VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Re-situating Learning

In this dissertation I examine the Theory-Theory (T-T). I argue that T-T represents the orthodox conception of learning in today's psychological literature. T-T theorists hold that human beings come "equipped" with innate representations that are "a theory." Theorists believe that this innate theory guides our relations to the world. If T-T theorists are correct, learning amounts to theory-revision. Hence, T-T brings together (roughly) two commitments: (1) innate knowledge and (2) theory-revision. In this dissertation, I show that T-T depends on a reading of Plato's Meno to buttress its commitment to innate knowledge. For (2), T-T depends on aspects of W. V. Quine's philosophy. Theorists think that Quine's naturalised epistemology is central to their position. I show that T-T's dependence on Meno depends on a rough interpretation of the dialogue. Furthermore, I suggest while in some sense Quine's philosophy can accommodate innate knowledge, T-T theorists do not make a sufficient case for such an accommodation. By reconsidering Meno I wish to question T-T's dependence on what may not be in fact a case for innate knowledge. Later I show that no clear case has been made that Quine's philosophy is compatible with the sort of innate knowledge theorists require. I suggest that re-thinking Plato's dialogue cannot save T-T. For T-T theorists must provide a clear case of how innate knowledge is clearly compatible with Quine's philosophy. I argue that too much requires reworking in T-T, and that such a reworking is not necessary because an alternative conception of learning is possible. As an alternative, I argue that learning depends on factors that are not primarily innate but social. In terms of the social aspects of learning, I argue that an important condition of human learning involves being initiated into a set of social practices. Those practices are constitutive of meaningful behaviour that is inherently tied to the histories of those who live and work within these boundaries. Here we can read "history" as "having a tradition." This latter position stands, I suggest, in stark contrast to the view of T-T theorists and is far more plausible in providing an account of learning.

Keywords: Learning
Teaching
Philosophy of mind
Education, Philosophy
αβ-TCR+CD4¯CD8¯NK1 .1¯ Double-Negative (DN) regulatory t cells: gene expression profiling and functional analysis

The role of alphabetaTCR+CD4-CD8 -NK1.1- double negative (DN) regulatory T (Treg) cells from both mice and humans has been demonstrated to be involved in settings of autoimmunity, transplantation and cancer. The focus of this thesis was to develop a gene expression profile to characterize the molecular mechanisms underlying the observed function of DN Tregs. Analysis of the gene expression profile identified several possible mechanisms which may explain DN Treg antigen detection, migration, IFN response, survival, cytotoxicity, apoptosis and immune modulation. CXCR5 was one of several chemokine receptors found to be up-regulated in DN Tregs. Characterization of CXCR 5 expression and function on DN Treg cells identified an important function in allograft homing. Using a murine cardiac allograft transplant model, we found that early production of CXCL 13 following transplantation preferentially directed DN Treg cell homing allografts. We further demonstrate the role of HSP70 in DN Treg cytoprotection following antibody mediated TCR cross-linking as a mimic for activation induced cell death (AICD). Cytosolic HSP70 protein expression was up-regulated immediately following cross-linking in both DN Tregs and CD8 T cells. However, in DN Tregs this up-regulation was maintained while CD8 T cells rapidly mobilized HSP70 to the cell membrane. We found membrane HSP70 expression was correlated with apoptosis and describe a previously unknown involvement of HSP70 in Treg resistance to AICD. The data presented within this thesis describe important mechanisms responsible for DN Treg tissue homing and survival. Better understanding of molecular mechanisms utilized by DN Tregs for regulatory function may allow us to manipulate them for cell based immunotherapies.
Finding paraphrases using PNrule

In this thesis, we attempt to use a machine-learning algorithm, PNrule, along with simple lexical and syntactic measures to detect paraphrases in cases where their existence is rare. We choose PNrule because it was specifically developed for classification in instances where the target class is rare compared to other classes within the data. We test our system both on a dataset we develop based on movie reviews, and on the PASCAL RTE dataset; we obtain poor results on the former, and moderately good results on the latter. We examine why this is the case, and suggest improvements for future research.
Essay on semiparametric efficient adaptive estimation and empirical applications in finance

This thesis is composed of three chapters. The first two chapters construct semiparametric efficient adaptive estimators: one is for asymmetric GARCH-in-mean models; the other is for single-index models. However, estimation methodologies are different. The first chapter is related to maximum likelihood; and the second chapter minimizes mean square errors. In Chapter 1, without imposing additional restrictions on the distribution of disturbances other than some regular assumptions, I show that parameters appearing in the conditional standard deviation function can be adaptively estimated. The kernel smoothing parameter is calculated by minimizing mean squared errors between estimated score functions and target score functions. Significant asymmetric effects are identified with daily value-weighted stock index returns on NYSE/AMEX. Monte Carlo simulation results support my theory. In Chapter 2, conditional expectation function is estimated by k − nearest neighbor method. I show that semiparametric efficient estimate of parameters of single-index models and k can be calculated simultaneously. Monte Carlo experiments results show that the semiparametric estimator performs equally well across different data generating mechanisms even for small samples. In Chapter 3, catastrophe-linked securities whose payoffs are tied to the occurrence of natural disasters allow insurers to better diversify their risks through capital markets while at the same time offering an attractive new asset class to investors. Up to now, this class of assets is still under development, and few empirical applications have been carefully analyzed. This chapter examines one of the catastrophe-linked instruments—PCS options traded at the CBOT. Two main issues are explored: (a) Theoretical prices are derived by assuming complete and arbitrage free market. Comparing market prices to theoretical prices, three puzzles are observed. (b) Comparing PCS call spread option contracts to traditional excess-of-loss catastrophe reinsurance contracts; I find that pricing patterns of these two types of assets are similar. Other factors, not limited capacity, are capable of explaining these special pricing patterns.
The clinical epidemiology of poisoning in Ontario

This thesis describes the application of health services research techniques to the study of toxicoepidemiology in Ontario using multiple administrative databases. From January 1st 1992 to December 31st 2001, we identified 80,888 hospital admissions in Ontario for which a poisoning (ICD-9 960.0 to 990.0) was the most responsible diagnosis. Of these, 43,965 (54.4%) were coded as self-inflicted, 46,970 (58.1%) involved women, and 5,793 (7.2%) involved children under age 6. About 5,708 patients died from poisoning, although only 884 of these were identified from hospital records. Acetaminophen poisoning (n = 12,738) was the most common diagnosis, followed by poisoning due to benzodiazepines (n = 9,368), antidepressants (n = 8,488) and salicylates (n = 3,344). Collectively, admissions for poisoning led to about 307,250 days in hospital. Examining specific poisonings, we found that hospitalization for iron poisoning in children less than age 3 was temporally associated with the birth of a sibling. Among elderly Ontarians treated with lithium, hospital admission for lithium toxicity was a relatively common occurrence and often followed a recognized drug interaction. Finally, hospitalization for toxic effects of digoxin, glyburide, and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors was strongly associated with recent prescriptions for drugs known to provoke the toxicities of these agents. In addition to the specific findings outlined above, the results of this thesis demonstrate that the application of observational research methods to population-based healthcare databases is a feasible, efficient, and novel means of studying the epidemiology of poisoning.
Bodies that sing: the formation of singing subjects

This study explores how singing subject positions are discursively produced in various social spaces, including how people come to understand themselves as 'non-singers' and 'not musical'. The notion of 'non-singers' is addressed as a socially mediated construction primarily achieved through the formation of White' bourgeois subjectivity and various boundary-keeping practices necessary for the preservation of 'respectable space'. 'White' bourgeois subjectivity requires the preservation of social hierarchies. Therefore, discussions about singing practices as cultural phenomena and socially mediating practices are taken up in terms of how they reinforce social hierarchies by race, class, gender, and sexuality through the dominating discourses and practices of 'Whiteness' in social relations. This study is positioned within the field of Community Music focusing on informal singing practices and a wide range of teaching/learning practices. The primary data comes from observations and interviews with a select group of people who teach singing to adults outside of formal music education and who use a variety of alternative approaches to singing. I include my own practice in this data. Other primary data comes from interviews from a small sampling of so-called non-singers. Secondary data comes from a wide range of sources that address the phenomenon of individual and group singing. Analysis of the data is informed by feminist, poststructuralist and postmodern theories of subject formation, critical race theory, class formation, spatial theory, and linguistics. Because this exploration of the 'singing subject' is based in a discourse that sees singing as a developmental phenomenon, the singer/non-singer binary can be challenged. Understanding how this socially and culturally mediated construction results in practices of exclusion and subordination provides insights into the creation of anti-subordinating practices and approaches to singing based in counter-discourses of resistance and alternative practices. This opens up possibilities for educators to treat singing as socially transformative and liberatory--positively affecting social relations among individual and collective subjects, and shaping discourses that affect communities and institutions. This study builds on research which attempts to find pedagogical principles and strategies that can move music educators, song leaders and teachers of singing to creatively incorporate critical reflection practices into our teaching.

Keywords: Music in education
Singing
Music appreciation
Visions, reading and identity in the monastic culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries: Otloh of St Emmeram and Guibert of Nogent

The period from 1050 and 1150 was a dynamic one in the history of visionary literature; this thesis examines ideas about reading, writing, and self-definition in monastic communities of the day, with particular reference to the visionary collections of Otloh of St. Emmeram (d. 1067) and Guibert of Nogent (d. 1124). Each wrote about his own religious visions and those of religious and lay contemporaries. Each thereby contributed chapters to the histories of autobiography, of reading and writing, and of the human soul in this world and the next. The first chapter examines the autobiographical portion of the Liber Visionum of Otloh of St. Emmeram. I trace the narrative of Otloh's conversion to the monastic life as described through his visions and demonstrate how Otloh's identity as an author, a scribe, and an intellectual is reflected in the content of his visionary experiences. Chapter Two is also about Otloh and the remainder of this text, including stories about dreams and visions drawn from his own monastic milieu in Southern Germany. This second chapter describes how currents of eleventh-century monastic reform and of papal and imperial politics affected Otloh's community. Guibert of Nogent's conversion to monastic life was strongly influenced by his mother's dreams and visions. In my third chapter, I examine the connection between Guibert's treatment of her visions and his interest in biblical scholarship, which is evident in his autobiographical work, the Monodiae. I conclude by examining the philosophical connections between this work and the fourth book of his treatise on relics. The concluding chapter offers a survey of the ways the visionary tradition develops after Otloh and Guibert. The methodologies I have proposed for studying visionary accounts invite a re-evaluation of the works of such figures as Peter the Venerable of Cluny, Alberic of Settefrati, Hildegard of Bingen and several other monastic writers of the twelfth century. I argue that visions continue to be a tool in constructing identity, and that monastic identity was fundamentally linked to reading, writing, and moral reform.
Litigating identity: the challenge of aboriginality

In Aboriginal rights litigation in Canada, claimants must demonstrate continuity with ‘pre-contact’ peoples and practices. This is a daunting task for communities, such as mine, whose encounter with Europeans commenced nearly four centuries ago. As a child, my grandmother told me that hers was the Otter clan. When my Great-great-grandfather signed treaties in the nineteenth century, he signed by drawing an Otter, his totem. It is my thesis that totemic identity is the crucial link in the Anishinabek chain of continuity. In Anishinabek culture, people reckon their kinship from a other-than-human progenitor traced patrilineally. In seeking to understand totemic identity, I have traced a path from clans, to marks, to souls; from geography to a sacred landscape; from genealogy to Anishinabek cosmology. It remains to be seen whether this totemic system, with its implications for territorial claims, can be made intelligible to the Canadian legal imagination.
Aristotle on the ends and limits of teleology

Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the exact term “teleology” originated in the eighteenth century. If teleology means the use of ends and goals in natural science, then Aristotle should be regarded rather as a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among his predecessors, but Aristotle rejected their conception of extrinsic causes like mind or god as the primary causes for natural things. Aristotle's radical alternative was to assert nature itself as an internal principle of change and an end, and his teleological explanations focus on the intrinsic ends of natural substances—those ends that benefit the natural thing itself. To these he contrasted incidental ends of natural things, such as possible uses of the thing which do not serve its own functions and interests. Aristotle holds that natural science is knowledge that comes about through demonstration of the causes of natural kinds. Most important is “the cause for the sake of which”—the end. The identification of a natural end initiates the process of explanation and constitutes the basis for all objective knowledge about natural kinds—stars, elements, plants, and animals. The determination of the ends of natural kinds also indicates how other causal factors, such as matter and necessity, are to be integrated into an explanatory account of their parts and behavior. Aristotle's teleology was subsequently conflated with incompatible “teleological” notions, including proofs for the existence of a providential or designer god, vitalism and animism, opposition to mechanism and non-teleological causation, and anthropocentrism. I aim to correct these misrepresentations through an investigation of Aristotle's methodological statements, as well as the explanations actually offered in the scientific works. I argue that Aristotle's aporetic approach avoids the dilemma between backwards causation and anthropomorphism that is frequently leveled against teleology. Although Aristotle's philosophy sometimes suffers from failed extrapolation of teleological principles, still it succeeds in challenging the anthropocentric conception of nature, and rising above the banausic perspective which views all natural things as instruments for human ends, to a loftier viewpoint from which natures can be observed and appreciated as their own goods.
Mechanisms underlying naming impairments in post-stroke and progressive aphasia

This thesis investigated mechanisms underlying impairments in naming, word repetition and nonword repetition in four different populations: patients recovering from post-stroke aphasia who received treatment (PSA), a control group of patients who did not receive treatment (CPSA), and patients with two variants of progressive aphasia (i.e., fluent FPA and nonfluent NPA). Predictions based on the interactive activation (IA) model of lexical retrieval (Foygel Dell, 2000; Hanley, Dell, Kay Baron, 2004) were tested at two time points in order to evaluate the viability of the model and its two mechanisms, the strength of semantic and phonological connections. The status of the putative non-lexical route in nonword repetition and its relationship to the model's other two mechanisms was also examined. Results of the naming study showed that, on average, patients in the PSA and CPSA groups presented with a combination of semantic and phonological impairments, while patients in the NPA and FPA groups presented with more uniform impairments to the semantic connections. Data from the word repetition study pointed to impairments mostly to the phonological connections in all groups. This combination of mechanisms appeared in the presence of what was usually impairment to the non-lexical route in the PSA and CPSA groups and a relatively spared non-lexical route in the NPA and FPA groups. The mechanisms underlying impairments were relatively stable over time but stability of lexical diagnosis was not seen across the tasks of naming and word repetition. Results also revealed that the non-lexical route, claimed by the model's proponents to be independent from the model's two other mechanisms, appeared in fact, to have a relationship with the phonological connections of the network. Participants with impaired phonological connections tended to have the non-lexical route impaired while those with impaired semantic connections (i.e., spared phonological connections) presented with a relatively spared non-lexical route. Findings from the three studies are discussed in the framework of the model's viability and its shortcomings. Limitations of this study are also discussed. Potential clinical and theoretical implications are presented along with directions for future research on lexical retrieval models.
Protein nitration is associated with neuronal death following traumatic brain injury

Recent research has focused on the role of reactive nitrogen species (RNS) in mediating neuronal degeneration following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Previously, TBI was shown to result in increased 3-nitrotyrosine (3-NT), a marker for ONOO- (Lau et al., 2006). The lateral Fluid Percussion Injury (FPI) model of moderate TBI was used to investigate the relationship between ONOO- and neuronal damage in rats. A temporal increase in protein nitration occurs in injured neurons within 1 hour following injury, peaking at 12 hours, and persisting for 24 hours. Injured neurons exhibit nitrated proteins in the cytoplasm, degenerate, and have an altered morphology compared to non-injured neurons. Protein nitration was not observed in astrocytes. Using an ex-vivo system, peroxynitrite was shown to inhibit GAPDH activity through cysteinyl oxidation. Taken together, these results suggest that peroxynitrite is formed rapidly in neurons following FPI, nitrates key neuronal proteins, and is linked with neurodegeneration.
A comparative analysis of wage claims' priority in corporate bankruptcy procedures: Canada and Peru

This thesis gives an account of wage claims' priority in the corporate bankruptcy regime of Canada and Peru, whose legal system and economic circumstances are quite different. Therefore, this thesis makes the normative argument that proposals for reform of wage claims' priority should not be considered in isolation, but must be assessed by reference to what can be called the "matrix of non-bankruptcy laws" relating to wage-earner protection, such as the labor market, directors' liability and employment insurance. In this respect, as the thesis demonstrates, Canada and Peru are actually different, even when their bankruptcy principles and the categories of their bankruptcy proceedings are almost the same. The thesis also makes a corresponding descriptive point, namely that the special priority Peruvian law gives to wage earner claims needs to be understood against the backdrop of Peruvian non-bankruptcy law which, in comparison with Canada, provides very little protection for workers.

Keywords: Priorities of claims and liens, Canada
Wages, Peru
Corporate reorganizations, Canada
Bankruptcy, Canada
Bankruptcy, Peru
Corporate reorganizations, Peru
Priorities of claims and liens, Peru
Wages, Canada