VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Social solidarity among Chinese Canadian evangelicals in short-term missions

This thesis examines how Chinese-Canadian evangelicals (CCEs) maintain social solidarity through short-term missions (STMs) to China. STMs are pilgrimage-like service trips that entails an individual to travel to a distant place to engage in social service for one or two weeks. This research draws on theoretical insights from Randall Collins’ interaction ritual chains (IRC) theory to examine the intersections of ethnicity, religion, and emotions at the macro-, meso-, micro-, and situational levels. This study involved over 131 in-depth interviews with 48 STM participants, observations of four STMs in 2015, and a two-year ethnography of a sending church north of the Greater Toronto Area in 2015-16. My first empirical chapter takes a macro-level perspective to investigating the global missions phenomenon. My findings reveal that the religious discourses that motivate the collective actions of transnational Chinese fundamentalist organizations are unstable, and this unity based on a religious pan-Chinese ethnicity is challenged by linguistic, geographic, generational, and ideological fractures. In my second chapter analyzing the meso-level CCE congregations, I observed how they maintained their organizational focus by operating cyclically and how each congregation’s members actively participated to maintain the pursuit of their mission. In my third chapter, I focus on the micro-level motivations for CCEs to engage in STM action. I connect contemporary neuroscience to IRC theory’s conception of IR “chains,” and suggested the concept be revised to “entangled chains.” I discuss how acknowledging the emotional entanglement of various identities should drive the analytical discussion of the self in modernity. My final chapter examines how situations of putative spiritual conflicts allowed STMers to generate various collective-effervescence outcomes. This thesis contributes to the sociology of religion and emotions and our understanding of communities by uncovering how social solidarity is generated and sustained at multiple levels of social organization.

Keywords: Sociology
Chinese Canadian
Religion
Social Solidarity
Short-term Missions
Evangelical
Advisor: Murphy, R
Hamill, H
How we value animals: the psychology of speciesism

In this thesis, consisting of three empirical projects (18 studies, total N = 8,218), I investigate how people morally value animals and why they value them less than humans. My central hypothesis is that people primarily value animals less than humans because of their mere species-membership, i.e. due to speciesism.
First, I develop and validate a Speciesism Scale, a psychological assessment instrument that measures the extent to which people value humans more than animals. I find that speciesism is a stable construct with large interpersonal differences. It shares psychological properties with other forms of prejudice and predicts behaviour directed towards animals.
Second, I experimentally investigate in more detail why people endorse speciesism. I develop a multi-factorial framework according to which people: a) believe that individuals should prioritise members of their owns species over others (Species-Relativism); b) have a slight tendency to consider humans to be of superior value in an absolute sense (Pro-Human Bias); and c) have a specific bias against animals (Anti-Animal Bias). I also show that people value animals less, the lower their perceived mental capacity levels are (Individual Mental Capacity View)—a principle that people selectively apply to animals but not to humans.
Third, I experimentally investigate when people consider it permissible to harm animals or humans in cases where harming a few could save many. My findings support a model which I call Multi-level Weighted Deontology: deontological protections against harm are not absolute and get weaker the less people value the respective being, but they do not completely disappear. They are strongest for humans, followed by dogs, chimpanzees, pigs, and finally inanimate objects.
Overall, my research shows that speciesism is a pervasive psychological phenomenon that strongly impacts our social lives and moral thinking. This thesis is one of the first attempts to transition speciesism from moral philosophy into psychology.

Keywords: Moral Judgments
Animals
Speciesism
Advisor: Faber, N
Savulescu, J
Agency in a quake in time - an ethnographic study of jokes about the future amongst Pakistani migrant youth

This paper explores agency through humour and time amongst a group of Pakistani young men who reside, or recently resided, in a refugee shelter for unaccompanied minors in Athens, Greece. It asks how jokes about alternate futures amongst this group might challenge the slow, structural violence which places these young men on the margins of society in terms of work, space, and temporality. Despite a lack of anthropological work on humour, particularly amongst migrant communities, this ethnography takes up humour as an analytical tool due to its pervasive presence in the shelter and its challenge to the discourse of victimhood and pity of migrant children. I ultimately argue that conventional theories about the role of humour fail to fully account for the temporalities that these jokes around futurity evoke. This paper also sheds light on the various constructs of time at play within the lives of these young men and how these are disrupted in the moment of the joke. It asks what modalities of agency emerge during these jokes when we employ Deleuze’s non-linear syntheses of time and seeks, ultimately, to look beyond conventional assumptions of youth agency and structural inequality, and to question the premises upon which such conventions are built.
Sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene of the gut microbiota in mice treated with a high fibre diet as a potential endogenous mechanism of radiosensitisation

New non-toxic radiosensitisers are needed in the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer because elderly patients are very vulnerable to chemotherapy-related toxicity of currently available radiosensitisers. Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibition is a promising mechanism of radiosensitisation. Tumour cells can accumulate butyrate which is produced by the gut microbiota via fibre fermentation to sufficient levels to cause HDAC inhibition, due to the Warburg effect. This has been seen when mice were treated with high-fibre diets. I hypothesise that the gut microbiota in mice fed a high fibre diet provide a sufficiently high systemic butyrate level for this to act as an endogenous mechanism of radiosensitisation. The specific aims are to examine the impact of the diet on the microbiome, and subsequently correlate diet-induced microbiome changes with tumour growth and response to radiation treatment.
RT112 xenografts were used in this study. 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed on a MiSeq platform and metagenomic analysis was conducted using a QIIME2 platform.
The faecal (n=59) and caecal (n=59) microbiomes from mice were similar and they shared the 3 major taxa (> 80% abundance): Bacteroidales, Clostridiales and Verrucomicrobiales. Significantly higher abundance of Bacteroides acidifaciens (p < 0.001) existed in the gut microbiome of mice fed soluble high fibre (HF) for 2 weeks. Principal coordinate analysis showed a notable clustering effect within groups, indicating that diet indeed modified the faecal microbiome. Survival analysis by log-rank test showed soluble HF conferred survival benefits with delayed tumour growth after irradiation (n = 32, p = 0.045). Comparison of the gut microbiome of responders (n = 4) and non-responders (n = 4) to irradiation in the soluble HF group revealed higher abundance of B. acidifaciens in responding mice (p < 0.05). Predictive metagenomic profiling showed gut microbiota in responders to be enriched for carbohydrate metabolism. To investigate the correlation between specific bacterial taxa and tumour response to irradiation, all mice fed different diets (n = 32) were pooled together. Univariate linear regression revealed a statistically significant positive correlation between the survival time of mice and abundance of the B. acidifaciens (R2 = 0.528, P < 0.001).
In conclusion, high fibre diets sensitised RT112 xenografts to irradiation by modifying the gut microbiome and this phenotype was associated with higher relative abundance of B. acidifaciens. Therefore, B. acidifaciens could be a potential radiosensitiser in bladder cancer.

Advisor: Kiltie, A
Pharmacological approaches for lysosomal storage diseases

Niemann–Pick disease Type C (NPC) is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder that arises from defects in lysosomal proteins involved in intracellular lipid trafficking. Cellular pathology leads to clinical neurological manifestations, including ataxia. The anti-vertigo drug N-Acetyl-DL-Leucine (ADLL) has been found to be beneficial for treating vestibular anomalies and cerebellar ataxia. ADLL has also been found to ameliorate cerebellar symptoms in 12 NPC patients treated with this drug in observational clinical studies. However, the mode of action of this drug requires further study. This project has investigated the effects of ADLL and other leucine amino acid derivatives in in vitro and in vivo models of NPC. We found that ADLL, and its individual enantiomers acetyl-l-leucine (ALL) and acetyl-d-leucine (ADL) improve symptoms of ataxia in a mouse model of NPC (Npc1-/-). However, when ADLL and ALL were administered pre-symptomatically to Npc1-/- mice they were neuroprotective and ADLL synergised with the standard of care drug, miglustat. Altered energy metabolism was implicated as the mechanism of action in Npc1-/- mice. A neuroprotective effect of ADLL was also demonstrated in a mouse model of GM2 gangliosidosis (Sandhoff disease mouse) with differential effect on metabolism. We also explored the efficacy of natural, non-acetylated forms of leucine including DL-leucine, L-leucine, D-leucine and an ethyl ester form of l-leucine and found that N-acetylation of either L-leucine or D-leucine led to increased efficacy in vivo in Npc1-/- mice. Interestingly, esterification provided neuroprotective effect to L-leucine, which was not seen with N-acetylation. NPC1 null CHO cells responded to all leucine isomers in terms of correction of mitochondrial volume and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species defects characteristic of NPC but also reduced lysosomal volume and lipid storage. Finally, we performed discovery proteomics to identify ALL interacting proteins in NPC1 cells and found 9 potential interactors that could represent new therapeutic targets.

Advisor: Platt, FM
Legal mosaics: the post-Mubarak Egyptian constitutions, their legal legacies and constitutional heritages

Egypt’s three constitutions in three years after the fall of Mubarak in 2011 were unprecedented in Egypt’s constitutional history and reflect the socio-political context in which they were drafted. Each defines the relationship between citizen and state, between the branches of government, the role of the military and the role of religion in the state. This thesis demonstrates that the three constitutions are also ‘legal mosaics’ comprised in part of the legal legacies and constitutional heritages of Egypt’s pre-2011 modern history, from the 1923 constitution onwards. The legal legacies of Egypt can be defined thematically as the British colonial legal legacy, the French colonial legal legacy, pan-Arabist socialist-influenced constitutions and Islamic jurisprudence and shari’a. The 2011 constitution’s interim nature gives it specific qualities that combine constitutional qualities with provisional qualities of a document written during an unfinished revolution. The 2012 constitution reflects both Egypt’s constitutional heritages and legal legacies, and the social and political conditions in which it was drafted, under the shortlived Muslim Brotherhood-backed Presidency of Mohammad Morsi. The 2013 constitution reflects both Egypt’s constitutional heritages and legal legacies, and the social and political conditions in which it was drafted, after the removal of Mohammad Morsi and the subsequent state clampdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt’s tumultuous recent history can be read through its successive post-revolutionary constitutional documents, including which parts of Egypt’s legal legacies and constitutional heritages were drawn upon in the successive 2011-2013 constitutions. This is most evident in the significant role of Article 2 in the constitutions, defining the role of religion. The empirical evidence and analysis presented in this thesis provides a significant original contribution to scholarship in the field by demonstrating how the drafters of Egypt’s three post-revolutionary constitutions drew upon the legal legacies and constitutional heritages of Egypt’s past in a way that reflects the social and political situation of the post-revolutionary period. It pioneers the concept of ‘legal mosaics’ as a way to read constitutions that have been written in states with a modern constitutional history that involve successive previous constitutions, and demonstrates how conceiving of the post-Mubarak constitutions of Egypt as ‘legal mosaics’ is crucial to understanding the content, the salient features and the socio-legal dimensions of these constitutional texts.
Justified emergency medicine research

My research uses the case of emergency medicine research to challenge established norms of governance and regulation which reflect an influential regulatory model of research ethics. This model has two foundational pillars: regulatory review and participant informed consent. Emergency research, where the possibility of consent is unclear, destabilises the pillar of consent and raises questions about the decision-making justification for emergency research. It asks how we may justifiably decide the research is permissible under a waiver of consent.
In Chapter 1, I outline the nature of the regulatory model of research ethics. I also offer key definitions and theoretical distinctions. These include the distinction between the ethics of research decision-making and the ethics of the research itself.
In Chapters 2 and 3, I characterise a landscape of issues relevant to the question of emergency research decision-making. For this I use case studies and regulatory responses arising in three research jurisdictions (the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom). Having developed themes from case and regulatory analysis, I argue there are two main areas of decision-making to be justified: at the general level of regulatory review, and the individual level of each participant’s enrolment.
In Chapter 4, I justify decision-making at the level of regulatory review, uniting my arguments with existing emergency research regulations. In particular, I examine whether the current formulation of the US regulatory requirement for prior consultation with communities about the research contributes to the justification. I argue that regulatory review is justified by reason of: securing commitment to emergency research under a consent waiver as a common purpose; judging the research’s risks appropriately; and considering the research’s impact on social injustice through an altered form of community consultation.
In Chapter 5, I turn to the justification for decision-making at the level of participant enrolment despite the emergency context and the participant’s likely mental incapacity. Here I carve out a key role for the physician-researcher. I argue she is uniquely positioned to make ethical decisions about whether or not to enrol the emergency patient. Her decision-making secures a modest level of respect for the patient as a person worthy of moral consideration despite his mental incapacity. Her role is sensitive to, and avoids provoking, a deep concern in research ethics. Namely the use of patients by researchers as merely a means to the ends of the research.
In Chapter 6, I describe a number of key findings arising from the justifications made, and some important policy implications. I also make recommendations for future work and scholarly thinking where regulatory models of research ethics are used.

Keywords: waiver of informed consent
Advisor: Kelley, M
Sheehan, M
Iranian and Saudi mutual (mis)representations: a study of the relationship between discourses of othering, political confrontation and sectarian strife

The objective of this dissertation is to study the concept of the ‘representation of the Other’ in the context of Saudi-Iranian confrontation and Shi’i-Wahhabi strife. The aim of this study is to incorporate discourse analysis, to study mutual Iranian-Saudi representation of each other in political, religious and media genres. Therefore, taking on a relatively new approach to the study of these two states.
By conducting a diachronic approach from 1979 to 2009, this dissertation discusses the employment of tropes and narratives to explore the concept of the ‘representation of the Other’ in the context of Saudi-Iranian confrontation. Since the constructivist approach allows for a better understanding to the representation of Othering in socio-historical and International Relations settings, Foucault’s power-knowledge relations; Edward Said’s concept of Othering and dichotomies in his Orientalism thesis; and image theory based on Hermann and Fischerkeller’s image of the enemy are employed. Finally, by investigating three main Iranian and Saudi spheres/discourses, namely the political (speeches of the elite), religious (Friday prayer sermons) and media (newspaper editorials) discourses, this study will try to explain how Othering is understood and functions in the Iranian-Saudi discourse, its relationship to political rivalry and religious conflict and how they are understood as cases of political propaganda or religious polemics.
The study findings identify a paradigm shift in analysis of the Saudi-Iranian relationship, moving away from conventional geopolitical and sectarian paradigms, which have been dominant. I conclude that religious and sectarian identities remained a propaganda tool, whereas, the nature of the agenda promoted by both sides was political in nature. The Othering framework employed marks a shift in the longstanding understanding of ‘rivalry’ in the SaudiIranian setting, where the relations between these two sides were dependent on the perceptions of each other, rather than embodying any innate or deeply grounded ideological fervour

Advisor: Herzig, E
Hollis, R
Cross ratios on cube complexes and length-spectrum rigidity

We prove two versions of the marked length-spectrum rigidity conjecture for a large class of non-positively curved spaces: CAT(0) cube complexes. Under weak assumptions, we show that proper cocompact actions of Gromov hyperbolic groups on CAT(0) cube complexes are fully determined by their combinatorial length functions. If the cube complexes are irreducible and have the geodesic extension property, the same result holds for non-proper, non-cocompact actions of arbitrary groups.
While some of our arguments are well-known in negative curvature, until now no length-spectrum rigidity result had been obtained in a setting of non-positive curvature (except for some particular cases in dimension 2). Our spaces are allowed to have arbitrarily high dimension and can contain flats.
Fixing a group Γ, our work sets the basis for the study of the space of all actions of Γ on CAT(0) cube complexes. As a first step in this direction, we use length functions to compactify large spaces of cubulations of Γ. This can be viewed as an analogue of Thurston’s compactification of Teichmüller space.
As a special case of our results, we construct a compactification of the Charney-Stambaugh-Vogtmann Outer Space for the group of untwisted outer automorphisms of an (irreducible) right-angled Artin group. This generalises the length function compactification of the classical Culler-Vogtmann Outer Space.
Throughout the thesis, our main tool is a new notion of cross ratio on Roller boundaries of CAT(0) cube complexes. We develop a general framework reducing length-spectrum rigidity questions to the problem of extending cross-ratio preserving maps between (subsets of) Roller boundaries. We then study under what conditions such boundary maps extend to cubical isomorphisms. In the hyperbolic case, our results extend part of the work of Bourdon and Xie on Fuchsian buildings.
Along the way, we also analyse the relationship between Roller boundaries, contracting boundaries and visual boundaries of CAT(0) cube complexes. For a Gromov hyperbolic group Γ, this allows us to embed the space of cubulations of Γ into the space of Γ-invariant cross ratios on the Gromov boundary of ∂∞Γ. This draws an unexpected similarity between cubulations and the many other geometric structures that can be encoded in terms of boundary cross ratios: for instance, points of Teichmüller space, Hitchin representations, geodesic currents.

Advisor: Drutu, C
Colloidal liquid crystals: phase behavior, dynamics and confinement

In this thesis, we report on the phase behaviour, dynamics and confinement of micron-sized colloidal silica rods with small gravitational length. In sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium, distinct isotropic, nematic, smectic and crystal phases are found to coexist within tens of micrometers. By combining confocal microscopy and tracer particles, the rods' phase behavior and dynamics are characterized across the whole phase diagram in a single sedimentation-diffusion experiment.
Our experimental approach allows to quantitatively compare the sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium of charged rods with theoretical predictions. All predicted phases are observed. However, the thickness of the upper sediment - counting the isotropic, nematic and smectic regions - is found to be inflated with respect to the hard rod prediction, up to a factor 2. We consider the possible effect of polydispersity, electrostatic repulsion and the entropy of counterions (Donnan effect). We conclude that only the Donnan effect can explain the observed inflation. To support the hypothesis, we independently determine the surface charge of silica rods and discuss the results.
Subsequently, we measure the self-diffusion of rod-like particles in sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium. Firstly, a molecular dynamic simulation is used to test the method. The self-diffusion coefficients are measured across the whole phase diagram and compared to bulk simulations -without gravity. We then present experimental results for an aspect ratio of 10, which has not been yet reported upon in literature. We reproduce most trends predicted by simulations. In particular, we find evidence of strong correlation between rotational and translational diffusion approaching the nematic phase, and a crossover between diffusion parallel and perpendicular to the nematic director in the smectic phase. However, we measure smaller diffusion coefficients than predicted by simulation, which is consistent with work on viral colloidal liquid crystals with larger aspect ratio.
Finally, we study sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium in confinement, with a focus on the smectic phase, and consider three geometries: the square, the lozenge and the annulus. The interplay between boundary conditions, elasticities and defects lead to a host of different structures. In squares and disks, we mostly observe the smectic bridge state. However, by transforming the shapes into annuli and lozenges, we force new configurations. The transitions are characterized in light of phenomenological models to extract the ratios between: the energy of an edge dislocation, the energy of a disclination line and the bending energy of smectic layers.

Keywords: Sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium
smectic
Confinement
osmotic pressure
confocal microscopy
Liquid crystals
equation of state
Colloids
brownian
nematic
tracking
isotropic
soft lithohraphy
Charged rods
Self-diffusion
Donnan
Packing
hard rods
Advisor: Aarts, D