VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Making diversity meaningful: a study of inter-cultural interaction among undergraduate students at a large public research university

Higher education research indicates that structural diversity--the racial and ethnic diversity of the student population--is only one of several conditions that must exist within an institutional setting in order for the educational benefits of diversity to be realized (Gurin, Hey, Hurtado Gurin, 2002; Chang, Astin Kim, 2004). Recent survey results at the University of Toronto would seem to support this finding. Conducted in the context of a large research university with a high level of structural diversity, this study uses a variety of data sources--including National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data from the University of Toronto and aggregate NSSE data from U of T's peer comparison groups; a follow-up questionnaire on cultural diversity experiences; and focus groups--to isolate some of the conditions and interventions that serve to stifle or facilitate inter-cultural interaction in a large public research university.

Keywords: Cultural pluralism, Ontario
Intercultural communication, Ontario
Minority students, Ontario
Chromatin-based mechanisms control the cell-specific and hypoxia-regulated expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase

Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is highly restricted in expression to vascular endothelial cells of medium- to large-sized arteries. We hypothesize that chromatin-based mechanisms are operative in eNOS cell-specific expression. Here we identify a differentially methylated region that is localized to eNOS proximal promoter DNA. This region is densely methylated in non-endothelial cell types such as vascular smooth muscle cells, but is devoid of methylation in primary vascular endothelial cell types. We also demonstrate that the eNOS promoter is enriched in acetylated histone H3 and H4 and di- and tri-methylation of histone H3 (lysine 4) in endothelial cells, but not nonendothelial cells. An endothelial-specific histone acetylation code is present at the eNOS promoter that consists of acetylation of lysine 9 of histone H3 and lysine 12 of histone H4. DNA methylation and post-translational histone modifications are functionally important in regulating eNOS cell-specificity as modulating these pathways results in expression of the eNOS gene in normally non-expressing cell types. Histone modifications are also implicated in the down-regulation of eNOS in disease states, as we demonstrate that hypoxia transcriptionally down-regulates eNOS in endothelial cells by modulating the eNOS histone code. Repression of eNOS is mediated by histone eviction of proximal promoter nucleosomes(s) and their associated post-translational modifications. While histories are replaced following long-term exposure to hypoxic conditions, these histories are hypoacetylated. Reoxygenation results in the re-acetylation of the eNOS promoter and alleviates transcriptional repression. We therefore present evidence that chromatin-based mechanisms play a role in the cell-specific and regulated expression of eNOS.
Penelope speaks: Making the mythic specific in the works of five contemporary Caribbean and Italian writers---Lorna Goodison, Juana Rosa Pita, Derek Walcott, Silvana La Spina and Luigi Malerba

Using a combination of literary, postcolonial, and gender theories, the following study looks at the figure of Penelope in works of various genres by five contemporary Italian and Caribbean writers. It is a synchronic analysis with the aim of addressing each representation of Penelope within its socio-historical and cultural location at the same time that it examines common themes and approaches to her figure. The introduction traces the importance of the figure of Penelope the weaver to European theoretical discussions about narrative and subjectivity as well as her significance to feminism as a metaphor for Western women's writing and to the notion of violence against women in particular. Within the Caribbean, the figure of Penelope as weaver is significant insofar as it embodies an interrelational notion of subjectivity; her figure is also linked to resisting a logic of domination and objectification. The first chapter presents an analysis of the figure of Penelope as mother. The chapter brings together the poetry of Jamaican-born Lorna Goodison (Guinea Woman 2000), the Italian author Silvana La Spina's novel Penelope (1998), and Cuban-born poet Juana Rosa Pita's long poem Viajes de Penelope (1980). Each author's engagement with the figure of Penelope as mother accomplishes things particular to their individual cultural contexts and histories: Goodison's work is invested in outlining an African maternal geneology; La Spina's novel rises out of an Italian feminist context, concerned with issues such as violence against women and how particular forms of violence are institutionalized; La Spina's writing seeks to create a non-hierarchical model of being between mother and son to challenge both the gender hierarchy as well as the sacrificial notion of motherhood that lies at the centre of Catholicism which in some ways informs her work. Chapter two examines Penelope as wife in the St. Lucian author Derek Walcott's The Odyssey: A Stage Version (1993) and in the Italian writer Luigi Malerba's novel Itaca per sempre (1997). A renegotion of the conjugal bond where each spouse configures as equal partner in a non-hierarchal, intersubjective relationship serves as the axis of analysis.
Decolonizing the social sciences: aboriginal-centered theorizing and aboriginal relationships with postcolonial theories

This Aboriginal-centered thesis explores the potential dialogue between Aboriginal-centered theorizing and Postcolonial theorizing. I map North American Aboriginal scholars' and writers' responses to--and relationships with--Postcolonial theories in order to decolonize the latter and promote Aboriginal agendas. I put forth the argument that if Postcolonial theories are to be successful, and relevant to Aboriginal peoples, substantive changes are required. I arrive at this argument by examining the ways in which Aboriginal theorists conceptualize, interpret, utilize and critique Postcolonial theories. To this end, I draw upon literatures of critical Aboriginal knowledge production and responses to Postcolonial theories in the works of well-known Aboriginal theorists, such as Marie Battiste, Louis Owens, Thomas King, and Marcia Crosby. I conclude by articulating two promising stances with regard to this issue: indigenizing Postcolonial theories, and promoting Aboriginal-centered frameworks. Furthering the discussion, I imagine the possibilities of decolonization that lie within each of these stances.

Keywords: Postcolonialism
Decolonization
Social sciences, Philosophy
Ethnophilosophy
Indian philosophy, North America
An experimental study investigating the role of chromite on affecting the behaviour of the platinum group elements in igneous systems

Experiments were performed to document the role of chromite in affecting the behaviour of the platinum group elements (PGEs) during melting and crystallization. Initial experiments involving diffusive exchange of natural chromite with PGE-saturated basaltic melt revealed platinum group minerals (PGMs; including metal alloys and laurite) as precipitates along the chromite-melt interface. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy of the glass near the chromite showed lower Fe3+/Fe2+ relative to measurements far removed from the interface, indicating a local zone of reduction The reduction is likely caused by preferential uptake of Fe3+ and Cr 3+ by the chromite relative to the melt. The effect causes the precipitation of PGMs due to their locally lowered solubility. PGM precipitation was also found to occur during spinel growth experiments, which we attribute to the same effect. This process could explain the commonly observed inclusion of PGM in chromite in ophiolites and layered intrusions, and may contribute to the fractionation of the PGEs due to their differential solubilities in silicate melt. Chromite may therefore concentrate and fractionate the PGEs by two different mechansims, one involving physical entrapment of PGMs following local reduction, and the other involving direct solid solution into the chromite lattice. The diffusive exchange technique was also used to measure chromite-melt partitioning of the PGEs, which avoids the problem of PGE contamination during heterogeneous nucleation of chromite in metal-saturated experiments. Run product chromite crystals and glass were analysed by laser ablation---inductively coupled plasma---mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Partition coefficients were calculated using the composition of chromite margins and coexisting glass. In sulfur-free experiments, chromite-melt partition coefficients (D) for Rh and Ru are large (> 10), and show a progressive decrease with lower fO 2, but still remain> 1. Partition coefficients for Pt are sim;2 or less, whereas values for Pd are
Middle to Late Holocene paleoenvironments in a Great Lakes coastal wetland, Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

This study evaluates the factors that have constrained wetland development since the middle Holocene at a Great Lakes coastal marsh. Peat stratigraphies were examined in the two major depositional environments at the Lake Erie field site. A series of short cores from the geomorphically dynamic Rondeau spit provided a 2200-year record in which the construction of storm beach ridges, providing protected backshore environments, is a fundamental control on wetland development. Century-scale Lake Erie transgressions, however, acted to restart it episodically. Longer peat records were obtained from the head of Rondeau Bay, extending to the Nipissing Highstand 4200 radiocarbon years before present, during which time a diatom-rich Zizania marsh existed. Following the Nipissing Highstand, this community was replaced by a shrub dominated swamp at one core location and a fern dominated marsh at another, located less than 1 km to lakeward. Taken as a whole, the peat records from Rondeau show evidence for post-Nipissing Lake Erie transgressions at approximately 2200, 1300 and 750 radiocarbon years before present. Correspondence analysis is used to compare fossil and modern proxy indicator spectra and to illustrate the reduction in community diversity that has occurred since European settlement. The paleoecological records show long periods of stasis in wetland plant communities and do not contain any evidence for the autogenic processes specified in the traditional hydrosere model. The study concludes that geomorphic activity and hydrological change, controlled by climate as well as crustal movement, interact with autogenic processes that take the form of ecological community dynamics, to result in the diverse wetland complexes that have existed at the study site since the middle Holocene. The thesis also demonstrates techniques to identify pollen grains of the common wetland dominant Typha and presents data on the modern pollen rain and diatom assemblages across the study site, showing that the wettest sites dominated by Zizania aquatica are the most distinctive palynologically and in terms of diatom assemblages. A species-specific approach was used to show low pollen production relative to plant abundance in Phragmites, Sparganium and Typha. Cephalanthus and Zizania produce large amounts of pollen, which in Cephalanthus, is deposited locally.

Keywords: Paleoecology, Ontario
Paleogeography, Ontario
Paleoecology
Paleogeography
Region and nation in early imperial Germany: transformations of popular allegiances and political culture in the period of nation-building

This doctoral thesis addresses the question of people's sense of belonging and allegiance in the territories of Baden, Bavaria, and Saxony in the late nineteenth century, when they were incorporated in the German Empire. The study explores how in a transitional period of nation building, regional identities conditioned political cultures at the local and national levels and, conversely, how existing political cultures affected the formation of regional and national identities. Chapter III on the Kulturkampf, a major conflict of imperial German society, shows how regional and national allegiances clashed and were negotiated in Baden and Bavaria. Central is the extent to which the Kulturkampf failed as a deliberate measure of nation-building and instead precipitated Catholic resistance and re-regionalization of Germany. Chapter II sets the regions into the broader context of nineteenth-century German history. Specifically, the chapter delimits the range of analytical filters used in the subsequent chapters: Kulturkampf, Anti-Socialist Law, and symbolic representations of nation. In Chapter V three different commemorative approaches to German unification help survey the contested symbolic space that "unified Germany" occupied between 1870 and 1890: the Sedan Day celebrations; specifically Saxon varieties of symbolic representation contrasting with those in the other states; finally, the public ceremonies attending the birthdays and deaths of Wilhelm I and Bismarck. Chapter IV explores the Anti-Socialist Law, the most visible escalation of class conflict plaguing the Kaiserreich. Comparing regional responses on this issue reveals the extent to which centralizing efforts ran up against particularist sensibilities in the regions. Nonetheless, the preoccupation with socialism and co-operation of governments and anti-socialists promoted one form of nation-building at the price of excluding workers. Investigating these celebrations and tributes together with the societal conflicts puts into sharper contrast the multivariate ways in which enthusiasm and rejection, participation and exclusion shaped contrasting collective memories of unification. Ultimately, the varieties of defining, agreeing, rejecting, and qualifying perceptions of "nation" in the regional settings were testimony to the continuing diversity of Germany after unification; but since they did not preclude identification with the German Empire, their analysis also reveals that there was no standard path to national integration.
Interposing on calls in the K42 operating system

Code interposition allows new code to be dynamically inserted into a call path at run time. This work presents the design and implementation of a facility that allows new code to be inserted into calls to functions in clustered objects in the K42 operating system. Indirection through K42's object translation tables is used as an insertion point. Potential uses include debugging, performance monitoring, and hot swapping of clustered objects. Performance evaluation shows that the interposition facility developed has low enough overhead to be suitable for these uses.
Effect of the interface and alloy composition on the in vitro marginal fit and mechanical properties of implant supported frameworks

A precise or so-called passive fit between the implant supported prosthesis (ISP) and implant abutments is regarded essential to protect the load bearing capacity of the screw joints and implants from high stresses. The efficacy of section-and-solder and Preci-Disc methods to correct ISPs inaccuracies following their castings were evaluated as well as the load bearing capacity of the modified frameworks. Standardised ISP frameworks were fabricated using either Preci-Disc system (palladium-gold (PdAu); cobalt-chromium (CoCr) or silver-palladium-gold (Ag-Pd-Au) alloys) or cast-over method (PdAu alloy). The relative distortion of the frameworks to the prosthetic analogue was assessed before and after modification of the frameworks according to the specific modification method, using coordinate measuring machine. The load under which the modified frameworks failed was measured using universal testing apparatus. None of the measured frameworks provided a completely passive fit. However, their modification, by either section-and-solder or Preci-Disc system, reduced the three-dimensional distortion relative to the prosthetic analogue. The Preci-Disc system was the more efficacious system in improving framework fit to the master model and the resultant distortion values were lower than the components manufacturing tolerance. Regardless of the alloy used in this study, this system consistently produced passively fitted frameworks, without apparent reduction in their mechanical properties. Moreover, the latter system can be used intraorally and can reduce the cumulative error from all fabrication stages.
Patterns of HIV diagnosis among HIV-positive women giving birth in Ontario: results from the Ontario Perinatal HIV Database, 1994--2002

Objective. To examine patterns of HIV diagnosis and correlates of late HIV diagnosis among HIV-infected mothers giving birth in Ontario from 1994 to 2002. Results. 33% were diagnosed before conception and 27% after delivery; 96% of HIV transmissions occurred among the latter. Proportion diagnosed after delivery decreased over time. Year of delivery was independent correlate of diagnosis after delivery; age and country of origin for diagnosis before conception. Mothers diagnosed before conception were older, mostly Canadian and fertility rate was lower than general population's. Methods. Information on 256 HIV-infected mothers reported to the CPARG surveillance and supplemented using Motherisk and HIV Program and chart reviews was used. Logistic regression modeling and tests of association were used to analyze the data. Conclusion. HIV prenatal testing since 1994 has increased diagnosis during pregnancy but the rate remains suboptimal. No specific subgroups of women, notably women from HIV-endemic countries, are being selectively missed.
The clinical significance of family history, young age at diagnosis and polymorphic variation in breast cancer

The overall objective of this study is to investigate the association of first-degree family history of breast and ovarian cancer, diagnosis at age 35 or younger, and polymorphisms in candidate genes with tumor characteristics, treatment and/or survival in breast cancer. Candidate polymorphisms included non-synonymous amino acid substitutions in key genes implicated in pathways involved in proteolysis, cell adhesion, motility, transcription, inflammation, and growth control including the transforming growth factors-beta family. This cohort study consisted of 967 incident female pathologically-confirmed cases of primary invasive breast cancer from the Ontario Familial Breast Cancer Registry (OFBCR). All cases were identified from 1996 to 1998 and followed prospectively for the occurrence of clinical outcomes until 2005. Patient characteristics, clinical features and tumor pathological characteristics were obtained from self-completed questionnaires, review of clinical records and a full pathological review. To assess the association of genetic factors with the primary endpoint of interest, time to distant recurrence, the Cox proportional hazards model and survival trees, were used. First-degree family history was associated with increased detection by mammography, low T stage, and a non-significant improved survival. Individuals diagnosed under age 35 were more likely to self-detect tumors and to present with inflammatory breast cancer. Tumours in young women were more likely to be ductal carcinoma of no special type, less likely to be T1 stage, and more likely to be grade III and estrogen receptor-negative, and to have lymphovascular invasion. Younger women were more likely to receive chemotherapy, particularly anthracyclines, and less likely to receive hormonal therapy even if receptor positive. Diagnosis at 35 or younger was associated with significantly reduced DRFS. Poor outcomes were restricted to younger women with hormone responsive breast cancer. In multivariable analyses, age did not exert an adverse prognostic effect. The nsSNP in the ETS transcription factor, ELF1-N58S, was associated with poor survival in adjusted models. In summary, deciphering the clinical significance of genetic factors may have important implications for the practice of medicine if validated and shown to have a meaningful significance above current measures of prognosis and treatment response.
The role of two DNA repair polymorphisms XRCC1-R399Q and XRCCC3-T241M in breast cancer risk

The objective of this thesis was to determine the potential role of two single nucleotide polymorphisrns in DNA repair genes, XRCC1 and XRCC3, as susceptibility alleles for breast cancer. XRCC1 and XRCC3 are involved in base excision repair and double strand break repair respectively. A polymorphism in XRCC1 results in an arginine (R) to glutamine (Q) change at codon 399 within a BRCT domain and PARP binding site. Another polymorphism in XRCC3 results in a threonine (T) to methionine (M) change at codon 241 located in a RecA protein domain. Both amino acid substitutions result in radical changes in conserved sites of their respective proteins. Furthermore, these polymorphisms have been linked with DNA damage phenotypes in human tissues and associated with cancer susceptibility in previous case-control studies. This study combines the systematically-collected data in the Ontario Familial Breast Cancer Registry (OFBCR) and existing high throughput technology to conduct a case-control study to investigate the roles of two SNPs in DNA repair genes, XRCC1-R399Q and XRCC3-T241 M, in breast cancer. We hypothesize that these SNPs may be low-penetrant breast cancer susceptibility alleles. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
A reduced complexity face recognition system: towards assisting age associated memory impairment

This thesis proposes a reduced complexity face recognition system that could be suitable for use on a mobile computer, and is intended as an aid to people with cognitive impairments. It is shown that a prevalent effect of normal aging, which inhibits communication and social inclusion, is a difficulty remembering proper names. This system was achieved by first developing a face detection algorithm that makes use of multiple, orientation specific, scalable detectors to achieve computationally efficient rotation and scale invariant detection. Secondly, a subspace approach to face recognition was employed to reduce memory requirements. Lastly, accuracy was improved by exploiting the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon; where a shortened list of name-face matches prompts the user to make a positive identification. The result was a cascaded system that achieved an accuracy of 85 percent on a realistic test set.