over the gold standard scale, and may be able to identify MDD subtypes (i.e. TRD). Furthermore, the first preliminary evidence was provided for a direct link between self-reported anhedonia in MDD and dopamine D2/D3 receptor binding in the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, two regions implicated in reward response and depression. Finally, preliminary evidence suggests that D2/D3 binding potential in the orbitofrontal cortex, additional prefrontal regions, insula and temporal cortex can predict outcome to antidepressant therapy with DBS, representing a potential biomarker of response.
Mutation in VMAT2 Causing a Pediatric Neurotransmitter Disease
Keywords: Pediatric Neurotransmitter Disease
VMAT2

This thesis describes a new disease encompassing infantile-onset movement disorder (including severe parkinsonism and nonambulation), mood disturbance, autonomic instability, and developmental delay that was identified in eight cousins of a consanguineous Bedouin family in Saudi Arabia. The autosomal recessive disease was hypothesized to be a disorder of monoamine neurotransmission, and evidence supporting its causation by a mutation in SLC18A2 (which encodes the vesicular monoamine transporter 2 [VMAT2]) was acquired by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping, homozygosity analysis, and exome sequencing. VMAT2 translocates dopamine and serotonin into synaptic vesicles and is essential for motor control, stable mood, and autonomic function. The loss of VMAT2 function was further confirmed through biochemical assay of serotonin uptake. Consistent with a defect in vesicular monoamine transport, treatment of the patients with levodopa was associated with worsening, whereas treatment with direct dopamine agonists was followed by immediate ambulation, near-complete correction of the movement disorder, and resumption of development. Understanding the underlying mechanism of this disorder extends the spectrum of known pediatric neurotransmitter diseases, serves as the first demonstration of mutation in VMAT2 causing a human phenotype, and thereby provides new insight into the role of VMAT2 in monoamine homeostasis. This thesis additionally demonstrates the utility of implementing genomic diagnosis in the clinic, with respect to providing simple and effective treatments in a timely manner to improve outcomes for patients with rare inborn errors of metabolism.
The Interpretation of Orchestral Ballet Excerpts for Clarinet
Keywords: Clarinet
Interpretation
Orchestral Ballet Excerpts
Performance Practice
Prokofiev
Tchaikovsky

This research examines the current performance practice of ballet excerpts for clarinet from five ballets: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, and Cinderella. Research has been published on the performance practice of symphonic orchestra and opera repertoire for clarinet, however, there is a paucity of research that examines the current performance practice techniques of orchestral ballet clarinet excerpts. The methodology of this research consisted of identifying major orchestral ballet clarinet excerpts in the canon and interviewing five experienced principal clarinetists in North American ballet orchestras. The interviewees were Max Christie from National Ballet of Canada Orchestra, Steve Hartman from New York City Ballet Orchestra, Jon Manasse from American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, Sheryl Renk from San Francisco Ballet Orchestra, and William Wrzesien from Boston Ballet Orchestra. They discussed clarinet solos from the selected ballet excerpts regarding phrasing, technique, dynamics, fingerings, pitch, tempo, and ensemble playing in a ballet orchestra. An analysis of the interpretation of musical excerpts by the interviewees reveals some common themes. They addressed phrasing, dynamics, intonation, fingerings, and instrument choice (A or B-flat clarinet). Phrasing was the most prominent musical feature discussed, although there was variation in their opinions about phrasing. Some clarinetists had specific suggestions for the phrasing of each individual passage; others generally preferred a long or short phrase. All interviewees commented on fingerings for notes in the altissimo register, particularly for technically difficult passages that reached into the altissimo registers in the Prokofiev ballets. They also indicated that intonation is influenced by the dynamic played, the register of the clarinet, and the orchestration. Many of the interviewees suggest that certain passages work better for the fingers or timbre if transposed to the A clarinet or vice-versa.
Cinematic Modernity: Cosmopolitan Imaginaries in Twentieth Century Iran
Keywords: Cosmopolitanism
Historiography of Cinema
Islamic Culture
Modern Iran
Modernity
Popular Culture

"Cinematic Modernity: Cosmopolitan Imaginaries in Twentieth Century Iran" explores the 'genesis amnesia' that informs the conventional scholarly accounts of Iranian cinema history. Critiquing a "homogeneous historical time," this dissertation investigates cinematic temporality autonomous from (and in relation to) political and social temporalities in modern Iran. Grounding the emergence of cinema in Iran within a previously neglected cosmopolitan urban social formation, it demonstrates how the intermingling of diverse Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, French and British communities in interwar Tehran, facilitated the formation of a cosmopolitan cinematic culture in the early twentieth century. In the 1930s, such globally-informed and aspiring citizens took part in the making of a cinema that was simultaneously cosmopolitan and Persian-national, i.e. cosmo-national. This dissertation explains how, in the late 1940s, after a decade long hiatus in Iranian feature-film productions--when cinemas were dominated by Russian, British, and German films--Iranian filmmakers and critics actualised their aspirations for a sovereign national cinema in the form a sustained commercial industry; this cinema staged the moral compromises of everyday life and negotiation of conflicting allegiances to families and social networks in a rapidly changing Iran--albeit in entertaining forms. While critiqued for "imitating" European commercial films, this cinema--known as "Film-Farsi" (Persian-Language)-was highly informed by lived experiences of Iranians and international commercial motion pictures. In the late 1950s, a group of internationally-educated filmmakers, distanced themselves from the debilitating charges aimed at "Film-Farsi" cinema, and crafted an "alter-native," social realist, intellectual cinema that drew upon recognised international visual motifs and techniques, and lent itself to a critique of social and political conditions of the time. Envisioning a cinematic revolution (in form and content), this cinema became more politically conscious as revolutionary fervor grew in the 1970s. Decoupling cinematic temporality from Iran's political temporality, this dissertation demonstrates that alter-native cinema's revolution presaged the political revolution of 1979.
Photocurrent Control in a Magnetic Field through Quantum Interference
Keywords: coherent control
exciton
graphene
magnetic field
photocurrent
quantum well

Quantum-mechanical interference between excitation pathways can be used to inject photocurrents optically in semiconductors, the properties of which can be coherently controlled through the phases and polarizations of the optical pulses. In this thesis, coherent photocurrent control is investigated theoretically for two-dimensional semiconductor systems in a perpendicular magnetic field. The semiconductor systems are subjected to optical pulses with centre frequencies
The Classification of Dirac Homogeneous Spaces
Keywords: Algebroids
Dirac Geometry
Groupoids
Homogeneous Spaces
Lie Theory
Poisson Geometry

A well known result of Drinfeld classifies Poisson Lie groups (H,Pi) in terms of Lie algebraic data in the form of Manin triples (d,g,h); he also classified compatible Poisson structures on H-homogeneous spaces H/K in terms of Lagrangian subalgebras l in d with l intersect h equaling k=Lie(K). Using the language of Courant algebroids and groupoids, Li-Bland and Meinrenken formalized the notion of Dirac Lie groups and classified them in terms of so-called ``H-equivariant Dirac Manin triples" (d,g,h)_beta. This generalizes the first result of Drinfeld, as each Poisson Lie group gives a unique Dirac Lie group structure. In this thesis, we consider a notion of homogeneous space for Dirac Lie groups, and classify them in terms of K-invariant coisotropic subalgebras c in d, with c intersect h equaling k. The relation between Poisson and Dirac morphisms makes Drinfeld's second result a special case of this classification.
Investigation of Porphyrin and Lipid Supramolecular Assemblies for Cancer Imaging and Therapy
Keywords: Cancer Imaging and Therapy
Lipid
Molecular Aggregate
Nanoparticles
Porphyrin
Supramolecular assemblies

Aerobic life on earth is made possible through the functions of the porphyrin. These colorful and ubiquitous chromophores are efficient at concentrating and converting sunlight into chemical energetic potential which sustain biological life. Humans have had a longstanding fascination with these molecules, especially for their applications in photodynamic therapy. The photophysical properties of porphyrins are highly influenced by their surrounding environment. Intermolecular interactions between these pigments can lead to excited state quenching, energy transfer and large changes to their absorption and fluorescence spectra. This thesis is focused on utilizing molecular self-assembly strategies to develop nanoscale porphyrin and phospholipid structures. The rationale being that intermolecular interactions between porphyrins in these nanostructures can induce changes which can be exploited in novel biomedical imaging and therapeutic applications. Four lipid-based structural platforms are studied including: nanoemulsions, bilayer discs and nanovesicles. In Chapter 1, I provide a background on the photophysics of porphyrins and the effect of intermolecular porphyrin interactions on photophysical properties. I also discuss phospholipids and their self-assembly process. Lastly I review current biomedical photonics techniques and discuss how these strategies can be used in conjugation with porphyrin and lipid supramolecular assemblies. In Chapter 2, I investigate the influence that loading a novel bacteriochlorin photosensitizer into a protein-stabilized lipid emulsion has on its spectral properties. I discovered that while the dye can be incorporated into the lipid emulsion, no changes were observed in its spectral properties. In Chapter 3, an amphipathic alpha-helical protein is used to stabilize and organize porphyrin-lipid molecules into bilayer discs. Close packing between porphyrin molecules causes quenching, which can be reversed by structural degradation of the nanoparticle. This enables application as an activatable photodynamic therapy agent. In Chapter 4, energy transfer between porphyrin-lipid dyes in porphysome nanovesicles is explored as a way to track the structural fate of the nanovesicle
The Application of Millimeter Wave Spectroscopy to Ground-based Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere
Keywords: Arctic
millimeter wave
Ozone
PEARL
Radiometry

A new ground-based millimeter wave radiometer, SPÉIR, was designed as part of an observation system to detect and monitor ozone-related trace gases in the Arctic stratosphere. SPÉIR is designed to operate in the frequency range 265-280 GHz and measure the atmospheric spectra of ozone, nitrous oxide, nitric acid, and chlorine monoxide, from which vertical profiles of the gas concentrations can be retrieved. The observation system was characterised and simulated to determine its capability while operating at its intended location at Eureka, Nunavut (80°N). The altitude ranges and resolution of the retrieved profiles were determined, as well as the most significant sources of error in the profile of each gas. Optimal estimation statistics were compared to inversions of 500 simulated spectra. The results are in good agreement but showed that nonlinearities in the forward model, if not accounted for, can cause errors of 5-10% when constructing climatologies or analyzing trends with the trace gas profiles. A sensitivity study was performed to quantify the effects that uncertainties in the spectral parameters of molecules have on ground-based measurements at 265-280 GHz, and recommendations are made for new laboratory measurements. An inversion scheme was created to retrieve ozone profiles from measurements made by KIMRA (Kiruna Microwave Radiometer) and MIRA 2 (Millimeter Wave Radiometer 2), two ground-based millimeter wave radiometers in Kiruna, Sweden (68°N). The resulting profiles in winter/spring 2012/2013 were compared to each other, and to those from ozonesondes and the satellite instrument Aura MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder). The Kiruna instruments are biased low compared to the ozonesondes and generally agree with MLS. A significant oscillatory bias was found in KIMRA profiles and is attributed to standing wave features in the spectral measurements. Winter-time KIMRA ozone from 2008-2013 was used to investigate the natural variability of ozone above Kiruna. A persistent local minimum at approximately 35 km altitude is observed in winter-time ozone profiles and may be due to an effect of the polar vortex edge.