VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Awe Promotes Relationship Quality and Prosocial Motivation through Appreciation

As a self-transcendent emotion, awe shifts one’s focus away from the self and towards others (e.g., Stellar et al., 2017). Past work has examined the influence of awe on an individual’s self-concept and interactions with strangers, but a greater outward focus induced by awe may have consequences within long-term intimate bonds. I examined the affiliative effects of awe within the context of close relationships. I hypothesized that feeling awe would be associated with heightened relationship quality as well as prosocial motivation. In addition, I predicted that appreciation of one’s partner would mediate these effects. In Studies 1 and 2, dispositional reports of awe were positively correlated with relationship satisfaction and commitment, as well as willingness to sacrifice. In Study 2, participants who were experimentally induced to feel awe by watching an awe-inspiring video did not report heightened relationship satisfaction, commitment, or willingness to sacrifice compared to a neutral or positive control video. In Study 3, a 14-day experience sampling study, on days when participants felt higher than average levels of awe, they reported higher relationship quality and greater endorsement of prosocial motives for sacrifice. The partner’s awe was also associated with the actor’s prosocial motives for sacrifice, and the actor’s own awe predicting prosocial motives dropped to nonsignificance when accounting for the partner’s reports (Study 3). Appreciation mediated the effects of dispositional and daily awe on both relationship quality and prosocial motives for sacrifice (Studies 2 and 3). Together, these studies suggest that awe may promote the maintenance of long-term close relationships.

Keywords: appreciation
awe
emotions
prosocial motivation
relationship maintenance
relationships
Advisor: MacDonald, Geoff
Joy as a Mode of Resistance: An examination of Black Girl Hockey Club’s Ongoing Quest for Racial Justice

Through a case study of the Black Girl Hockey Club (BGHC) founded by Renee Hess, this doctoral research project investigates how an online sports network operates as a community of resistance to racism, uniting political action with the joy of sport. Hess initially established media sites including a Twitter handle, ‘@Blackgirlhockey’ as a fan account, to attract Black women who enjoyed watching and engaging with hockey cultures. The COVID 19 pandemic and the 2020 global racial uprisings transformed the Black Girl Hockey Club into a site for hockey fandom while simultaneously influencing hockey environments and users of the site to address racism. This dissertation uses mixed-methods to employ an in-depth case study of the BGHC, a not-for-profit organization and digital network with over 30K Twitter followers. The thesis integrates theoretical and methodological frameworks of critical media studies, Black feminist theory, critical race theory, anti-racism, and social movements. The thesis demonstrates that cyber networks can enable participants to initiate social change within their own communities. The effectiveness of hashtag feminist sports activism was demonstrated through an analysis of BGHC’s #getuncomfortable campaign. Various outcomes related to involvement with Black Girl Hockey Club were explored including the blurring of on and offline engagement and the development of political consciousness among users of the site. Research participants acquired intellectual empathy, humility and a collective agency related to anti-racism movements. The Black Girl Hockey Club community clearly developed ‘networks of hope’ that produced visible cracks to the dominant social order (in hockey cultures). Another measured outcome was an increase of social capital, individual and collective agency achieved through active involvement with Black Girl Hockey Club. The research illuminates the effective functionality of feminist cyber networks and supports the plausibility and advancement of anti-racism efforts in hockey cultures both virtually and offline. This thesis broadens sport and social movement literature by exploring how the pleasures associated with sport – in this case the love of hockey—became linked to anti-racist activism in an online community. It reveals how an affective mode, joy, shapes a social movement.

Keywords: anti-racism
feminism
justice
race
social media
sport
Advisor: MacNeill, Margaret
Evolutionary Processes in Urban Environments

Approximately 55% of the world’s human population currently lives in cities, a figure that continues to increase annually. Because cities are constructed to suit the needs of humans, urban environments around the world are predicted to be more like one another than to their own surrounding non-urban habitat, which may drive parallel evolutionary responses to urbanization. In my thesis, I tested these predictions and leveraged large-scale, replicated urban environments to examine the extent of parallel evolution in the production of hydrogen cyanide (HCN)—an ecologically important antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors (e.g., drought, frost)—in natural populations of white clover (Trifolium repens). Using observational, experimental, theoretical, and genomic approaches, I have shown that urbanization drives repeated reductions in the frequency of HCN in 16 eastern North American cities. I later expanded this work across the globe and showed that urban habitats around the world have converged to similar environmental features: cities are warmer, less vegetated, and contain more impervious surfaces than surrounding non-urban habitats. These convergent urban environments have driven changes in the frequency of HCN in urban populations (i.e., urban-rural HCN clines) in 47% of the 160 cities sampled. However, using computer simulations, I have shown that the epistatic genetic architecture underlying HCN makes populations particularly susceptible to loss of HCN via genetic drift. Therefore, urban-rural HCN clines could evolve if urbanization is associated with gradients in the strength of drift. Nonetheless, sequencing the whole genomes of 2,074 plants from 26 cities around the world has confirmed that clines are adaptive: urban and rural habitats consistently had equal amounts of genetic diversity, and I detected signatures of selection on the HCN phenotype and its underlying loci in cities with urban-rural clines. In addition, variation in the strength of clines could be predicted by urban-rural changes in the strength of drought and herbivory, factors also known to influence HCN frequencies at continental scales. My work has contributed to long-standing questions in evolutionary biology regarding the extent of parallelism in nature and provides fundamental insight into the drivers of evolution in one of the planet’s fastest growing and most environmentally destructive ecosystems—cities.

Keywords: Anthropogenic
Plant-animal interactions
Population genetics
Quantitative genetics
Urbanization
White clover
Advisor: Johnson, Marc T. J.
Ness, Rob W.
Digitally Mediated Support for Lifelong Culture and Language Learning

Learning to thrive in a new culture is a cognitively and emotionally demanding task that requires a lifetime of exploration, goal setting, and intentional effort. Lifelong learning is the reality for millions of immigrants in Canada, young and old, who leave behind the familiar to pursue social, economic, and education opportunities in unpaved landscapes. Learning independently in non-learning settings, such as the home, is particularly challenging because learning moments are sporadic, unstructured, and tacit. As a result, immigrants are at heightened risk of experiencing adverse consequences when they do not meet their learning goals, such as missing out on employment opportunities or facing relationship stress. The ill-defined pathways for supporting lifelong learning for immigrants creates barriers to full participation in their new society. In the absence of structural support, alternate possibilities for fostering the informal learning process must be identified. Toward this goal, I investigated two lifelong learning contexts and created tools that serve three generations of immigrants. In my first project I uncovered the dynamics of immigrant grandparent-grandchild storytelling practices, and I designed and evaluated a digital crafting tool that prompts two-way language and culture learning. In my second project I built and deployed a peer-feedback platform for adult immigrants learning to write in English. In my dissertation I integrate these two projects to answer three research questions. First, I have mapped the unique multifaceted learning landscapes faced by immigrants regarding (1) language and culture, (2) age, (3) attitudes, and (4) external structures. Second, I evaluated digital interventions informed by my mapping and showed how manipulating (1) flexibility and structure, and (2) shared spaces can springboard learning moments into meaningful engagement. Third, I reflect on the participatory approaches I adapted to better serve marginalized users. I advance knowledge in Human-Computer Interaction by validating design mechanisms that enrich social learning experiences, and the learning sciences by demonstrating how the interplay of internal psychosocial constructs and external sociocultural context influence the learning process for immigrant populations. Broadly, I contribute a body of interdisciplinary evidence for designing digital tools to capitalize on learning moments that arise from daily routine.

Keywords: Culture and language
English as a second language
Families
Human Computer Interaction
Immigrants in Canada
Lifelong learning
Advisor: Munteanu, Cosmin
Charting the Genetic Architecture of the DNA Damage Response in Human Cells

Lying at the core of genetic inheritance is the fundamental prerequisite of ensuring correct transmission of genetic information (Jackson and Bartek 2009). To achieve this goal, cells must constantly fight back assaults from exogenous or endogenous genotoxins, able to cause a broad spectrum of mutations and genome alterations (Nickoloff and Hoekstra 2013). For this reason, cells have evolved sophisticated sensing and repair mechanisms that promptly recognize DNA lesions, regulate cell cycle progression, and trigger the activation of a limited number of DNA repair pathways, with many of them competing or collaborating for the repair of given DNA lesions. To shed light on the complex architecture of the DNA damage response pathways, the overarching aim of my Ph.D. project was to chart the genetic architecture of the DNA damage response to identify new factors involved in the detection and repair of genotoxic lesions. Using retinal pigment epithelium-1 (RPE1) TP53-/- cell line, I performed screens against 27 genotoxic chemicals using genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 loss-of-function genetic screens (Olivieri et al. 2020). These screens identified 890 genes whose deletion causes to be more sensitive or resistant to DNA-damaging agents (Olivieri et al. 2020). Among them was ERCC6L2, which is mutated in a bone-marrow failure syndrome (Shabanova et al. 2018a; Douglas et al. 2019; Shu Zhang et al. 2016; Tummala et al. 2014; Järviaho et al. 2018) and codes for a previously unrecognized canonical non-homologous end-joining pathway factor; the RNA polymerase II component ELOF1, which I found to act as a modulator of the response to transcription-blocking agents. Mining the dataset, I uncovered that the cytotoxic mechanism of action of the G-quadruplex ligand pyridostatin involves the trapping of topoisomerase II on DNA (Olivieri et al. 2020). This DNA damage response map is a valuable resource for studying the entire biological system. It has ramifications for the development and application of genotoxic chemicals in cancer treatment.

Keywords: CRISPR
DNA damage
Advisor: Durocher, Daniel D
Self-critical Perfectionism and Body-related Self-conscious Emotions: Refining the Transdiagnostic Cognitive Behavioural Model of Eating Disorders

This dissertation aims to refine two mechanisms of the transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural model of eating disorders: perfectionism and mood intolerance. All three studies from this dissertation used a sample of undergraduate women. Chapter 1 explored multidimensional perfectionism in relation to facets of restrictive eating. Based on structural equation modeling, self-critical perfectionism, the more maladaptive dimension of perfectionism, was uniquely related to behavioural restriction (i.e., the act of restrictive eating). In contrast, personal standards perfectionism, the less maladaptive dimension of perfectionism, was uniquely related to cognitive restraint (i.e., thoughts of restrictive eating). Chapter 2 implements a 10-day ecological momentary assessment to examine how general and body-related self-conscious emotions (i.e., body-related shame) predicted facets of restrictive eating. Based on multilevel modeling, experiencing a higher intolerance of body-related self-conscious emotions compared to one’s average was particularly important when examining behavioural restriction. Lagged analyses revealed that experiencing a higher intolerance of body-related envy predicted increases in behavioural restriction at the time of the next report. Chapter 3 integrates the findings from chapters 1 and 2; the relationships between body-related emotion intolerance and restrictive eating facets were explored as a function of perfectionism dimensions. There were significant cross-level interactions between perfectionism dimensions and emotion intolerance when examining facets of restrictive eating. For example, levels of behavioural restriction increased as levels of body-related shame intolerance increased, but this was only true for individuals with average to high levels of self-critical perfectionism. The findings from this dissertation can be incorporated into eating disorder treatment such that practitioners may consider paying particular attention to multidimensional perfectionism and a high intolerance of body-related self-conscious emotions.

Advisor: Sabiston, Catherine M
Uliaszek, Amanda A
Study of Neutrino Oscillations with Enhanced Selection of Electron Neutrino Interactions

T2K is a neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan utilising a beam of predominantly muon neutrinos or muon antineutrinos. Oscillations are observed by measuring the flavour composition of the beam at a near detector (280 m downstream) and far detector (295 km downstream). T2K is sensitive to the CP-violating phase delta_CP, where CP violation would manifest as a difference in the oscillation probabilities of neutrinos and antineutrinos. The discovery of CP violation in the neutrino sector could help to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Super-Kamiokande acts as T2K's far detector, and observes neutrino interactions on water via charged particles emitting rings of Cherenkov radiation. At T2K, charged current quasi-elastic (CCQE) events where only a charged lepton is visible are dominant, while charged current single pion production (CC1pi) events producing a charged lepton and a pion are sub-dominant. Electron neutrino samples at T2K currently select for nu_e CCQE events, nu_e CC1pi+ events (where the pi+ is not directly observed), and anti-nu_e CCQE events. All samples exclusively select for events with a single ring. This thesis presents the development of new nu_e CCQE and anti-nu_e CCQE samples to replace the existing CCQE samples, and a 2-ring nu_e CC1pi+ sample to supplement the existing samples. Studies using Monte Carlo (MC) simulated data predict that the new samples will provide an 11.4% increase in nu_e sample statistics and a 10.5% increase in anti-nu_e sample statistics. Systematic uncertainties on the total number of events in each sample are estimated to be 4.5% for both the nu_e and anti-nu_e CCQE samples, and 17.7% for the 2-ring nu_e CC1pi+ sample. MC studies predict an improvement in T2K's sensitivity to delta_CP. When applied to T2K data up to the end of 2018, the new samples provide 10 more nu_e sample events (11.1% increase) and 1 fewer anti-nu_e sample event (7.1% decrease). The total number of events in each sample agree with the MC predictions within the statistical and systematic uncertainties. Implementing these samples into a future oscillation analysis can potentially improve T2K's measurement precision of delta_CP.

Keywords: cherenkov radiation
machine learning
neutrino oscillations
Advisor: Tanaka, Hirohisa A
Grid Entropy in Last Passage Percolation, a Variational Formula for Gibbs Free Energy, and Applications to a ”choose the best of D samples” Model

Working in the setting of i.i.d. last-passage percolation on R^D with no assumptions on the underlying edge-weight distribution, we develop the notion of grid entropy: a deterministic directed norm with negative sign that measures the proportion of empirical measures of edge weights (in a fixed direction or direction-free) which converge weakly to a given target measure. Though grid entropy and its convex duality to point-to-point/point-to-level Gibbs Free Energy have already been discovered by Rassoul-Agha and Seppalainen [19], our approach is novel in that we realize grid entropy as both a Subadditive Ergodic Theorem limit and equivalently as the threshold exponent of canonical order statistics associated with the Levy-Prokhorov metric. We use this new framework to re-derive various properties of grid entropy, including an upper bound on the sum of relative and grid entropies and upper semicontinuity. We also show that the direction-free case is nothing more than the direction-fixed case in the (1,1, ...,1) direction. In addition, we connect these results to the work of Bates [3] and partially answer a directed polymer version of a question of Hoffman. Shifting gears, we proceed to study these objects in a model consisting of repeatedly taking D samples from a distribution and picking out one according to an omniscient ”strategy.” We show that the set of limit points of empirical measures is almost surely the same whether or not we restrict ourselves to strategies which make the choices independently of all past and future choices, and moreover, that this set coincides with the set of measures with finite grid entropy. These setsare convex and weakly compact; we characterize their extreme points as those given by a natural ”greedy” deterministic strategy and we compute their grid entropy to be 0. This yields a description of the set of limit points of empirical measures as the closed convex hull of measures given by a density which is D Beta(1,D) distributed. We also derive a simplified version of a grid entropy-based variational formula for Gibbs Free Energy for this model, and we present the dual formula for grid entropy.

Keywords: directed polymer
entropy
free energy
order statistics
subadditive ergodic theorem
variational formula
Advisor: Virag, Balint
Visualizing Medicine in the Twelfth Century: Bodily Disease, Spiritual Cure, and Christian Salvation

This study reevaluates the meaning and function of some of the earliest extant Western medical illustrations by interpreting them within the context of their manuscripts and the monastic culture that produced them. It is based on cases studies of three northern European books from the twelfth century and the illustrations of surgery, anatomy, and medical authorities contained therein (Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100; London, BL, Harley MS 1585; Munich, BSB, Clm. 13002). Previous scholarship separated such images from their manuscript contexts and focused almost exclusively on their medical meaning and function. This study reinterprets the medical images in situ and finds other connotations and uses that relate to the theological, intellectual, and institutional concerns of the monasteries in which they were created. An iconological assessment of the imagery in these manuscripts reveals that portrayals of diseased bodies also reflect degrees of sin; peculiar features of surgical procedures represent divine intervention; and certain images of disease, suffering, and cure are associated with the rigor of monastic discipline and its goal of salvation. Furthermore, a consideration of the use and placement of the medical illustrations within the manuscripts highlights the complex visual and codicological strategies used to create additional layers of meaning. Juxtapositions of different kinds of illustrations, recurring textual themes, the structural practice of bookending, and repetition of colour and specific imagery create relationships that contribute to the monastic authors’ larger intellectual and ideological programs. Moreover, these relationships, viewed within the spiritual and educational practice of monastic meditatio, broaden the conceptions of the body, sickness, cure, and health such that medical illustrations could expound a sophisticated Christology while at the same time support the reform or reinvigoration of “unhealthy” institutional “bodies.” In the monastic milieu of the twelfth-century, images of the human body and medical procedures did not necessarily serve the same purposes they would in the later setting of the university. As the three manuscripts treated here demonstrate, they could also serve to communicate profound theological insight; substantiate a monastery’s intellectual and institutional needs; and visualize an ideal “body” intended as a model for salvation.

Keywords: anatomy
cautery
illustrated manuscript
medieval medicine
monasticism
twelfth century
Advisor: Cohen, Adam S
The Formation of Relationships between Unfamiliar Toddlers

Peer relationships play an important role in children’s emotional, social, and cognitive development. Very little is known about the development of peer relationships between toddlers. This dissertation examined the formation of relationships between 28 unfamiliar 20- and 30-month-old toddlers. Participants met separately with each of two other toddlers for 18 playdates.In Study 1, the frequency and length of games, conflicts and contingency sequences were examined. The frequency of games increased over time, while the frequency of conflict and contingency sequences decreased. The length of games increased over time while the length of conflicts and contingency sequences was stable. Age did not predict changes in frequency and length of the different types of sequences. Study 2 examined changes in positive and negative behaviors over time. For older, but not younger, toddlers, the frequency of both total positive and negative actions increased as relationships developed. While significant amounts of the variance were explained at the session and dyad-levels for both positive and negative actions, variance at the child-level was only significant for negative actions. Study 3 examined whether behaviors early in the formation of toddler relationships predicted interactions later in their relationships. Both positive and negative behaviors at the beginning of the relationship predicted a higher frequency of games later in the relationship. Positive behaviors at the beginning of the relationship predicted fewer conflicts later in the relationship. Negative behaviors at the beginning predicted more conflicts later in the relationship. The unique design of this study allowed tracing the relationship of toddlers who were initially unfamiliar with one another. The findings suggest that as toddler relationships evolve, their interactions become increasingly more organized and complex; over time, their relationships include, not only positive, but also negative actions. Finally, toddlers’ behaviors when they initially meet, underlie the pathway in which their relationship develops. Taken together, these findings are consistent with characteristics of the development of friendships.

Advisor: Perlman, Michal