VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Regulatory Loop between β-Catenin and Extra-cellular Matrix Components during the Proliferative Phase of Cutaneous Wound Healing

β-Catenin is an important modulator of the cutaneous wound phenotype, where it is activated in dermal fibroblasts during the proliferative stage of repair. Despite its importance as a mediator of the healing process, the factors that regulate β-catenin during wound repair are not well understood, nor are the identities of its target genes. One possibility is the involvement of the extracellular matrix (ECM) as both a target and a regulator of β-Catenin activity. I investigated the existence of a regulatory loop between β-Catenin and the ECM in dermal fibroblasts during cutaneous wound repair. Fibroblasts cultured on various ECM components showed increased levels of β-Catenin activation, and this was found to occur through an integrin mediated, glycogen synthase kinase 3β dependent pathway. In vivo, wounds from mice that lack the EDA-fibronectin variant exhibited decreased β-Catenin signaling, fewer dermal fibroblasts, and decreased wound strength. These properties were rescued by genetic or pharmacologic activation of β-Catenin, using an EDA-fibronectin deficient mouse model that also expresses a conditionally stabilized form of β-Catenin, or the drug, Lithium Chloride. This suggests both, that ECM components regulate β-Catenin activity in dermal fibroblasts during healing, and that β-Catenin is an important modulator of cell behaviour and the resulting properties of the wound. Since fibronectin is a known transcriptional target of β-Catenin, it also suggests a regulatory loop between these two molecules. To investigate the existence of other ECM targets of β-Catenin during wound repair, we undertook a microarray analysis in wounds from conditional β-Catenin knockdown and stabilized mice. We found several ECM associated candidates that have not previously been identified as β-Catenin targets, and verified their direction of expression by real-time PCR. Together, this work suggests that β -catenin and ECM components interact in a regulatory loop to modulate fibroblast behaviour in the physiological context of wound repair.

Keywords: wound repair
beta-catenin
extracellular matrix
fibroblast
Advisor: Alman, Benjamin
Reform in the Time of Stalin: Nikita Khrushchev and the Fate of the Russian Peasantry

“Reform in the Time of Stalin: Nikita Khrushchev and the Fate of the Russian Peasantry” Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Auri C. Berg Graduate Department of History University of Toronto “Reform in the Time of Stalin” is an exploration of a little-known, but highly significant chapter from the last years of the Stalin era. Between 1949 and 1951, Nikita Khrushchev attempted to carry out a radical reform of collective farms, an event that served as a turning point in the history of rural Russia and could be justifiably labeled “the second collectivization.” Through the prism of James Scott's concept of “high modernism,” this study examines the issue of reform under Stalin, demonstrating the political, economic, and social context in which the top leadership struggled to reform what had become an unworkable agricultural system. The dissertation draws on sources from party and state archives in Moscow, Kiev and Arkhangelsk, as well as central and regional newspapers and unpublished memoirs. To lay the background, the dissertation first explores the failed attempt by the Soviet Union to replace the traditional Russian commune with larger, rationally organized farms during the course of collectivization in the early 1930s. The subsequent two chapters are focused on the origins of the reform campaign: first in post-war Ukraine, where Nikita Khrushchev had considerable independence; and subsequently in Moscow, where high-level political rivalries and institutional competition undermined his efforts. Chapter four explores the local dimensions of the campaign through a case study from the province of Arkhangelsk. The final chapter turns to the relationship between center and periphery during the final chaotic months of the campaign. This study of late Stalin-era reform contributes to several recent debates in the historiography. First, it provides a new assessment of an increasingly controversial period in Nikita Khrushchev’s career. Second, it challenges the conventional view of a totalitarian society marked by conformity and fear by demonstrating that there was significant pressure throughout the country for reform during Stalin’s last years. What the prism of high modernism reveals is that advocates for change were limited by their own conviction that science and technology could solve social problems.

Keywords: Nikita Khrushchev
late-Stalinism
Joseph Stalin
collective farms
high modernism
James Scott
Arkhangelsk
Advisor: Viola, Lynne
America Eats: Taste and Race in the New Deal Sensory Economy

Recent developments in sensory history highlight the rewards of a sensory approach to the topic of racial formation in twentieth century U.S. Yet, few explicitly focus on the sense of taste. This dissertation looks at sensory interaction over food as a site for the making of the interwar American racial landscape. The narrative focuses on the cornerstone period of the late 1930s-early 1940s and considers, through the notion of sensory economy, the extent to which the senses are part of modern circuits of economic and cultural exchanges. The argument builds on the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) archive, especially the America Eats project; The FWP was one of the art programs of the New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) and an important part of the liberal state cultural apparatus. Considering the sense of taste as a cultural and economic currency circulating throughout the American social fabric as well as through the FWP archive allows highlighting taste as a medium for the negotiation of raced, gendered, ethnic, and regional identities in the interwar period. I examine how the FWP’s nostalgic and patriotic endeavour to record a national cuisine in the midst of the Great Depression contributed to the production and archiving of a prescriptive sensory and culinary knowledge about what was American food and who American eaters were. This dissertation documents how sensory interaction participated to the policing of the colour line but also to the creation of new tastes and, ultimately, to the birth of a commodified culinary plurality. The narrative also highlights how the encroachment of the food industries on American taste and the coming of World War II led to the upholding of conservative gender roles and stereotyped racial imagery. Finally, this dissertation examines the notion of region in the U.S. and looks at how the search for regional cuisines led FWP workers to use raced tastes as signals of regional authenticity. Overall, I suggest that a combined analysis of taste and race not only further our historical understanding of twentieth century American food culture but also enhances our comprehension of the role of the senses in race making.

Keywords: Food
Taste
Race
Gender
New Deal
America Eats
Advisor: Bender, Daniel
Biography and Autobiography at the Hogarth Press

The subject of this thesis is the biographies and autobiographies published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press between 1917 and 1946. I combine several areas of scholarly inquiry – biography and autobiography studies, modernist studies, book history, and the history of reading – in order to examine the intersections between literary and textual constructions of genre and the role of categorization in the book trade. My central argument is that diversity, as both the policy and the product of the Hogarth Press, allowed a multitude of voices, methodologies, perspectives, and subjects to co-exist at one publishing house and produced a body of works that goes far beyond the small circle of Bloomsbury with which it is usually associated. The variety of the Hogarth Press’s publications meant that its approach to genre was one of hybridity, oscillation, and ambivalence, but one that nevertheless found ways to position complicated works in the category-oriented world of the book trade. Drawing from unpublished archival materials in order to uncover relationships between authors, readers, publishers, booksellers, literary agents, book clubs, and critics, I argue that the Hogarth Press’s practices in publishing biographies and autobiographies informed the Woolfs’ writings about the importance and role of the genres in the context of literary modernism. Using material from the Hogarth Press Business Archive housed at the University of Reading, I offer detailed studies of the Press’s translations from the Russian of three biographies of Tolstoy and Sophia Tolstoy’s autobiography; two biography series of the 1930s; Henry Green and Christopher Isherwood’s fictionalized autobiographies; and Virginia Woolf’s own biographical experiments, Orlando, Flush, and Roger Fry. My analysis of these particular groups of works is underpinned by a reading of the Press’s whole list of publications between 1917 and 1946, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of which I offer in the opening chapter of the thesis. The 522 copies of Hogarth Press books and pamphlets I read are housed in the Virginia Woolf Collection at the E. J. Pratt Library at Victoria University in the University of Toronto.

Keywords: Book History
Modernism
Biography
Autobiography
Publishing History
Virginia Woolf
Advisor: Jackson, Heather
A Theory of Scientific Change

At any moment of history, there are theories that the scientific community of the time accepts as the best available descriptions of reality. In addition, there are methods which the scientific community of the time employs in theory assessment. This set of all accepted theories and all employed methods constitute the scientific mosaic of the time. The mosaic is in a process of constant change – both accepted theories and employed methods change through time. The main question of this dissertation is: are there any laws governing the process of transitions from one accepted theory to another and from one employed method to another? I.e. can there be a general theory of scientific change? Contrary to the widespread opinion, I argue that scientific change is a law-governed process and that there can be a general descriptive theory of scientific change (TSC). In the first part of the dissertation, I clarify the scope of TSC by defining it as a descriptive theory that reveals the actual mechanism of transitions in the mosaic, regardless of its scale, time period or field of inquiry. Then, I scrutinize and reject a number of traditional arguments against the possibility of TSC. In the second part, I construct an actual theory of scientific change. First, I postulate four axioms – four laws of scientific change. From these laws, I deduce a number of theorems concerning different aspects of scientific change. All axioms and theorems are illustrated by examples from the actual history of science. By proposing this TSC, I oppose the common wisdom of the so-called disunity of science thesis. I argue against the particularist approach which holds that the history of science can only be studied in a piecemeal fashion. On the contrary, I show that a general descriptive theory of scientific change can and does exist.

Keywords: Scientific Change
Method
Theory
Advisor: Baigrie, Brian
Comparative Cases in Long-Distance Nationalism:Explaining the Émigré, Exile, Diaspora and Transnational Movements of the Crimean Tatars

This dissertation is an attempt to explore the unexpected mobilization of the Crimean Tatar diaspora in the recent decades. Why and how did the Crimean Tatar communities, all of which resided outside their homeland, develop a political identity and engage in nationalist mobilization in the 1990s? How did the communities, living apart from each other, in some cases for more than a century, mobilize simultaneously? What explains the variation in forms of mobilization among these communities? Does the transnational mobilization of the Crimean Tatars amount to an emergence of a transnational nation? I explore these questions by comparing the cases of the Crimean Tatar diaspora communities, located in the former USSR, Romania, Turkey, and the United States across space and time. This dissertation attempts to develop a dynamic theory of diaspora by demonstrating how recent unexpected mobilization was a consequence of the interaction of movement framing processes with discursive and political opportunity structures. I emphasize the unique set of political and discursive opportunities that emerged in the transnational political space due to new technologies of communication and ease of transportation that precipitated simultaneous mobilization of communities as well as the attempt for constructing a transnational nation. The thesis also introduces a typology long-distance nationalism which includes newly developed concepts of émigré, exile, diaspora and transnational nationalism to explain the variation in identities and mobilization of these communities. The theoretical framework developed in this study will be useful for studying and comparing other cases of diasporas.

Keywords: Diaspora
Crimean Tatar
Nationalism
Social Movements
Crimea
Turkey
Dobruja
USSR
Deportation
Transnationalism
Advisor: Schwartz, Donald
Glucocorticoid Regulation of the Placental System A Amino Acid Transporter

The system A transporter transfers small neutral amino acids across the placenta and is essential for normal fetal growth. Synthetic glucocorticoids (sGCs) are routinely given to women with threatened preterm labour (PTL) and have been linked to fetal growth restriction. sGCs differentially regulate the system A amino acid transporter depending on organ and cell type, but there are no comparable data in the placenta. Since ~30% of women who receive sGCs carry to term, our objective was to examine the short and longer-term consequences of antenatal sGCs on placental system A transport using human in vitro model, mouse in vivo and human placenta ex vivo. We hypothesized that sGCs would inhibit system A activity, thereby adversely affecting placental function by reducing nutrient transport. Additionally, we hypothesized that the system A transport would be regulated based on timing from sGC exposure. Contrary to our hypothesis, acute sGC treatment (48 h) stimulated, rather than inhibited, system A activity in human placental explants in vitro. Increased system A activity was not mediated by changes in mRNA expression; however, it was associated with increased syncytial differentiation and maturation. In the mouse, there were no short-term effects of mid-gestation sGC treatment on murine placental system A transport in vivo. However, a substantial reduction in system A mediated transport occurred at term. When examining the effects of sGC treatment given to women at risk of PTL, reductions in system A transport were found in placentae delivered at term following treatment compared to placentae that were delivered less than 14 days and between 14 days and term following treatment and term controls. Taken together, these findings strongly demonstrate that sGC treatment regulates placental system A activity. As such, prenatal use of sGC therapy may lead to a reduction in availability of neutral amino acids if gestation persists until term.

Keywords: Placenta
System A
Glucocorticoids
Advisor: Matthews, Stephen
Challis, John
Les figures de la répétition intratextuelle chez Nathalie Sarraute : Leitmotive, clichés, lieux communs, topoï et stéréotypes

En partant de l’hypothèse qu’il existe un réseau intratextuel parcourant toute l’œuvre de Nathalie Sarraute – une toile qui se compose de Leitmotive, de clichés, de lieux communs, de topoï et de stéréotypes –, notre thèse examine les rôles de ces figures de la répétition et de la banalité dans le corpus choisi. Plus précisément, cette recherche nous a permis de définir ces figures intratextuelles, d’identifier plusieurs instances textuelles de celles-ci, d’étudier comment elles sont enchâssées au texte, d’analyser les emplois similaires et différents de celles-ci et de réfléchir sur leur signification dans le texte même ainsi que sur leur transformation à travers l’œuvre, notamment en tant qu’agents structuraux et thématiques. De nature théorique, le premier chapitre de ce travail fait d’abord un résumé de plusieurs écrits incontournables de l’intertextualité (Bakhtine, Kristeva, Angenot, Genette, Jenny et Riffaterre), de l’intratextualité (Ricardou, Genette, Dällenbach et Fitch) et des figures de la banalité et de la répétition (Amossy, Rosen et Riffaterre). Au sein de ce même chapitre, on trouve également des discussions portant sur l’historique et l’acception actuelle de chacune des figures à l’étude, ainsi que des exemples de celles-ci, puisés de textes ne faisant pas partie du corpus principal, de sorte à refléter l’ampleur que peut avoir notre propos. L’analyse textuelle fait l’objet des quatre autres chapitres de la thèse; les trois premiers portant sur les figures du Leitmotiv, du cliché et du stéréotype respectivement et le dernier regroupant des études sur le lieu commun et le topos. En examinant des reprises intramonotextuelles et intrapluritextuelles de chacune de ces cinq figures, les entrelacements complexes entre les textes révèlent que ce réseau participe au développement de la thématique de la mise en relief des platitudes langagières et idéologiques et de la poétique de l’inter, tout en contribuant à l’effet de tension qui balise l’œuvre sarrautienne.

Keywords: Nathalie Sarraute
répétition intratextuelle
Leitmotiv
cliché
lieu commun
topos
stéréotype
Advisor: Havercroft, Barbara
The First Time and the Mourning After: On Love, Loss, and Virginity

In “The First Time and the Mourning After: On Love, Loss, and Virginity,” I consider the question, mythology, and importance of the first time. My study opens theoretically and polemically with a concern for the meanings of the first time, why we reify the first time, why we mythologise the first time, and why we narrate the first time. In this opening, I also develop an argument for, what I call, “the flirtatious method,” a method, which pays little attention to commitment, but instead finds productive comfort in flirting with various theoretical postures, textual examples, and varying belief systems. The goal, thus, of the flirtatious method is to consider a problem, like the first time, from a variety of, and at times, competing discourses. In the chapters that follow, I begin to theorise one of the most important first times: the loss of virginity, and more specifically, male virginity. I argue that all first times must include paranoia, jouissance, hysteria, and mourning. In the next chapter, “On the First Love and First Loss,” I begin to theorise the first time in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. In this chapter, I further establish the theoretical framework that was presented in the opening chapter by demonstrating the ways in which the first time is theorised and experienced within the text; additionally, I also develop Jane Gallop’s notion of “anecdotal theory.” In the following chapter “Popular Romance and Virginity,” I begin to study the popular romance novel. My theorisation of the first time is dependent upon it being true in a variety of “literatures”; accordingly, I move to the most optimistic treatment of love to consider the place of mourning. If my theorisations of the first time and the mourning after are true then surely they must also appear in the most optimistic, hopeful, and utopian manifestations of love. I begin initially by providing a reading of Last Virgin in California by Maureen Child, which narrates the first time of its heroine. Once this first time has been considered and explored, I move to the specific site of interest: narratives about male virginity. In “His First Time, His Mourning After, His Virginity,” I provide readings of popular romance novels and how the male exhibits each of these tendencies and experiences his first time. Finally, after concluding these readings, I move to the perhaps obvious question that has been lurking in the background: what about the second time? In my closing chapter, “The Second Time and the Morning After,” I consider the question of how we experience the second time in relation to the process of the first time and the mourning after.

Keywords: Comparative Literature, Love, Loss, Virginity, First Time
Advisor: Jagoe, Eva-Lynn
Hart, Jonathan
Electronic Prayer Rug: Design and Evaluation

For more than a thousand years, the prayer rug has been used by Muslims, around the world, to conduct the five daily prayer rituals. The rug has undergone very little modification since it was first used – mainly aesthetics in the form of adding motifs and patterns. This dissertation constitutes the first major enhancement to the prayer rug: an electronic version that neither compromises the traditional form nor the simple interaction associated with the passive device. This modern version of the prayer rug enhances the spiritual experience of Muslims during prayer. The electronic version also supports the display of Quran verses – enabling Muslims, for the first time, to read un-memorized parts of the Quran during prayer. This dissertation makes a number of key contributions; first, a study of the challenges facing Muslims in fulfilling prayer requirements. Second, the design and implementation of the electronic prayer rug – the first of a kind device – to support Muslims during prayer rituals. Third contribution is using Electroencephalography to evaluate the impact of a newly designed digital device (electronic prayer rug) to support religious rituals – the first of a kind study. Fourth, conducting a four month longitudinal study to evaluate the long term impact of a newly designed digital device (electronic prayer rug) to support religious rituals – also the first of a kind study. The fifth contribution is an HCI-centered reviews and taxonomies of rituals and related tools, from several religions. These studies are the first to be performed within the area of digital tools for religious rituals.

Keywords: HCI eRug
Advisor: Chignell, Mark
Fels, Deb