VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
8-Port Homodyne Detection of EIT-enhanced Cross-phase Modulation Using Broadband Signal Pulses

This thesis summarizes my work on the interactions between light and matter in the context of optical quantum information processing. I have designed and implemented a phase-sensitive detection scheme for optical-frequency electromagnetic fields, which has been used to measure μrad phase shifts on nanosecond timescales. This phase measurement was developed for the express purpose of detecting cross-phase modulation (XPM), a key ingredient in the construction of optical logic gates. I have implemented the 'N-scheme', a form of XPM which exploits electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) and which was promised to yield 'giant' optical nonlinearities sufficient for all-optical quantum information processing. Using a cloud of laser-cooled 85Rb atoms as the nonlinear medium, I present the first ever experimental study of EIT-enhanced XPM in the controversial regime of broadband signal pulses and spectrally narrow EIT windows. The results of this experiment constitute a breakdown of the original proposal for EIT-enhanced XPM. In light of these findings, I conclude with a theoretical analysis of the feasibility of using N-scheme as implemented in our lab to perform a non-demolition measurement of a single photon (a crucial step when using XPM to generate a universal optical logic gate). While possible in principle, the experimental conditions necessary to achieve a signal-to-noise ratio above unity are found to be practically unrealistic, suggesting a more sophisticated scheme is necessary.

Advisor: Steinberg, Aephraim M
The Role of Next Generation Sequencing in the Molecular Diagnosis and Treatment of Retinoblastoma

Retinoblastoma, a rare cancer of the infant retina, is a major health problem in low-income countries. Genetic testing for retinoblastoma or identification of the underlying RB1 mutations is particularly essential to the clinical management of this disease. High-quality conventional genetic testing is unaffordable for the majority of afflicted families in underdeveloped areas. The dynamic field of next generation sequencing (NGS) has allowed for simultaneous variant detection in multiple samples at a higher throughput than traditional sequencing. We hypothesized that NGS technology is a prospective cost-effective supplement to the conventional genetic testing strategy for retinoblastoma. We compared the cost and sensitivity of the Pacific Biosciences and Illumina MiSeq sequencing platforms for RB1 mutation identification and report a 70% to 90% sensitivity of mutation detection. We further performed a cost-effectiveness analysis of an NGS-based testing strategy versus the conventional Visible Genetics Incorporated (VGI)-based testing strategy in the genetic testing of an individual affected with unilateral retinoblastoma and seven at-risk relatives. A comparison of costs and effectiveness, measured as the sensitivity of RB1 mutation detection, as well as the number of invasive eye exams under anaesthesia (EUAs) required in the case of false negatives, across the two strategies revealed that the NGS-based strategy was associated with both a lower cost and decreased effectiveness of mutation detection. Consequently, we do not recommend NGS implementation in molecular diagnostics for retinoblastoma. Since retinoblastoma patients are at risk of ototoxicity due to carboplatin, tests for known single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with platinum-induced ototoxicity, coupled with NGS for RB1 mutations may be useful to guide therapy. We hypothesized that genetic and clinical predictors of carboplatin-induced ototoxicity would inform therapy to reduce this risk. None of the polymorphisms examined in the TPMT, COMT, and ABCC3 genes were associated with the development of hearing loss after carboplatin treatment in our cohort of 71 retinoblastoma patients. Younger age at treatment initiation was identified as a significant risk predictor of hearing loss. This work represents the first attempt to examine the cost-effectiveness of NGS in retinoblastoma genetic testing as well as investigate genetic determinants of carboplatin-related ototoxicity in this cancer.

Keywords: Carboplatin
Cost-effectiveness analysis
Decision analytic modelling
Next generation sequencing
Ototoxicity
Retinoblastoma
Advisor: Gallie, Brenda L
Autism and Mothering: Pursuing the Meaning of Care

This dissertation investigates the cultural production and lived meanings of the identity ‘autism mother’ from its emergence in 1943 to the present day. Drawing on critical and interpretive methods and theories within disability studies, informed by philosophical sociology, poststructuralist and phenomenological philosophies, cultural and maternal studies and feminist philosophies of science, my project explores the shifting emergences, historical traces and cultural meanings of this new mother identity. The analysis addresses psychoanalytic understandings of the ‘cold’ mother thought to cause autism in her child during the 1940s-1960s; the ‘mother therapist’ of the 1970s-1990s who must utilize scientifically guided techniques to achieve a ‘normal’ child; and today’s ‘mother warrior’ who must intensively fight against the so-called rising threat of autism. I take up the identity ‘autism mother’ as a way to explore, and offer an alternative to, Western patriarchal, racist, scientific and capitalist modes of power, knowledge production and subjectivities that are captured by cultural understandings of autism as an undesirable neurodevelopmental difference, non-autistic life as the only life worth living, and mothers as culpable for the remediation of their autistic child. The historical and social significance of everyday text and talk during 1943-2015 by and about autism mothers in the mass media and popular science, as well as focus groups held with autism mothers in Toronto in the fall of 2013, are analyzed. This work reveals the identity ‘autism mother’ as a key cultural contradiction through which scientific, bourgeois, white understandings of autism, and a contradictory femininity have come to regulate the good/bad mother in new ways, alongside the ever-present complexity and meaning of caring. Emerging from my analysis of everyday texts and focus group dialogues with mothers, I propose pedagogic care as an important alternative that embodies a creative critique of and resistance to exclusionary, and sometimes violent, biomedical and professional regimes. Critically pursuing questions of the meaning of ‘autism’ and ‘autism mother’ as culturally produced, lived identities integrally linked to knowledge production and power opens space for new meanings.

Keywords: autism
mothering and pedagogic care
cultural studies
disability studies
genealogy of 'autism mothers'
phenomenology
poststructuralist philosophy
Advisor: Titchkosky, Tanya
Community-based Physical Activity Following Rehabilitation in Chronic Disease

The overlap in physical impairments and rehabilitative management for heart failure (HF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), stroke, and diabetes supports the potential for an integrated symptom-directed approach to long-term management and physical activity promotion. The main objective of this thesis was to align the evidence across conditions to allow for comparison of PA levels following rehabilitation and to evaluate whether individuals with HF, COPD, stroke, and diabetes experience similar barriers to PA following discharge from rehabilitation. The first study in this thesis showed that physical activity levels for diabetic adults with a transtibial amputation remain stable following discharge from prosthetic rehabilitation, but fall well below recommended guidelines of 150 minutes/week for adults with diabetes. In the second study, we found similarly low levels of physical activity following rehabilitation for individuals with HF and COPD. In this study, participants also expressed the need for minimally supervised community-based programs tailored to functional ability to support adherence to exercise and prescribed activity following rehabilitation. The third study identified similar perceptions across chronic conditions with respect to barriers to and facilitators of physical activity in the community. However significant differences were found between healthcare professionals and older adults with chronic disease with the respect to their perception of barriers. The findings from the three studies included in this thesis support the need for exercise maintenance programs following rehabilitation and the potential for an integrated approach to management.

Keywords: chronic disease
community
exercise
physical activity
rehabilitation
Advisor: Brooks, Dina
Regulating International Finance: The Genesis and Transformation of Central Banking Practices

This dissertation investigates the development of financial regulation since the nineteenth century through central banks’ governing practices in industrial countries. Since central banks adopted the lender-of-last-resort function in the 1870s, they have been continuously contributing to the stabilization of financial markets. However, the nature of their governing practices has transformed. This dissertation addresses the sociological and historical underpinnings of central banks’ authority. By combining theoretical insights from interactionist sociology (e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias, and Etienne Wenger) and from the philosophy of modernity (e.g., Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas), it looks into the crucial role of knowledge for financial governance in general and central banks’ authority in particular. Knowledge shapes governance in two ways. It structurally creates the conditions of possibility for certain practices to develop and it cognitively represents reality. Such representations become incorporated into the background knowledge of the community of practice. The thesis highlights the importance of modern science for governance to occur. The rise of science in economics and finance has transformed legitimate representations of the financial environment and concepts of competence and credibility defining who is entitled to act. The dissertation details three practices of financial stabilization by central banks through time, each of which stem from a distinct market representation and cultural configuration of the community of practice. The practices investigated are monetary-based, capital-flow-based, and standard-based practices of governance.

Keywords: Authority
Central Banking
Financial Regulation
International Political Economy
International Relations
Practice Theory
Advisor: Pauly, Louis W
Adler, Emanuel
Singing Terminology Usage: A Quantitative, Inter-disciplinary Study

Calls for a consistent terminology that can be used both intra-disciplinarily among voice teachers and inter-disciplinarily among the voice professionals who treat or teach classical singers have been heard for the better part of a century. Based on perceptions of inconsistent terminology use, voice pedagogues have produced glossaries containing favoured terms and their definitions, written articles prescribing specific pedagogic expressions and imagery, and in a few cases, published stand-alone dictionaries. This body of activity was rationalized as a "response to a pressing need to define and analyze those terms and expressions in common usage by the vocal profession from the early seventeenth century to the present, as well as those introduced into the lexicon by members of the various scientific disciplines concerned with the subject" (Reid 1983, xix). To date, the success of these attempts to systematize voice terminology among voice practitioners has never been quantified and they may or may not reflect the current objective reality of terminology use by voice teachers and by voice specialists in the fields of speech-language pathology and laryngology. This unique inter-disciplinary research uses survey methodology to ascertain a) whether currently practicing voice teachers use a common terminology, and b) whether there is commonality of terminology use among voice teachers and voice practitioners in the fields of speech-language pathology and laryngology. Results of this research reveal that there is a higher level of consistent terminology use among voice teachers than what is presently assumed, and that there is a higher level of inter-disciplinary agreement about breathing for singing terminology than what is currently assumed. These results suggest that ongoing calls for systematization of singing terminology may no longer be warranted.

Keywords: breathing for singing
inter-disciplinary
laryngology
speech-language pathology
terminology
voice pedagogy
Advisor: MacDonald, Lorna
Characterization and Estimation of Three-dimensional Structure in Unforced and Forced Blunt Trailing Edge Wake Flows

Blunt trailing edge airfoils offer structural and aerodynamic advantages in modern wind turbine and aircraft applications. However, penalties are introduced concurrently by vortex shedding at separation. In particular, the adverse effects of increased drag and unsteady loading motivate the development of a control strategy for the blunt trailing edge wake. Closed-loop control is pursued for its potentially greater effectiveness and efficiency, relative to open-loop forcing. Toward this aim, the thesis addresses the need for estimation of the state from limited measurements. The wake of a blunt trailing edge body is investigated experimentally through simultaneous measurements of velocity and the spanwise distribution of fluctuating surface pressure. Passive forcing is implemented with an array of vortex generators that are arranged according to the characteristic wavelength of the dominant small-scale instability. The guiding considerations for the analysis and discussion are physical characterization and the development of estimation strategies based on surface pressure. Joint examination of the measured variables through reduced-order modelling, wavelet analysis, and conditional averaging yields insight regarding the unsteady, three-dimensional nature of the flow. The investigation of forcing is focused upon the influence of the perturbation on the surface pressure and the performance of estimation models in the modified wake. It is found that low-frequency amplitude modulation of the pressure results from variation of both the magnitude of velocity fluctuations and the vortex formation length. The forcing regularizes the shedding in time and space, as evidenced by the attenuated modulation and enhanced spanwise coherence of the amplitude and phase. Examination of this behaviour confirms the connection between amplitude modulation and vortex dislocations in bluff body wakes. Several properties of the estimation approaches hold in general. It is shown that the phase is captured well, while the nonlinear relationship between the pressure and velocity presents a challenge for accurate estimation of the amplitude. Although the small-scale structure remains unobservable from the pressure sensing scheme, the large-scale spanwise variation of the wake is reproduced with equal fidelity by estimation models constructed in two orthogonal planes. The increased organization with forcing results in reduced estimation error, relative to the unforced case.

Keywords: blunt trailing edge
estimation
flow control
reduced-order modelling
surface pressure
wake flow
Advisor: Lavoie, Philippe
Aristocrats into Modernity: French Émigrés and the Refashioning of Noble Identities

In the wake of the French Revolution, several thousand noble men and women sought refuge outside France. The emigration was a unique space in which ci-devants – as the revolutionaries called ex-nobles – could experiment with different practices and conceptions of nobility. The collapse of the traditional social structure under which they had been accustomed to exist and the extraordinary circumstances of exile allowed, and often compelled, several noble émigrés to adapt, or at least attempt to adapt, to the new world ushered by the Revolution. In order to find a new place and a new legitimacy, noble émigrés relied on a variety of practices and discourses. Some turned to landownership and argued that land was the foundation of the order’s moral superiority and socio-economic power. Others turned to commerce to rebuild their fortunes and re-establish their families on a favourable footing in post-revolutionary France. Noble émigrés also modified their social reproduction strategies to meet the revolutionary challenges and facilitate the survival of the noble family’s corporate distinctiveness. In spite of its dispersal all over the Western world, the émigré diaspora formed an imagined community tied together by cultural productions as well as by a common set of valued emotions and comportments meant to affirm their nobility, their national identity, and their resistance to the Revolution. The counter-revolution was not limited to taking up arms against the French Republic and émigrés waged war against revolutionaries in the Francophone pan-European public sphere. They articulated discourses that contested the revolutionary representation of the émigré as a decadent, treasonous aristocrat. This cultural battle continued after their return to France under the Napoleonic Regime and Restoration when they penned several memoirs. The revolutionary upheavals led to the development of a heightened historical consciousness. As a result, émigrés left numerous testimonies that helped them impose their specific interpretation of the Revolution – one that emphasized its destructive nature – and helped them fashion their individual and collective identities.

Keywords: Emigration
French Revolution
Memoirs
Nobility
Refugees
Advisor: Mori, Jennifer
Imaging Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson's Disease: The Role of Dopamine, Beta-Amyloid and Intrinsic Brain Networks

Parkinson's disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder with an immense impact on daily life. It is now known that the majority of PD patients undergo cognitive decline in addition to the motor symptoms of the disease. PD patients with mild cognitive impairment can experience cognitive deficits in memory, executive function, attention, language or visuospatial function, and are at an increased risk of progressing to dementia. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate the underlying brain changes occurring in these patients experiencing cognitive decline. The dopaminergic systems of the brain are affected in PD, and dysfunction of these systems may underlie cognitive impairment. Striatal dopamine depletion can extend beyond the motor regions of the striatum to regions involved in cognition and the modulation of cortico-striatal loops involved in cognitive processing. Mesocortical dopamine is released throughout the cortex and limbic regions, and dopamine in these regions binds to dopamine receptors that act to modulate neuronal activity during cognitive processes such as executive control and memory retrieval. Changes in mesocortical dopamine or cortical dopamine receptors could have an impact of cognitive performance in PD. Furthermore, there is evidence that amyloid deposition may be linked to cognitive decline in PD. Amyloid has been shown to impact functional connectivity of brain networks involved in executing large-scale cognitive processes. Thus, amyloid in PD may disrupt functional connectivity within or between cortical brain networks, affecting cognition. The aim of the work in this thesis was to 1) investigate the role of striatal and mesocortical dopamine dysfunction in contributing to executive and memory dysfunction in PD patients with mild cognitive impairment 2) investigate whether amyloid deposition in PD impacts functional connectivity of intrinsic brain networks and cognition.

Keywords: beta-amyloid
cognition
dopamine
MRI
Parkinson's disease
PET
Advisor: Strafella, Antonio
The Reactivity and Conformational Properties of Aziridine-containing Cyclic and Bicyclic Peptides and Their Derivatives

Cyclic and bicyclic peptides represent a vast class of molecules that are incredibly varied in their structure and function. Thus, methods regarding their synthesis and subsequent characterization of their conformational properties are invaluable in the understanding of these privileged scaffolds. Cyclic tetrapeptides in particular are a noteworthy subset because not only are they among the smallest of the peptide macrocycles, they also exhibit unusual conformational dynamics in solution. The ability to harness this flexibility would represent a powerful method to control target binding and cellular permeability of these molecules. We have demonstrated that aziridine cyclic tetrapeptides are perfectly poised to investigate these conformational nuances, where aziridine ring-opening of 12-membered rings yields exclusively 13-membered α3β architectures that contain a β-amino acid residue that is rich in stereochemical complexity. The disubstituted β-residue further acts as a rigidifying structural element that induces allylic strain and raises the barrier to cis-trans isomerization such that multiple conformations are energetically differentiated, resulting in conformational heterogeneity. From this, we sought to explore other methods in which rigidifying elements can be incorporated into cyclic peptide structures and decided to pursue the synthesis of bicyclic peptides. Since disulfides are well precedented in nature, we chose a transannular disulfide as a synthetic target, coupled with the peptide macrocyclization chemistry using aziridine aldehydes and isocyanides previously developed by our group in 2010. After careful consideration of cysteine protecting groups and the order of cyclization reactions, we have found that head-to-tail cyclization first followed by late-stage oxidative deprotection of a bis-acetamidomethyl protected peptide could successfully yield the desired disulfide-bridged peptide bicycle. With the combined understanding of conformational dynamics in small cyclic peptide systems and the knowledge of a bicyclic bridge synthesis, this work should provide ample context for future studies exploring the conformational tuning of peptide macrocycles with transannular constraints.

Keywords: Aziridine
Cyclic Peptide
Organic Chemistry
Peptide
Peptidomimetics
Synthesis
Advisor: Yudin, Andrei K