VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Language of Solitude: writerism and the aspiring writer

The following inquiry attempts to explain, contextualize and describe aspiring writers, with special attention to their experiences and self-understandings. The inquiry pursues these understandings through autobiographic and ethnographic modes of data gathering; specifically, asking how such experiences and self-understandings allow for positioning, coherence and sustenance in the service of writing aspirations. Data presentation is also guided by dual approaches since the inquiry uses two distinct modes of data presentation in offering its findings. First the dissertation contains a novel, Language of Solitude. The integration of this novel was part of a deliberate design to create autobiographic experience. Put simply, over a three year period, I elicited my own experiences as an aspiring writer to better understand my research question. Notably I joined a writers' group, produced my own fiction and submitted it to this group, and ultimately wrote a novel. At the same time, Language of Solitude, which includes ethnographic observations and excerpts from my interviews with aspiring writers, provides a depiction of others and thus underlines generalized concerns. The second mode of data presentation, the Writerism Discourse, then features a form of social semiotic analysis that pursues the substance and component parts of aspiring writers' primary discourse which I have entitled writerism. With collaboration between these modes (Language of Solitude and the Writerism Codex), a special reciprocity develops; each mode filling in the other's 'blind spots': emotional, intellectual, dialogical, experiential, analytical, inter and intra-psychological. Such collaboration produced the results and conclusions of this work, allowing for traction on what might otherwise remain ineffable terrain. I reach deliberately for 'ineffable' since the self-understandings of aspiring writers are formed around a paradox. This paradox develops when two essential desires in writerism appear to exclude one another. The first of these is mimetic desires; that is, aspiring writers are elementally defined by aspirations: the strong desire to become 'the writer', projected into the future. These aspirations cannot be achieved without some imitation and mimicking of 'the writer'. In addition, aspiring writers desire to 'say things in their own words'. This too is fundamental. Since saying things in the words of others is plagiarism and not writing. With writerism the dissertation examines this conflict, contributing to aspiring writers' well-being by providing better understandings of this conflict and potential resolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Monitoring biodegradation of benzene in groundwater systems using carbon and hydrogen compound specific isotope analysis

Carbon and hydrogen Compound Specific Isotope Analysis (CSIA) was assessed for its potential to monitor benzene biodegradation in contaminated groundwater systems. In enriched cultures, benzene biodegradation under anaerobic nitrate-reducing, sulfate-reducing and methanogenic conditions produced significant 13C and substantial 2H isotopic enrichment consistent with preferential degradation of lighter isotopes in mass differentiating reactions. Differences in hydrogen Rayleigh enrichment factors (&egr;) were observed between anaerobic cultures and previously reported aerobic benzene biodegradation. These results suggest that hydrogen enrichment factors vary with degradation pathway, possibly because anaerobic benzene biodegradation may involve initial C-H cleavage and aerobic does not. To evaluate biodegradation of two BTEX compounds, benzene and ethylbenzene, in the field, carbon and hydrogen CSIA were applied to a petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated aquifer. This study established carbon and hydrogen CSIA as indicators of benzene and ethylbenzene biodegradation in the field however hydrogen CSIA may provide more conclusive evidence of biodegradation in its early stages.
When the fighting doesn't stop: an examination into the use of peer mediation in an elementary classroom

Recently peer mediation and conflict resolutions programs have been implemented in many elementary schools. Much work has yet to be done in the field and as a result I began my own inquiry on the topic. In addition to examining the types of conflicts students were engaged in and the way in which conflicts were resolved, the study also examined whether or not students were able to resolve conflicts independently of a mediator. Upon its conclusion the study found that while students were involved in various forms of conflict, that conflict resolution was successful in reducing conflict in certain situations. The study also found that upon receiving mediation training the students were able to resolve conflicts in an integrative manner. Finally, it found that some students were able to resolve conflicts independently of a mediator after having received mediation training. Peer mediation, therefore, assisted in creating a more harmonious environment.

Keywords: Mediation
Conflict management
Peer counseling of students
Interpersonal relations in children
False economies: forgery and other illegitimate issue, 1837--1895

The third chapter situates forgery in Collins' The Moonstone and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde in relation to contemporary economic and imperial contexts, first the opium trade and, in regards to Stevenson, the gold standard debate and gold discoveries in South Africa. In these novels, the forger's association with foreign exploits shows how such activity at once bolstered and threatened the position of English wealth and identity as pure standards of value. This thesis examines how legislative change, economic unrest, and shifting notions about genealogy, inheritance, and reproduction informed the representation of forgery in Victorian literature and culture. It considers the lasting effects of forgery's treatment as a capital crime until the 1830s and, in particular, addresses the recurrent intersection of forgery and illegitimacy in a range of Victorian fiction. The ongoing literary alignment of these forms of "spurious production" reveals the challenge that forgery posed to cultural understandings of individuality, identity, and origins and illustrates how, for the Victorians, forgery was persistently implicated in questions about the integrity of bodily and economic relations. The first chapter examines the resonance of forgery executions in the works of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Dickens' Barnaby Rudge and Collies' The Woman in White especially register the impact of earlier forgery trials, as well as forgery's ongoing conceptual connection to economic and bodily violation, particularly that represented by the bastard. The final chapter examines the increasingly conscious treatment of forgery by Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde, as the forger acquires a specialized criminal mind, one analogous to that of the artist. The forger gains a heroic status, his crimes bearing a resemblance to the emerging modern novel, as each represents a challenge to conventionally "authorized" texts. The second chapter considers how, into the mid-century, the rise of the money market, the expansion of the banking system, arbitrary economic fluctuations, and vast white-collar fraud undermined former measures of trustworthiness. Novels such as Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and Ruth and Dickens' Little Dorrit show how legitimacy thus became a highly precarious social category, as individual and institutional history and "credit" became increasingly unreliable.
Lightspace: A natural domain for imaging and analysis

This thesis demonstrates the value of lightspace image processing by detailing computer programs developed for high-quality, multiple flash studio imagery which uses only consumer grade digital imaging equipment and a single flash along with lightspace image processing to produce spectacular studio quality results. This thesis describes the benefits of working in a light-linear space for the purpose of image processing. Several consequences are explored and the benefits are explained. To transform images from pixels (referred to in this thesis as imagespace) to the light-linear space (termed lightspace), an important statistical structure, the superposigram, is introduced. The first purpose of the superposigram is to simply find the transformation into this light-linear space. Later, the superposigram is used to understand and model the noise present in an imaging system. Once the transformation of images has been made into lightspace, the thesis explores the potential of working in this space. One of the most important consequences is that of extended-dynamic range imaging and extended-dynamic range image processing, also termed super-tonal imaging. This thesis points out the benefits of working in this space, and solves the problem of how to handle the increased amount of data. Finally, the thesis utilizes lightspace file formats to explore the concept of camera resolution. A new pleasure of resolution, the Heisenberg-Gabor figure-of-merit is suggested. This single figure-of-merit is proposed to combat a growing perception that the measure of megapixels is a valid means of describing a camera's resolution. The figure-of-merit proposed is a single number, which in essence, evaluates the modulation transfer function, and thus the resolution, of an imaging system.
Assessing the evaluative properties of the Child Oral Health Quality of Life Questionnaire (COHQoL) in the context of orthodontic treatment

To establish its evaluative properties, patients from the Graduate Orthodontic Clinic, University of Toronto and their parents, were selected to complete the Child Oral Health Questionnaire---an oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) measure---both before commencement and after completion of the child's orthodontic treatment. The initial malocclusion and final orthodontic result were assessed using two occlusal indices (PAR and DAI) to determine normative orthodontic need. Statistical analyses were conducted to establish significant correlations and to evaluate the questionnaire's properties. It was concluded that although the overall sample size was small, the questionnaires showed evidence of longitudinal construct validity and responsiveness, and an ability to detect a positive change from pre- to post-orthodontic treatment. There also seemed to be a positive correlation between normative orthodontic need and impact on OHRQoL, although not statistically significant. No relationship, however, was found between treatment of malocclusion and change in OHRQoL in this sample.
The legal politics of globalization and workers with disabilities in Canada and the United States

Workers with disabilities face profound marginalization in both Canada and the United States as determined by a wide variety of measures including labour market participation rates, poverty rates and income levels. However, the advent of deregulated labour markets in a fast-changing world of globalization means both enormous opportunities and perils for workers with disabilities. In this dissertation, I explore the contradictory implications of globalization for workers with disabilities and the important role that legal regulation can play in structuring choices and allocating resources and power. I advocate throughout in favour of the social-political model of disablement as the most persuasive in explicating the systemic problems faced by people with disabilities in Canada and the United States. This approach focuses on the structural barriers and discriminatory attitudes imposed by society on people with disabilities and contrasts sharply with earlier failed paradigms such as the medical and economic models of disablement. These barriers range widely from ignorant attitudes about the capabilities of people with disabilities that malignly encourage discrimination in the workplace to physical impediments such as staircases which make it impossible for many with mobility impairments to access workplaces, educational institutions and public services and the lack of information throughout society and the media in formats accessible to blind people. I maintain that two major implications of the social model for the legal regulation of workers with disabilities are (a) greater worker control over the day to day decisions in the workplace and (b) the provision of disability supports across a disabled person's lifespan that would be decoupled from employment status or income level. I assess some of the major schools associated with the Law and Economics scholarly tradition in light of their salience for the two prongs that I have articulated. These include, inter alia, Behavioural Law and Economics, the Law and Social Norms School, Institutionalist and Neo-Institutionalist Law and Economics, and Critical Race Theory Law and Economics. Finally, I apply the two implications of the social model to evaluate selected key trends of globalization including human capital intensive workplaces, flexible working arrangements, the emergence of new technologies and telework.
Characterization of the mouse limb bud cell culture model to study the role of calreticulin in chondrogenesis

Calreticulin is an ER/SR-resident protein with many functions, including Ca2+ storage, chaperoning and cell adhesion, but its role in skeletogenesis, if any, is unknown because calreticulin-null mice die in utero before skeletal development. To follow up preliminary data on calreticulin expression in developing cartilage, I set up and characterized the limb bud cell culture chondrogenesis model. I confirmed that cartilage-like nodules form with a reproducible spatio-temporal sequence and in a cell density-dependent manner in this model. Contrary to previous suggestions, I also show that nodules increase in size at least in part by proliferation. I also show for the first time that calreticulin mRNA and protein are ubiquitously expressed during the cartilage differentiation program. My data indicate that the limb bud culture model will be a useful model in which to assess a functional role for calreticulin in chondrogenesis.
Manidoo Mazina'igan: An Anishinaabe perspective of Treaty 3

This is a legal, historical and personal account of Treaty 3. This paper discusses the Articles of Treaty signed by the Anishinaabeg and the Queens representatives on October 3, 1873. Since then, Canada has ignored the Anishinaabeg perspective of the treaty in the litigation of St. Catherine's Milling and Lumber Co. Ltd., a case that defined "Indian" title for almost a century. The Anishinaabeg perspective on the treaty, Manidoo Mazina'igan (the sacred paper) is important in defining a future for Anishinaabeg laws and social-political institutions within Canada. Utilizing existing academic and historical work and relevant jurisprudence, I attempt to bring clarity to what the treaty is: a sui generis order of "inter-societal" governments and their laws formulated to sacred treaty principles. One fundamental inter-societal institution is the treaty council, which should be the vehicle of treaty renewal for mutual reconciliation under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

Keywords: Indians of North America, Treaties, 1873
Indians of North America, Canada
Four Museum Rooms [Original composition, Orchestra]

Four Museum Rooms is an orchestral work in three movements and about 14 minutes long. It is composed on materials found by musicologists and historians known as scales or modes from Egyptian, Catalan, early Christian, and Chinese cultures. The rhythm of this music originates in both tradition and numerology found especially in rhythmic patterns of the first movement. The three movements are titled: Nile, Harvester's Song and Agnus Dei, and Five Strings. Each movement uses one set of the related materials as the base of music. The first movement is composed in two scales from Egyptian territories and in rhythmic patterns based on numerology, in other words, groups of four, five, eight and nine notes. The second movement contains two parts, one based on Catalan Harvester's Song, and another based on modes of the Gregorian Chant. Thus, both parts are based on Western modes and both are placed in the second movement. The third movement is based on the Chinese pentatonic scale. The rhythm uses groups of two and three notes found in Chinese traditional songs and short melodic motives to evoke the characteristic one syllable words exclusive to the language. Moreover, there is an abstract scenario of the Opera ensemble arriving in town creating a joyful atmosphere. Four Museum Rooms is scored for: Piccolo, 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, English Horn, 2 Clarinets in Bb, Bass Clarinet in Bb, 2 Bassoons, Contrabassoon, 4 Horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 2 Trombones, Bass Trombone, Tuba; Timpani, Crotale, Temple Blocks, Tubular bells (Chimes), Gong, Tam-tam, Bass Drum; Harp, and strings: 14, 12, 10, 8, 6.
An evaluative case study of UNICEF Global Education Project in Iran, 2000-2003

In 2000, an evaluation of Iranian elementary education revealed that it did not successfully prepare students for the future. The failure was attributed to the teacher-centered, content-oriented education system. In 2001, the Iranian Ministry of Education began a pilot project that introduced an alternative curriculum, known as global education, with UNICEF's participation. Global education, a participatory and collaborative approach to learning, proposes a holistic curriculum that encompasses all dimensions of learning. In a qualitative case study, I evaluated the implementation of global education on Iranian learners in two provinces, Sistan-Baluchistan and Tehran. I explored the perceptions of teachers, students, principals, and parents on teacher-student interaction, on the students' mastery of life skills and the concept of sustainable development. I collected my data through in-depth interviews, in-class observations, and a review of available documents. The data showed that the pupils not only learned life skills and the importance of sustainability, but enjoyed the process. They also established relationships with their peers, parents and teachers. However, the pupils, teachers and principals also found global education ambiguous. Teachers and principals found it time-consuming, hard to implement, and hard to explain to government officials. In addition, global education's philosophy and content hardly complied with Islamic teachings, the main focus of government policy-makers. The data also showed that the core team's preplanned activities did not work well in class. They did not cover local issues, were time-consuming and required resources out of reach for many schools, particularly in rural regions. Due to the non-global topics of the activities, and their central design and control, global education effectively reverted to traditional, teacher-centered methods. The results of this study suggest that future Iranian curriculum should emphasize present and future needs, both locally and globally. Such a curriculum requires educators and administrators who hold a global perspective. Curricular activities should be designed in each school, if not in each class. Emphasizing learners as global citizens able to establish global relationships is more important than any other immediate or long-term program for education in Iran.
A quantitative and experimental investigation of foodweb dynamics in intermittent freshwater ponds

The purpose of this study was to identify community-regulating mechanisms in intermittent ponds by contrasting the effects from foodweb manipulations to the natural temporal and spatial variations in four ponds. The ponds differed in depth, hydroperiod length, water chemistry, and community structure: the longer duration pond was dominated by collector-gatherers and had more high trophic level taxa compared with the shorter-duration pond that was dominated by collector-filterers. A 'false start' of the hydroperiod had a strong negative influence on the abundance of zooplankton and higher trophic levels throughout the hydroperiod. The addition versus removal of resources (i.e., leaf litter) in large pond enclosures affected the physicochemical variables in the ponds and generated shifts in the basal resources (e.g., chl a, bacteria, ciliates). The resource addition resulted in lower biomass of many insect taxa, whereas the resource removal had the opposite effects: the magnitudes of the responses were correlated with the substrate and vegetation in the ponds. The addition of invertebrate predators (i.e., odonates and coleopterans) had a negative impact on large zooplankton and dipterans, and indirectly, affected lower trophic levels in the ponds (e.g., bacteria, protozoans, and microcrustaceans). The odonates and coleopterans affected different prey taxa, but both preferred larger-sized prey. Aerial colonization was one of the most influential factors for maintaining intermediate and higher trophic levels in the ponds, whereas the use of enclosures prevented horizontal within-pond movements and significantly reduced abundances of many zooplankton taxa. The low trophic levels in the ponds were most strongly affected by the resource manipulations whereas higher trophic levels were more affected by colonization patterns and predatory intensity. Although the pond characteristics, seasonal development, and annual differences were of greater importance than biological factors for shaping the physicochemical characteristics, bottom-up and top-down effects in the ponds were both clear. The effects from the food web manipulations appeared weak in comparison to the natural variation due to the high temporal and spatial variability within the food webs. All manipulations resulted in responses that propagated through the food chains and demonstrated that the trophic links in intermittent ponds are strong.
Analysis of transient JAK/STAT signaling kinetics predicts control modules of stem cell fate control

A bottleneck in the development of many stem cell therapies is to control cell fate decisions such as self-renewal. Activation of Jak/Stat3 signaling is sufficient for self-renewal of mouse embryonic stem cells in serum containing media. We demonstrate that the magnitude of transient activation of transcription factor Stat3, at different LIF concentrations, correlates with Oct4 expression at steady state. We therefore hypothesize that understanding the regulatory mechanism of Stat3 activation should yield insight into novel strategies to control of ESC self renewal. To capture Stat3 activation kinetics a biochemical model was developed and validated. To understand how the pathway is controlled a global sensitivity analysis of interactions in the pathway was performed. This analysis identified the group of parameters responsible for inhibition or enhanced activation of Stat3. The most important modules for signal control are nuclear phosphatase, nuclear export and feedback inhibition by SOCS3; these along with receptor trafficking control desensitization kinetics.
The persistence of gender, race and heterosexuality in cyberspace

Given that identity cannot be visually detected in cyberspace, it has been characterized by Internet theorists as a space in which markers of identity such as race, gender, and ability no longer exist. The suggestion is that this post-identity space is utopian, as, given the lack of markers of identity, there can be no accompanying discrimination. This thesis investigates this problematic assertion and attempts to highlight the way in which whiteness is made normative online, and how this runs counter to the suggestion that identity does not exist in cyberspace. The way that identity is maintained in cyberspace and the ramifications of this are examined.

Keywords: Cyberspace, Social aspects
Internet, Social aspects
Minorities, Social aspects
Technological innovations, Social aspects
Heterosexuality
Homosexuality, Computer network resources