VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
English in context in an East Asian intercultural workplace

This thesis is concerned with English in East-Asian international settings, where it is practised mostly among non-native speakers, and where cultural and international norms cannot necessarily be assumed to be those of established English-speaking communities. It is a study of one representative setting for English language practice in the region, a multinationally staffed international cooperation agency located in Japan. It attempts to describe the social phenomena that make up the context of situation of interactions in the workplace, and investigates the influence that this context has on the practice of English language there. The objectives are to arrive at a clearer understanding of the functions and nature of English when it is used as a regional (or international) lingua franca, and to reappraise the goals for English language education in such regions. There were two components to the study: (1) An ethnographic study of the setting consisting of observation and interviews with participants probing (a) their accounts of the conventions and social relations operating in their workplace, and (b) their perceptions and expectations regarding communication in English; and (2) an analysis of audio-recorded interaction data, by grammatical, discourse, and conversation analytic methodologies. The participants' accounts were examined to see if they might help explain distinctive features in workplace language practices (successful and miscommunications, and innovation in English structures). The interaction data demonstrate that English is preferred for functions of ideational exchange within peer-groups, whereas Japanese is more often used when interpersonal meaning is important (requests, conversation regulation, etc.). Further, the following tendencies are observed in English language practice: (a) a de-emphasis on interpersonal meaning, (b) ideational explicitness, and (c) a preference for communicative efficiency over adherence to rules of 'well-formedness'. The interview data, wherein participants reported favouring English for its directness and status-neutral grammar, provide a potentially causal correlation. Overall, there are two remarkable findings: (1) the perceived view of English (as direct and status-neutral) is a social fact and has had real, self-fulfilling effect, and (2) English has been positioned as a complement to the participants' local languages, not acculturating to their cultural backgrounds, but given the restricted role of ideational exchange. The participants in this study are thus more accurately portrayed as 'practisers' of English than 'learners': they are not adopting the language practice of foreigners; they are creating a third culture and embracing an alternate practice of the language. English language teaching, thus, must be reconceived such that it helps future practisers to play a decisive role in choosing the practice that will suit them best.
The politics of exclusion: an examination of graduate student funding experience in Ontario

This dissertation examines the funding experiences of graduate students from diverse backgrounds. Data are collected through in-depth interviews with students pursuing Masters and Doctoral studies at three universities in Ontario. The students' experiences are discussed in the context of funding through an examination of various sites and sources, such as scholarships, assistantships, loans and paid employment outside the university. The sample reflected both funded and non-funded students in order to understand how they negotiate graduate studies and the implications for completion and career choice. Although the funding of post-secondary students has been debated at great length, much of this discussion has been focused at the undergraduate level. Graduate education and graduate students have been largely absent from these debates. Furthermore, critical discussion on social differences in Canadian graduate funding remains unaddressed. Employing qualitative methodology, this study analyzes students' experiences at various stages of their graduate studies. The findings indicate that funding is instrumental to students' progress in graduate education. Generally, students secured awards or scholarships consistently were well adjusted within their departments. These students were also more likely to complete within a reasonable time frame, but having scholarships did not necessarily mean that students complete within the required 4-year time frame specified by universities. The study also indicates that the funding provided was wholly inadequate and was a source of stress for most students. Non-funded students, especially racial minorities, working class, females, and single-parents were not only more likely to be under-funded, but they were also more likely to feel marginalized in their department. The findings suggest that graduate funding has multi-dimensional roles with important effects on the student body. Ultimately, these findings relate to issues of equity and access in the allocation of funding resources in graduate studies.

Keywords: Universities and colleges, Graduate work
Universities and colleges, Ontario
Student aid, Ontario
Discrimination in higher education, Ontario
Educational equalization, Ontario
Graduate students, Ontario
The effect of expedited, tripartite, and conventional arbitration on arbitration outcomes

Grievance arbitration is well established in Canada. All ten provincial jurisdictions, as well as the federal jurisdiction, require that every collective agreement shall provide for the final and binding settlement, by arbitration or otherwise, of all differences between the parties arising from the collective agreement. Notwithstanding its universality, grievance arbitration has been the subject of criticism, including: lack of timeliness, increasing cost, and excessive legalism. Expedited arbitration has been proposed as a method to address these criticisms. Expedited arbitration has no fixed definition. It is a general reference to any set of procedures or mechanisms designed to expedite the conventional arbitration process. Expedited arbitration has been successful in addressing the criticisms of conventional arbitration. However, it too has been criticized. There have been suggestions that expedited arbitration awards are inferior to conventional arbitration awards. This is due to the summary nature of its procedures, and due to the fact that many new arbitrators use expedited arbitration appointments as a method to gain experience. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether arbitration outcomes differ depending upon the type of arbitration used: expedited arbitration with a single arbitrator, conventional arbitration with a single arbitrator, or conventional arbitration with a tripartite board. Using logistic regression, 664 discipline and discharge arbitration awards, dated in 1994 and 1995 and filed with the Office of Arbitration at the Ontario Ministry of Labour, were analyzed. Evaluated at the mean probability of a grievance being upheld (0.533), and relative to the reference category of conventional arbitration with a single arbitrator, expedited arbitration with a single arbitrator is associated with a 0.195 (or 19.5 percentage point) increase in the probability of a favourable arbitration decision for the grievor, holding all other factors constant. The result is significant at the 0.05 level. Conventional arbitration with a tripartite board is associated with a 0.068 (or 6.8 percentage point) increase in the probability of a favourable arbitration decision for the grievor. However, this result is not statistically significant.
Protecting society from dangerous patients: the proper limits of a public safety exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality

This thesis examines the extent to which an exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality should be recognised to warn or protect third parties from dangerous psychiatric patients. In Part One, I discuss the existing Canadian jurisprudence and its implications for psychiatrist-patient confidentiality in Canada. In Part Two, I analyse the United States approach and the ramifications of the influential Tarasoff decision which imposes a tort law duty on psychiatrists to protect potential victims from dangerous patients. In Part Three, I consider the contrasting discretionary approach of the United Kingdom which affords psychiatrists discretion to warn potential victims. In Part Four, I suggest the proper limits of a Canadian exception to psychiatrist-patient confidentiality.

Keywords: Dangerously mentally ill, Legal status, laws, etc
Dangerously mentally ill, Canada
Confidential communications, Psychiatrists
Confidential communications, Canada
Risk assessment
Schematikon, an encyclopedia of structural motifs in proteins

We have compiled a comprehensive dictionary of local structural motifs and their corresponding sequence patterns. We start from the hypothesis that frequently recurring structural patterns correspond to low energy conformations, which arise due to specific residue interactions and conformational preferences. As source data we have defined a dataset of non-homologous structures. We define and identify "motifs" as local maxima of density, by applying a procedure called "kernel density estimation". The sequence profiles for motifs with strong sequence preferences are compiled. Our encyclopedia consists of 982 motifs, over 90% of these show significant sequence preference at least one position. The average coverage of protein domains in the non-homologous dataset was found to be 65%. We have identified several of the previously described structural motifs and some novel patterns. The anticipated uses include applications in protein engineering, structure annotation, structure prediction from sequence and detailed studies of sequence-structure relationships.
Polluting the sacred: Violence and religion in English daily life, c. 1400–1553

Late medieval and Reformation Europe was wracked with dynastic dispute and religious fragmentation. Yet, according to Norbert Elias, this was the time of the ‘civilizing process’. In his highly influential study, The Civilizing Process, Elias argued that the burgeoning power of the early modern state and humanist codes of courtesy slowly caused society to stigmatize the use of violence as both illegal and disreputable. Although monarchs and humanists certainly played a part in the alteration of social norms, Elias dismisses a crucial catalyst of change in late medieval and early modern culture, the Church. Long before standing armies and humanist handbooks on table-manners appeared, Christian pastors struggled to curb aggression and violence among their flock. Indeed, some historians have shown an interest in the interaction of the Church and violence, but mostly in terms of chivalry, the crusading ideal or just-war theory. The focus of historians on such broad ideological and intellectual developments leaves unexplored the quotidian struggle of the clergy to suppress violence at the parish level. Through an extensive investigation of late medieval and early Reformation sources, my thesis explores both clerical efforts to check aggression among parishioners and the actual impact of such attempts on lay attitudes and behaviour. Through this study, I show that the medieval Church compelled parishioners to regard the use of violence during sacred rituals or in sacred places as impious and hence, provoked them to question the legitimacy of violent conduct in other settings. Moreover, I display how Protestant reformers altered the manner in which the English Church suppressed aggression yet still clung fast to the idea that violence between parishioners was impious. In summation, this thesis investigates: the efforts of late medieval clerics through ritual, preaching and proscription to check violence; the impact of clerical efforts against aggression on lay actions and attitudes; the role of late medieval parish priests in the prevention and promotion of violence; and the impact of the early English Reformation on the clergy's efforts, lay attitudes and the role of priests.
Entertaining subalternity: the performance of nation and the politics of Indian classical dance

The critical gaze of Victorian morality and colonial bureaucracy affected many of India's cultural and artistic practices, including dance. As a result, reconstructing 'lost' art forms and invoking the 'real' traditions of pre-colonial India were central to nationalist movements rallying for political independence. However, in reconstructing the dance, elite artists largely ignored the lives of the actual women who practiced it. This contradictory appeal to a sanitised 'glorious past' has had significant impact on historical and contemporary representations of Indian dancers. This thesis examines questions of nationalism, citizenship, gender, subjectivity and power through a study of Indian classical dance to interrogate the tradition/modernity binary vital to colonialism and subsequently multiculturalism. I argue that the interconnected ways in which dancers were/are imagined through colonial, nationalist and contemporary multicultural discourses have shaped race and gender relations alongside notions of national belonging in the larger and related contexts of postcolonialism and multiculturalism.

Keywords: Dance, Political aspects
Dance, India
Devadāsīs, India
Sex discrimination against women, India
Nationalism, India
Imperialism
Chemical vapor deposition in three-dimensional photonic crystals: From perfection to imperfection

Herein, I describe my research on the synthesis and characterization of three-dimension photonic crystals in general and on the inverted silicon opal structure in particular. The latest techniques of synthesis of colloidal crystal templates including chemical vapor deposition of SiO2 to improve the template connectivity and mechanical properties are outlined. Different silicon infiltration methods by way of chemical vapor deposition are discussed and compared. Two of them are demonstrated and analyzed in depth. The various experimental (SEM, FT-IR UV-vis-nIR reflectance, transmittance, etc.) and theoretical (band diagram calc., SWA, etc.) characterization techniques are also demonstrated The synthesis of high quality rectangular and triangular oriented inverted silicon microfibers is also demonstrated. Two techniques, the MISO and the silicon double inversion, are demonstrated for the synthesis of novel silicon photonic crystal topologies and for the exact replicate in silicon of polymer photonic crystal templates prepared by direct laser writing or holographic lithography. I also describe the synthesis of static and dynamic planar defects in direct and inverted colloidal photonic crystal followed by theoretical and experimental characterization. This precedes description of a novel laser micro-annealing technique developed for controlled insertion of extrinsic defect in inverted silicon opals by way of writing refractive index patterns. In conclusion, a detailed roadmap is provided for future synthesis of a 2D-3D heterostructure based on a theoretical construct proposed by Prof. S. John.
Possibilities for critical democratic citizenship education in Pakistan: educators' concepts' of conflict education

This study examines a citizenship education course in Karachi, Pakistani based on document analysis and interviews with selected Pakistani educators. The Citizenship and Conflict Resolution sections of the same course presented contrasting critical and liberal-democratic notions of citizenship. Participants' understandings of conflict management and citizenship ranged between critical and liberal-democratic. Participants proposed educational strategies, while valuing student/citizens' involvement in decision-making strategies, often emphasized changing individual students' behaviour, a passive notion of citizenship and adherence to authority rather than systemic change in the school. At the same time, some participants (especially those marginalized by gender or religious minority status) recognized systemic inequity as conflict. This exploration of one citizenship course, and educators' specific experiences and views, illuminates possibilities for critical democratic citizenship education in Pakistan.
The situation calculus: decidability and an approach based on the logic for non-monotone inductive definitions

The situation calculus is a logical language for reasoning about action and change. A reasoning problem for the situation calculus can be formulated as follows: Given a basic action theory [special characters omitted] and a query &phis; is &phis; a logical consequence of [special characters omitted]? We demonstrate that the reasoning problem is decidable for a rather expressive fragment of the situation calculus. We allow second order quantification over finite and infinite sets of situations, as well as over some object variables. The complexity of the decision procedure is non-elementary. If arbitrary functions are allowed, the situation calculus becomes undecidable. Motivated by the well-known complexity/expressiveness tradeoff, we develop a less expressive variant of the situation calculus. To achieve it, we go beyond the problems specific to the situation calculus. We introduce a Logic for Non-Monotone Inductive Definitions, which is based on the idea of Iterated Induction. This logic contributes to the theory of inductive definitions by giving a clear logical formalization of Iterated Induction. In addition, it provides a new tool for solving knowledge representation problems. To use this tool effectively, we need to be able to combine and decompose definitions into sub-definitions. These two operations may change the original meanings of definitions. We study under what conditions combining and decomposing definitions is equivalence-preserving. These results imply another theorem, which is, when combined with previously known techniques, a powerful tool for reducing formulas with complex definitions to first-order formulas. We introduce an inductive variant of the situation calculus, an discuss applications of our Logic to the semantics of ConGolog and to the verification of ConGolog programs. Then we use the results about equivalence-preserving combining and decomposing definitions to address the ramification problem, which is the question of how to represent indirect effects of actions. We describe a general solution in our inductive version of the situation calculus, and present a series of simplifications which hold under particular assumptions about the logical theory. Finally, we formulate a sufficient condition for obtaining first-order successor state axioms of the situation calculus.
The university in a global age: economy, culture, and democracy

While it might be clear that a global knowledge-based economy is restructuring many of the world's universities, it remains unclear how access to education can be made available to people who cannot afford to pay. I will offer peer-based technology as a promising medium for enabling democratic modes of education and training. More specifically, I will endeavour to show that the distributed nature of peer-based technologies can provide a concrete infrastructure in support of global modes of cultural production.

Keywords: Universities and colleges, Social aspects
Universities and colleges, Economic aspects
Information technology, Social aspects
Information technology, Economic aspects
Culture and globalization
Democracy
Determination of the mechanism of activation and the physiological functions of serum and glucocorticoid-regulated kinase-3

The phosphatidylinositol 3' kinase (P13K) pathway is an important signaling cascade that modulates several critical cellular processes including survival pathways. Several components of this pathway are recognized oncogenes and tumor suppressors, such as P13K catalytic subunits themselves, Protein Kinase B (PKB)/Akt and -PTEN, and they represent promising targets for cancer therapeutics. The Serum and Glucocorticoid-regulated kinase-3 (SGK3) is a novel component of the P13K pathway and exhibits structural similarity to PKB, contributing to its interest. The level of understanding of the regulation of SGK3 activity and its cellular roles has been very limited. Herein, we have studied and hence shed light on the mechanism of activation and the physiological functions of SGK3. We present a model of SGK3 regulation and compare its differences with PKB activation. We show that the Phox Homology (PX) phospholipid binding domain of SGK3 contributes to its activation by localising it to endosomes, where a P13K-dependent hydrophobic motif kinase phosphorylates it and yields a fully active SGK3. Our results indicate that SGK3, in addition to being involved in the P13K pathway, may also play an important role in cAMP responses. Microarray profiling of SGK3 null mouse embryonic fibroblasts revealed alterations in the gene expression profiles of Tenascin C (Tnc), solute carrier family 9 (sodium/hydrogen exchanger), isoform 3 regulator 1 (SIc9a3r1), Lymphocyte antigen 6 complex, locus E (Ly6e) and Guanine nucleotide binding protein, alpha 13 (Gna13), genes implicated in tumorigenesis and in T cell homeostasis. We have generated two models of transgenic mice expressing a constitutively active mutant of SGK3 in mammary epithelial cells and in T cells. Expression of the activated SGK3 transgene affects ductal branching morphogenesis and lumenal formation and delays involution due to decreased apoptosis in murine mammary glands. We also demonstrate that SGK3-PRK2 has oncogenic potential as the two founders of the MMTV lines developed mammary tumors at six months of age. Finally, in the T cell model, SGK3-PRK2 caused thymic hyperplasias by seven weeks of age and promoted inflammation as well as signs of autoimmune disease.
Solving queueing design and control problems with constraint programming

The central thesis of this dissertation is that constraint programming can be effective in solving queueing design and control optimization problems. We consider a retail facility that has front room and back room operations, and cross-trained workers. Firstly, we examine the queueing control problem of optimizing a policy for switching workers between the two rooms so that expected waiting time in the front room queue is minimized and all back room work is performed. Secondly, we address the queueing design and control problem of finding a smallest-cost combination of cross-trained and specialized workers that guarantees the existence of a satisfactory control policy. We propose several constraint programming methods for these problems and experimentally demonstrate their strong performance. We then analyze our second problem under a complete set of assumptions regarding worker costs. To our knowledge, this is the first work that integrates the methodologies of constraint programming and queueing theory.
Anaerobic hydrogen production under different pre-treatment and operating conditions

To determine the effects of different anaerobic sludge pre-treatment techniques and operating conditions on by-product formation during anaerobic wastewater treatment, five conditions were examined using a glucose-fed, laboratory reactor. The conditions tested included: unaltered inoculum sludge operated at pH 7 and pH 6; boiled inoculum operated at pH 7 and pH 6; and an air sparged inoculum. All conditions were operated as sequencing batch systems with sequentially alternating sparging and non-sparging conditions. Differences in the amounts of gases, volatile fatty acids and alcohols produced were observed between all conditions. Acetic acid, propionic acid and hydrogen production were favoured during sparging, while ethanol and butyric acid production were favoured during non-sparging. The boiled conditions produced the most hydrogen and the least methane, however with a low total gas production. The pH 6.0 condition, although not the most productive in terms of hydrogen, possibly has the greatest potential for full-scale hydrogen production.