VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
"What I wish you knew": Towards a sociology of physical activity in congenital heart disease (CHD): The social determinants of physical activity and health in youth with CHD and their health care professionals

Medical advances have increased survival for youth with congenital heart disease (CHD); the field of pediatric cardiology is concerned with enhancing quality of life in pediatric heart patients. Although physical activity is associated with numerous benefits, levels of participation remain low. Facilitated by the Labatt Family Heart Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, this study employed novel, child-centred methods in order to explore the impact of social determinants on the health and physical activity experiences of youth with CHD. Participants discussed numerous barriers in their "social lives and worlds" that have detracted from the attainment of optimal health and physical activity. Findings are discussed within the context of the existing research and recommendations are proposed. Social factors may mediate the relationship between CHD and reduced physical activity participation. As the "experts of their own illness experiences", youth with CHD direct the way to social change.
The rock concept album: context and analysis

The ‘concept album’ exemplifies the dichotomy between compositional practice and social function like no other recorded music. Despite the relevance of the genre to a decade characterized by its withering idealism, few scholars have broached this tangled subject of 1970s popular culture; fewer still have been able to write objectively about the significance of this period of recent music history. This dissertation traces the notion of the concept album from the development of the long-playing record in 1948 to the creation of the first rock concept albums in 1967. Whether a pinnacle of popular music—or as some suggest, a misdirected foray into the realm of ‘serious’ or ‘art’ music—the concept album represents an ignored but significant challenge to our understanding of what came before and after the era of its cultivation. The notion that the ‘concept album’ represents a desire on the part of rock performers to legitimize their efforts through the Western art music tradition is common to much rock and popular music literature. This approach, however, fails to realize the significance of marketing and technological developments within the recording industry, as well as, overlooking the impact of twentieth century popular music where the concept album is concerned. The analysis of the evolution and decline of the concept album as a compositional practice, particularly as an aspect of ‘progressive rock’ least adaptable to ‘punk’ and ‘new wave’ aesthetics, relates directly to our post-McLuhan and post-Adorno awareness of the machinations of the popular-culture industry. Moreover, while academia has absorbed discussions concerning popular culture and media in debates concerning postmodern aesthetics, music is often dealt with in an indeterminate manner despite its prevalence and cultural resonance. To examine the complex of cultural tropes involved in the aesthetic comprehension of popular music, I have attempted to create an informative model with which to address the tensions between commercial purpose, social function and artistic intent the concept LP exemplifies. Two case studies serve as examples of the historical analysis suggested.
Is a decision aid needed by individuals contemplating lung transplantation? A needs assessment

Rationale. Lung transplantation (LT) is a complex treatment involving many risks. Research indicates that individuals have difficulty evaluating complex treatment options. Purpose. To determine if a LT decision aid was needed by individuals attending a transplant clinic for assessment. Method. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted; data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Interviews were conducted with 22 patients and 16 support persons from the Toronto General Hospital LT Program. Results. The LT decision was not difficult for most participants. Individuals reported having adequate knowledge of treatment options, realistic expectations and clear values about outcomes, and support from family/friends. LT was viewed as the only acceptable option because it offered hope of improved survival and quality of life. Identified essential resources in making the LT decision were information and optimism. Conclusion. In general, most individuals attending a LT clinic for assessment will not require a decision aid.
The politics of natural resource access: Indigeneity, race and property rights in the Honduran Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve

The Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve has become a place of struggle over natural resource access and property rights. The Miskito Indians are the Reserve's largest indigenous group and are currently demanding the formalization of their customary territorial rights from the Honduran state. Since the mid 1990s, Miskito access to natural resources inside the Reserve has been persistently challenged by outside interests, namely ladino colonists (colonos), and the state itself. Through ethnographic participant observation, semi-structured interviews, historical data collection, and with a focus on discourse, this dissertation explores the dynamics of racial representations of indigenous and afro-indigenous peoples on the one hand, and their land uses on the other. A particular focus concerns the ways that pervasive and contradictory and historical and contemporary discursive constructions of indigenous and afro-indigenous peoples and their habitats are infused in contemporary natural resource struggles. The reproduction of racialized indigenous discourses occurs both in the context of state articulations of biodiversity and sustainable development priorities inside the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, and in addition, is embedded within national agrarian and environmental policies in Honduras. These dynamics are explored with particular emphasis on the ways that Miskito natural resource struggles articulate with the politics of global approaches to environmental conservation, with the resurgence of indigenous peoples' movements in Latin America and with the diffusion of market-driven land tenure policies. Acknowledging the significance of these broader, contextual influences, this work emphasizes the ways in which racialized struggles are highly localized, and particularly, how the Miskito, the colonos and the state lay claim to overlapping yet specific spaces and places inside the Reserve. Building upon the insights of political ecology and critical racial studies, this dissertation calls for increased attention to race in geography and political ecology as important influences on the politics of development and development policy and in the arenas of environmental politics and struggles over natural resources. In this light, Miskito struggles over natural resources are explored as interwoven contestations of racialized identities and land rights, wherein discursive and institutional articulations of state development, race and property rights are mutually constituted.
Characterization of drosophila N-ethylmaleimide sensitive fusion proteins-1 and -2

The ATPase, N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive fusion protein (NSF), plays a central role in promoting fusion of transport vesicles to their target membranes in several intracellular compartments. Through its interaction with soluble NSF attachment proteins (SNAPs), NSF alters the conformation of SNAP receptors (SNARRs), a step shown to be crucial in the fusion process. Presence of two Drosophila NSF genes (dNSF-1 and -2) raised the possibility that specific NSF functions that were provided by one NSF isoform in most eukaryotes may be divided between dNSFs. To explore this possibility, I analyzed their expression patterns and their functional properties. The expression analysis revealed that while dNSF-2 was expressed ubiquitously, dNSF-1 was only seen in the nervous system. I next examined the paralytic temperature sensitive mutant of dNSF-1, called comatose (comt) and discovered that at restrictive temperatures, mutant Comt protein becomes inactivated and translocates from the cytosol and membranes to a Triton X-100 insoluble fraction. I partially rescued the comt paralytic phenotype by ectopic expression of wild type dNSF-1 protein. Expression of dNSF-2 in the same pattern could not rescue paralysis, suggesting that dNSFs have distinct functions. Unlike comt adults, comt larvae were insensitive to heat shock. Expression of a dominant-negative mutant form of dNSF-2, dNSF-2(E326Q), that inhibited its ATPase activity, attenuated evoked potentials at neuromuscular junctions, demonstrating that it was dNSF-2 that mediated neurotransmission at the larval stage. dNSF-2 inhibition by dNSF-2(E326Q) expression in the larval CNS also altered Ca2+ cooperativity, most likely through a reduction in free monomeric SNARE levels. Consistent with this explanation, genetic reduction of Drosophila SNARE levels also reduced Ca2+ cooperativity. On another front, to assess the involvement of dNSF-2 during development, dNSF-2(E326Q) was expressed at the putative wing margin of larval wing disc and in salivary glands. This caused notching in wings and also resulted in malformation of salivary glands, demonstrating that dNSF-2 and SNARE-mediated transport system are important components of development. Together, these results indicated that while dNSF-1 appears to be solely involved in neurotransmission at the adult stage, dNSF-2 plays an important role in development in addition to its involvement in neurotransmission at the larval stage.
Community-driven adaptation

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to access Web content but lack the resources for proper presentation to the user. To address this problem, content is typically adapted to be more suitable for a mobile environment. Community-Driven Adaptation (CDA) is a novel approach to automatic content adaptation, which uses feedback to adapt content. CDA groups users into communities based on common characteristics, and assumes that users of the same community have similar adaptation requirements. CDA learns how to adapt content by observing how members of a community alter adapted content to make it more useful to them. We created a trace gathering system and observed how users adapted content in a controlled environment. Experiments were conducted on the traces and show that CDA reduces wastage of network bandwidth by up to 90% and requires less user interaction to correct bad adaptation decisions compared with existing approaches to automatic content adaptation.
Characterization and decoherence control of open quantum systems

An optimal quantum algorithm for "direct characterization of quantum dynamics" (DCQD) is introduced. The DCQD method can be utilized to completely determine the quantum dynamical superoperator acting on an open quantum system. In contrast to all other known quantum process tomography (QPT) schemes, this scheme relies on error-detection techniques and does not require any quantum state tomography. By analysis of the number of required experimental configurations and quantum operations in a given Hilbert space, it is demonstrated that this approach is more efficient than all other known QPT schemes. DCQD can be applied, by construction, to the task of partial characterization of quantum dynamics. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the DCQD algorithm can be efficiently used for Hamiltonian identification, and also for simultaneous determination of both the relaxation time T1 and dephasing time T2. Furthermore, it is argued that the DCQD scheme is experimentally implementable in a variety of prominent quantum information processing systems, and it is explicitly shown how it can be physically realized in photonic systems with present day technology. The ability of a quantum system to perform arbitrary or "universal" quantum operations is restricted to its naturally available/controllable interactions. It is shown that quantum systems with an effective exchange interaction can be made operationally universal by utilizing a subspace or a subsystem of the combined principal system and an auxiliary system. Moreover, it is demonstrated that universal fault-tolerant quantum computation can be performed on these systems without utilizing any form of single-qubit control. Characterization and control of open quantum systems are among the central and fundamental problems in quantum physics. A crucial primitive is the characterization of the dynamics of a quantum system that has an unknown interaction with its embedding environment. Another essential task is to control the decoherence of an open quantum system by using naturally available interactions. This thesis addresses the above fundamental problems in two separate parts. In the first part, a general theory for direct and complete characterization of quantum dynamics is introduced. In the second part, a scheme for performing arbitrary quantum operations on spin-based quantum systems is presented. This scheme can be implemented in the presence of environmental noise and faulty quantum operations without need to control the state of spins individually.
A lattice approach to the valuation of multi-variate contingent claims with regime switching

Various investment and operational practices, such as investing in flexible manufacturing systems and writing contracts to hedge the future risks, increasingly require tools for the valuation of contingent claims whose values depend on multiple underlying stochastic variables. These contingent claims incorporate advanced features, such as the early exercise of options, intermediate decisions, optimal policies, and possible causes of the dynamic behavior of the economic and operational environments. It would be impractical to utilize single-regime models, which specify a given mean and volatility to represent the evolution of an underlying variable, to describe the uncertainties from those economic and operational environments. Therefore, regime-switching models, which allow changes in the mean and volatility of the underlying stochastic variables over time, emerge as an alternative approach. Since the current literature on the regime-switching models mainly focuses on modeling and valuing an option on a single stochastic variable, the existing regime-switching models can not be applied to value options on several financial and non-financial regime-switching variables. Those options are complicated and require the development of a lattice approach, which is a discrete representation of a continuous process. Thus, one of the primary goals of this research is to develop a lattice approach that can be applied to value options on multiple underlying stochastic processes with multiple regimes. In this thesis, the existing lattice approach is extended in two major directions: lattice for a single stochastic process with multiple regimes, and lattice for multiple stochastic processes with multiple regimes. We then present three applications for the proposed lattices. The first application prices swing options under price uncertainty. The second application incorporates the product life cycle in valuing the flexibility of a manufacturing system that has three capacity options: expansion, contraction, and switching. The third application prices European and American rainbow options on correlated multiple regime-switching stochastic processes. We show that when compared with the Monte Carlo simulation, the proposed lattice for multiple stochastic processes with multiple regimes is computationally efficient and converged to the actual value of the options within a smaller number of steps.
Cohomology ring of symplectic reductions by circle actions

In this thesis we are concerned with how to compute the cohomology ring of a symplectic quotient by a circle action using the information we have about the cohomology of the original manifold and some data at the fixed point set of the action. Our method is based on the Tolman-Weitsman theorem which gives a characterization of the kernel of the Kirwan map. In Chapter 5 we compute a generating set for the kernel of the Kirwan map for the case of products of two dimensional spheres. In Chapter 6 we generalize this result to a product of compact connected manifolds such that the cohomology ring of each of them is generated by a degree two class. The circle action only needs to be “formally Hamiltonian”. By identifying the kernel we have found the cohomology ring of the symplectic quotient.
Obesity is not associated with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in HIV-positive gay males

Background. Although obesity and metabolic syndrome (MS) are associated with non-alcoholic-fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in the general population, it is unclear whether a similar association is found in HIV-associated NAFLD. Objective. To determine if obesity and MS-related parameters are similar in HIV(+)-NAFLD males and HIV(-) NAFLD males. Methods. Anthropometry, diet, exercise, and MS parameters were assessed in eighteen HIV(+) and fourteen HIV(-) age-matched male patients with ultrasound-proven NAFLD. Results. Waist circumference was significantly lower in HIV(+) than HIV(-), 93.1±1.7 versus 99.9±3.0 cm, respectively. Body mass index and fat mass % were lower whereas arm muscle area was higher in HIV(+). Insulin resistance (IR) parameters and the distribution of simple steatosis versus steatohepatitis were similar in both groups. Conclusion. The results suggest that in HIV(+)-male patients, NAFLD is not associated with obesity related to MS. Other factors such as chronic infection and HIV medications may contribute to IR and metabolic abnormalities.
Functions for Pho85 cyclin-dependent protein kinases in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are essential activators of cell cycle progression in eukaryotes and have been directly implicated in a number of different biological processes. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae serves as an excellent tool for exploring biology and establishing functions for CDKs in higher eukaryotes. In this thesis, I describe novel functions for the budding yeast CDK Pho85 in glycogen metabolism, cell integrity, stress response, and cell polarity. I also identify my contributions to the discovery that human CDK5 is a functional homologue of yeast Pho85. A transcriptional burst of G1 cyclins in late G1 phase is thought to promote the events of DNA replication, spindle pole body duplication and bud emergence. I show that a burst of G1 cyclin-CDK activity at START, including Cln1, 2-Cdc28 and Pcl1, 2-Pho85, is essential for morphogenesis not DNA replication. Furthermore, strains lacking the G1 cyclins CLN1, CLN2, PCL1, and PCL2 undergo morphogenetic catastrophe. I describe a number of phenotypic consequences of perturbing the Rho-GTPase Cdc42 in the absence of the Pho85 cyclins Pcl1 and Pcl2 and directly implicate the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Cdc24 as a target of G1 cyclin-CDK activity. The interplay between a burst of G1 cyclin-CDK activity and the mitotic signalling network involving Swe1 is essential for coordinating DNA segregation and morphogenesis.
A study on the performance evaluation of Linux I/O schedulers

I/O schedulers, also known as disk schedulers, are the part of operating systems that are in charge of ordering the I/O operations in the system. The Linux operating system incorporates four different I/O scheduling policies. This dissertation performs a study on Linux I/O schedulers and a performance evaluation of these algorithms under different workloads and on different hardware set ups. We performed some experiments with Flexible File System Benchmark (FFSB) and explored the automatic switching capability of the Linux I/O schedulers. The goals of this dissertation are as follow: (1) Presenting the results of a detailed study and evaluation of the performance of Linux I/O schedulers under different workloads with known and unknown patterns. (2) Exploring the performance behavior of the I/O schedulers on different hardware settings. (3) Exploring the benefits of an automatic and self-managed I/O scheduling sub-system in the Linux kernel.
Learning nonlinear constraints with contrastive backpropagation

In this thesis, we investigate a class of neural network EBMs that model distributions of data vectors using products of nonlinear constraints. We train the EBMs on trajectories of idealized particles using contrastive backpropagation, evaluate the resulting models, and compare their performance to that of Gaussian mixture models. The results show that, unlike mixture models, EBMs are capable of modelling complex distributions efficiently by taking advantage of the independence between subsets of input variables. If the data distribution has widely separated modes, contrastive divergence learning can fail to learn the relative heights of the modes. We compare three methods of using long-range jumps to overcome this problem. Energy-based models (EBMs) with deterministic hidden variables provide an alternative to causal generative models for density estimation. Features of such EBMs include fast exact inference and the ability to learn distributed representations nonlinearly related to data vectors.
Perception of musical rhythm and pitch in children and adolescents with spina bifida and hydrocephalus

Rhythm in music is established by temporal information. Accents are distributed regularly in time for rhythms with strong meters, but irregularly for weak meters. Discriminating rhythms activates the cerebellum, which is an important component of the neural substrate of timing. We examined whether children with a congenital malformation of the cerebellum, spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH), showed the strong meter advantage in rhythm perception. Participant were children aged 8–19, 21 with SBH, and 21 typically developing age-matched controls. Groups were equally able to discriminate rhythms with weak meters, although the SBH group was poorer discriminating rhythms with strong meters. The SBH group performed as well as controls at detecting violations of pitch and rhythm, but performed more poorly on a test of pitch discrimination. The data add to an emerging body of evidence about the effect of congenital malformations of the cerebellum on timing and the temporal processing of information.