VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Landlocked: Politics, Property, and the Toronto Waterfront, 1960-2000

Dozens of major cities around the world have launched large-scale waterfront redevelopment projects over the past fifty years. Absent from this list of noteworthy achievements, however, is Toronto, a case of grand ambitions gone horribly awry. Despite three extensive revitalization plans in the second half of the 20th century, Toronto’s central waterfront, an area roughly double the city’s central business district, has remained mired in political gridlock for decades. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain why this came to pass. Informed by extensive archival and interview research, as well as geospatial data analyzed using Geographic Information Systems software, the thesis demonstrates that above and beyond political challenges typical of any major urban redevelopment project, in Toronto, issues of land ownership — specifically, public land ownership — were pivotal in defining the scope and pace of waterfront planning and implementation. Few, if any, waterfront redevelopment projects around the world have been attempted amidst the same degree of public land ownership and jurisdictional fragmentation as that which plagued implementation efforts in Toronto. From 1961-1998, no less than 81% of all land in the central waterfront was owned by one public body or another, dispersed across a patchwork of public agencies, corporations, and special purpose authorities nestled within multiple levels of government. Such fragmentation, specifically across public bodies, added a layer of complexity to the existing intergovernmental dynamic that effectively crippled implementation efforts. It created a “joint-decision trap” impervious to conventional resolution via bargaining, problem solving, or unilateral action. This tangled political history poses a considerable challenge to conventional liberal, structuralist, and regime-based theories of urban politics derived from US experiences. It also highlights the limits of conventional implementation theory in the study of urban development, and calls into question longstanding interpretations of federal-provincial-municipal relations and multilevel governance in Canada.

Keywords: urban politics
urban development
waterfront redevelopment
public property
urban planning
city planning
public policy
implementation
historical institutionalism
path dependence
federalism
multilevel governance
multilevel non-governance
land ownership
Toronto
Canada
Advisor: Stren, Richard
Essays on Intermediated Corruption, Financial Frictions and Economic Development

Distortions that affect macroeconomic outcomes are an important avenue through which we can explain differences in cross country output and productivity. In this thesis I concentrate on two types of distortions, political economy and informational distortions. In Chapter one, I build a model of intermediated corruption where interactions between government bureaucrats and those who bribe them are mediated by a third party. I show that intermediation has significant effects on the incidence of corruption and the prices entrepreneurs pay for permits. When corruption is particularly acute, measures that increase the frequency with which government bureaucrats are audited often have the undesirable result of increasing the prevalence of corruption because of intermediation. In Chapter two I explore the link between corruption and inequality by building a model in which tax collectors are corrupt. I find that as inequality increases, the frequency of corrupt transactions increases as well. I also find that where corruption is more severe, because wealthier individuals tend to pay lower taxes, inequality is higher. I perform a few quantitative experiments to better understand this linkage. Chapter three explores distortions that are caused by adverse selection in markets with search frictions. I find that when participants are concerned about the information they reveal through their interactions in the market, the distortions to liquidity are deeper and that equilibrium selection is significantly affected. I also find that markets with reputational concerns are more sensitive to outside shocks.

Keywords: corruption
intermediation
inequality
reputation
directed search
financial frictions
Advisor: Shi, Shouyong
Adaptive Receivers for High-speed Wireline Links

This thesis examines the design of high-speed wireline receivers that can be adapted to a variety of operating conditions. In particular, the ability to adapt to varying received signal strengths, channel losses and operating frequencies is explored. In order to achieve this flexibility, this thesis examines several key components of such a receiver. First, a 15 Gb/s preamplifier with 10-dB gain control for the input stage of an analog front end (AFE) is presented that automatically adjusts its power consumption to suit the gain and linearity requirements of the AFE for various received signal strengths. The gain of this preamplifier, along with the amount of peaking delivered by a linear equalizer in the AFE are controlled using a new adaptation technique, which adds only a small amount of overhead to the receiver. This adaptation scheme is able to sense changes in the received signal conditions and automatically adjust the equalization and gain of the AFE in order to optimize the vertical opening of the received eye. In addition, this thesis presents the first clock multiplier with both a wide operating frequency range and the ability to transition between completely off and fully operational modes in under 10 cycles of the reference clock. This multiplier relies on the careful use of several injection-locked oscillators (ILOs) with an aggregate lock range of 55.7% of the 3.16-GHz centre frequency. The design of these ILOs was facilitated by the use of a new method for modeling the injection locking behaviour of oscillators. This model differs from existing techniques in the way that it relies on the simulated response of an oscillator to injected stimuli, instead of complex equations using quasi-physical parameters, to predict the behaviour of an ILO.

Keywords: communications
wireline
integrated circuits
CMOS
analog electronics
injection locked oscillators
equalization
Advisor: Carusone, Anthony Chan
Self-concept, Behavioural Attributions, and Self-awareness in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Mixed-methods Approach

Although a modest body of literature has emerged to investigate the experiences of youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there is a need to better understand their experiences to guide developmentally appropriate interventions and supports. This exploratory mixed-methods project included two studies aimed at gathering information about the self-perceptions and lived experiences of adolescents with ASD. In study 1, 27 adolescents (ages 13-18) completed measures to examine their self-concept and self-perceived competence, self-awareness of ASD characteristics and behaviours, and the types of behavioural attributions and stigmatizing beliefs they ascribe to their problematic behaviours. Two comparison groups (adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and typically developing adolescents) were used for self-concept and behavioural attribution comparisons. Study 2 comprised a smaller sub-set of 13 participants who participated in interviews designed to capture how ASD is perceived and experienced by those living with this disorder. Study 1 results suggested that adolescents with ASD have some awareness of the social, behavioural and adaptive challenges associated with their diagnosis and, as a group, hold some self-perceptions of competence and behavioural attributions that are different from those of adolescents without ASD. In Study 2, interviews were analyzed thematically to capture how adolescents talk about their diagnosis and psychosocial experiences, and how this may impact their self-concept and self-image. Four major categories emerged: (1) self-awareness and understanding of ASD; (2) psychosocial stress; (3) social-ecological factors; and (4) sources of support. Together, these results provide insights about how they perceive themselves and their diagnosis and some of the individual, family, and school factors related to their self-perceptions and self-awareness. Results from both studies converge to provide support for a systems approach to understanding the interactions between adolescents, families, peers, school, community, and greater society when undertaking individual assessments of needs and treatment planning for ASD. Findings from the studies are discussed with respect to the positive and negative effects of awareness and knowledge about one’s diagnosis on self-perceptions and psychological adaptation. This research has important implications for clinical and educational interventions that address the unique needs and strengths of adolescents with ASD to promote positive developmental outcomes.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder
Asperger syndrome
adolescence
diagnosis
self-awareness
self-concept
attributions
lived experiences
Advisor: Brian, Jessica
Archiving Authors: Rethinking the Analysis and Representation of Personal Archives

Personal archives are those created by individuals for their own individual needs and purposes. As a category of archive, personal archives are under-studied and under-represented in the archival literature. This dissertation seeks to fill some of the gaps identified by archival theorists by investigating the nature of personal archives and the application of foundational principles of archival theory to them. Focusing on the archives of a particular sub-set of creators, literary authors, I question both recent and persistent trends toward a psychological or character-based approach to personal archives, and call attention to the limitations of past and current interpretations of the principle of provenance (and its sub-principles, the principle of respect for original order and the principle of respect des fonds) as it is understood in relation and applied to writers’ archives. I argue that archival theory is too strongly oriented toward the creator of archives as referent rather than to the archive itself as referent, and propose the need for a stronger focus, both in theory and in practice, on the various individuals and processes that shape an archive. Finally, I call for more candid descriptive practices that better convey to researchers the complicated life histories of the archives they consult and that admit the degree to which archives are the self-conscious constructs of a variety of archival agents.

Keywords: personal archives
writers' archives
archival theory
provenance
respect des fonds
respect for original order
Advisor: MacNeil, Heather
Transition Metal Catalysis: Construction of Chiral Lactones, Ketones, Sulfoxides and 6-deoxyerythronolide B

The products of organic synthesis affect countless aspects of our everyday lives, from our medicines to our fuels, plastics and more. The discovery of new methods for organic synthesis is of paramount importance if we are to find greener and more efficient ways to synthesize commodity and fine chemicals, and lower the impact of the chemical industry on our environment. The aim of my doctoral thesis is to discover fundamentally new enantioselective transformations using transition metal catalysis, which can be applied to the synthesis of pharmaceutical agents, natural products or other fine chemicals. Hydroacylation is the atom economical addition of an aldehyde C–H bond across an unsaturated functional group such as an olefin or ketone. Theoretical studies on an intramolecular ketone hydroacylation catalyzed by rhodium were performed. The insights gained from this mechanistic study were then applied to the development of an asymmetric olefin hydroacylation using ethers, sulfides and sulfoxides as directing groups. Motivated by a desire to discover new catalysts with high activity and selectivity in rhodium catalyzed transformations, a chiral tridentate sulfoxide ligand was designed and synthesized. This ligand was found to be highly enantioselective in rhodium catalyzed 1,4-addition reactions. The use of allylic sulfoxides in a dynamic kinetic resolution was then investigated. The sulfoxide was found to direct a rhodium catalyzed olefin hydrogenation with simultaneous substrate racemization through a rhodium π-allyl pathway. Progress was made towards the total synthesis of a complex polyketide natural product, 6-deoxyerythronolide B. The key macrocyclization step was achieved in a model system by ring closing metathesis, and future work will be directed at completing the synthesis of the natural product.

Keywords: Asymmetric catalysis
Rhodium
Sulfoxide
Natural product synthesis
Advisor: Dong, Vy Maria
Cheating and Cheaters in German Romance and Epic, 1180-1225

Cheating and Cheaters in Pfaffe Amis and Reinhart Fuchs An Alsatian poet named Heinrich, writing around 1180, composed a beast epic, based on French sources, about a trickster fox named Reinhart. Some sixty years later, a poet known to us only as Der Stricker composed a work of similar length and structure, about a trickster priest named Amis, and his diligent efforts to cheat various anonymous individuals out of their money. Other works by this poet bear out the Stricker's consistent emphasis on strategy over brute force, prudence and intelligence over unconsidered actions. These stories both illustrate that power, when not directed by intelligence, is useless or dangerous, even to the one who wields it. Tricksters and cheating also appear in a surprising range of works contemporary to the Stricker's Pfaffe Amis and Heinrich's Reinhart Fuchs. Romances have their own trickster characters, conducting their cheats using methods and structures that recall those of these two Schwank-type epics. Cheaters like Amis, and Tristan's Isolde generate twin situations. One of them is true/hidden, and can influence the characters, and one is false/apparent, to which the victim characters are forced to respond. This artificial, apparent reality persists even after the cheater has left the scene, occasionally taking on a truth of its own. Both Reinhart and Amis, whatever their motivations, work evil everywhere they go; and yet the audience is expected to treat them as sympathetic characters. Because the trickster universe functions to turn systems upside-down, it also rejects the concepts of good and evil, forming a universe in which all that matters is who wins and who loses. The place of the villain belongs now to the fool; any character who becomes deceived deserves to be, and is treated with indignation by the narrator, just as the traditional villain might be.

Keywords: Reinhart
Amis
Advisor: Stock, Markus
Interplay between Spin-orbit Coupling, Electronic Correlations and Lattice Distortions in Perovskite Iridates

This thesis focuses on the interplay of the spin-orbit coupling, the electronic correlations and the bandwidth energy scales, along with the lattice distortions seen in perovskite iridates. In particular, we study the magnetic phases in these materials and the insulator to metal transition that occurs as the dimensionality of the system is changed. Motivated by the novel magnetic phases seen in the Sr2IrO4 system, we study the band structures of three materials in the Sr(n+1)Ir(n)O(3n+1) Ruddlesden-Popper series by use of a tight-binding model. From the effect of spin-orbit coupling, we see that the relevant bands near the Fermi energy are indeed made of effective J=1/2 states. This spin-orbit separation of the bands creates effectively smaller bandwidth which can then be split via magnetic ordering driven by electronic correlations. By the use of a self-consistent mean-field theory, we derive the ordering for each of the three materials studied and show that the nature of the magnetic ordering is highly dependent on the lattice structure. The ordering in the bilayer Sr3Ir2O7, which has been a topic of debate in recent experimental studies, is understood within the current approach to be a collinear antiferromagnetic order, in agreement with the latest results. Given that the iridate systems have large spin-orbit coupling, and that the topic of topological insulators has become a very popular subject of research, we discuss the proximity of the perovskite iridates to topological insulators. Since the SrIrO3 material displays a semimetal structure with nodal dispersion near the Fermi level, we looked at an extra term in the Hamiltonian that could lift the nodal lines and turn the system into an insulator. Further studies of the parity eigenvalues of the bands at each time reversal invariant momentum point confirms that for a range of this extra term, a topological phase can be achieved. A discussion on material realization of such a phase is also given where we suggest that a Sr2IrRhO6 superstructure might be a good candidate to achieve this state.

Keywords: Spin-orbit
Electronic correlations
Lattice distortions
Iridates
Advisor: Kee, Hae-Young
Interaction of bZIP and bHLH Transcription Factors with the G-box

Transcription factors are proteins that regulate transcription of genes by binding to specific DNA sequences proximal to the gene. The specificity and affinity of protein-DNA recognition is critical for proper gene regulation. This thesis explores the mechanisms of binding to the sequence 5’CACGTG, a common recognition sequence both in plants where it is known as the G-box and in mammalian cells where it is termed the E-box. This sequence is of clinical interest because it is the target of the transcription factor Myc, an oncogene linked to many cancers. A number of alpha-helical proteins with different dimerization elements, from the basic region-leucine zipper (bZIP), basic region helix-loop-helix leucine zipper (bHLHZ) and basic region helix-loop-helix-PAS (bHLH-PAS) protein families, are capable of binding to this sequence. The basic regions of all these protein families contain residues that contact DNA and determine DNA sequence specificity while the other subdomains are responsible for dimerization specificity. First, the influence of protein-DNA contacts on sequence specificity of the plant bZIP protein EmBP-1 was probed by point mutations in the basic region. Residues that contact the DNA outside the core G-box sequence and residues that contact the phosphate backbone were found to be important for sequence specificity. Second, the impact of the dimerization subdomains of bHLHZ protein Max, the required heterodimerization partner of the Myc protein, and bHLH-PAS protein Arnt was probed by mutation, deletion and inter-family subdomain swapping studies. All studied protein families are intrinsically disordered, forming structure upon dimerization and DNA binding. The dimerization domains were found to indirectly influence DNA binding by affecting folding, dimerization ability or proper orientation of the basic regions relative to DNA. Lastly, a new strategy for selection of G-box binding proteins in the Yeast One-hybrid system is explored. Together, these studies broaden our understanding of the structure-function relationship of the DNA-binding activities of these closely related families of transcription factors. The creation and characterization of mutants with altered specificity, affinity and dimerization specificity may also be useful for biotechnology applications.

Keywords: bZIP
bHLH
bHLHZ
bHLH-PAS
E-box
G-box
Max
Arnt
EmBP-1
transcription factor
leucine zipper
Fos
E47
yeast one-hybrid
sequence specificity
protein-DNA interaction
Advisor: Woolley, Andrew
Zamble, Deborah
Nonlinear and Ultrafast Optical Probing of Nanoscale MnAs and Graphitic Films

This thesis reports on ultrafast linear and nonlinear optical probing of nanometer thick films. Exfoliated graphene and few-layer graphite are probed through optical second harmonic generation (SHG) with 800 nm, 150 fs pulses. Samples of varying thickness from 1 carbon layer to bulk graphite are deposited onto an oxidized silicon substrate. SHG measurements are taken as a function of azimuthal rotation angle of the films. It is found that the SHG from graphene is much weaker than that from bilayer graphene, and has a qualitatively different azimuthal pattern. As the sample thickness increases from bilayer graphene to bulk graphite, the SHG yield generally decreases. Both of these effects are explained in terms of the symmetry of graphene and graphite, and modeled using multilayer optical transfer matrices, and an identical set of nonlinear susceptibility tensor elements for the front and back surfaces. These tensors are independent of sample thickness. MnAs films of 150 and 190 nm thickness on (001)GaAs are optically excited with 775 nm, 200 fs pump pulses. Specular SHG at 388 nm and first order optical diffraction at ∼ 400 nm are used to probe the samples on timescales up to 2 μs. It is found that the SHG probes the temperature-dependent, spatially averaged, surface strain. This strain reaches a maximum deviation in ∼ 6–100 ps after optical excitation depending on the pump fluence and initial temperature. The strain then recovers in hundreds of picoseconds, a timescale consistent with heat diffusion. The optical diffraction probes the first Fourier component of the paramagnetic–ferromagnetic stripes inherent to MnAs films in the 10–40◦C temperature range. After optical excitation, the diffraction data show highly nonthermal behaviour in the MnAs films. If a sample is excited from the coexistence phase, the diffraction signal shows decaying oscillations with a period of ∼ 335±4 (408±4) ps for the 150 (190) nm films; this is consistent with the release of a standing acoustic wave. Decay occurs on a timescale of ∼ 2 ns consistent with local diffusion through the films. The stripes are restored on a timescale of hundreds of nanoseconds, with a temporal behavior consistent with a diffusion process, possibly thermal in origin.

Keywords: graphene
MnAs
nonlinear optics
Advisor: Driel, Henry M. van