VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
“Asia” as Decolonial Analytic: Critiques of Cold War Neocolonialisms in Okinawa and Mainland Japan, 1960-70s

This study analyzes the ways in which critically minded intellectuals employed the idea of “Asia” as an analytic tool to interrogate Cold War neocolonialisms in Okinawa and mainland Japan between the 1960s and 1970s. By examining discourses on political and social issues such as national security (anpo), neocolonialism, and postwar democracy, this study demonstrates how imagining a decolonial Asia constituted an important element in critiques of Cold War neocolonialism, and particularly in critiques of American imperialism. Yet this process pertained to more than just criticisms of Cold War American imperialism. I argue that renewed visions of Asia allowed for interrogations of Japan’s own collusive relationship with the United States as well as for critiques of Japan’s postwar democracy through a series of events in the 1960s and 1970s. These included the 1960 and 1970 Anpo struggles, protests against the 1965 Japan-South Korean diplomatic normalization, and the 1972 reversion of Okinawa. I further argue that one of the most significant features of the critical capacity of Asia as a decolonial analytic came primarily from those who looked to and from the margins of the Japanese Empire. In particular, I stress the crucial role and historical significance of a group of Okinawan and mainland Japanese intellectuals who envisioned the possibility of a new subjectivity against logics of assimilation. For them, situating postwar Japan within the broader spatiotemporal “Asian” context was necessary to initiate critical interventions into Japan’s postimperiality as well as its collusive role in sustaining the neocolonial order in Asia. By looking at their writings on the colonial history of Japan, this study reexamines nationalism and colonialism in postwar Okinawa and mainland Japan within a broader Cold War context.

Advisor: Fujitani, Takashi
A Cross-Voxel Exchange Model for the Non-invasive Imaging of Tracer Transport in Tumours

Tumours exhibit abnormal interstitial structures and vasculature function often leading to an impaired and heterogeneous drug delivery. Predictions of tumour perfusion are key determinants of drug delivery and responsiveness to therapy. Pharmacokinetic models allow for the quantification of tracer perfusion based on contrast enhancement measured with non-invasive imaging techniques. In this thesis, a mathematical framework was developed to provide a comprehensive description of tracer extravasation as well as advection and diffusion based on cross-voxel tracer kinetics. The focus of the first part is on examining the assumptions made by Tofts Model (TM), a widely employed predecessor, and building upon the findings to develop an advanced Cross-Voxel Exchange Model (CVXM). The second part employs in silico datasets quantifying the roles of convection and diffusion in tracer transport (which TM ignores) to investigate the validity of Tofts’ perfusion parameters compared to CVXM. In the third part, transport parameters were derived from the dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images of human cervical carcinoma xenografts by using CVXM. The resulting velocity flows, tracer diffusivities and extravasation parameters were employed to explain the heterogeneous distribution of the tracer across the tumour and its accumulation at the periphery. Finally, a minimum scan time was advised for the pre-clinical datasets that renders informative estimations of the transport parameters. Concluding, the new mathematical framework, based on CVXM, can determine transport metrics characterizing the exchange of tracer between the vasculature and the tumour tissue, potentially leading to its clinical application in personalized treatment planning and its employment in drug development research.

Keywords: DCE-CT
DCE-MRI
Non-Invasive Imaging
Personalized Medicine
Tofts Model
Transport Modelling
Advisor: Coolens, Catherine
Understanding the Birth and Life of Mammalian Neural Stem Cells

Neural stem cells (NSCs) in the adult mammalian brain are found in germinal niches where they contribute to tissue homeostasis and neuroplasticity. One of these NSC niches is in the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) along lateral ventricles. V-SVZ NSCs are defined by their ability to persist in a quiescent-like state and become activated to generate neurons for olfactory learning or oligodendrocytes for white matter repair. V-SVZ NSCs are also exposed to a plethora of signals in the niche environment that affect their function. How do these adult V-SVZ NSCs integrate information from the many signals in the environment to persist in a non-proliferating state, and become appropriately mobilized to attempt to repair the injured brain? This question is addressed by examining V-SVZ NSCs during two key events, preceding and following the time of mammalian birth, and during a demyelinating injury in the adult brain. The first part of the thesis asks how quiescent-like NSCs emerge from embryonic neural stem cells known as radial precursors (RPs) and describes a molecular mechanism that regulates this transition. LRIG1 was identified a negative regulator of the epidermal growth factor receptor in embryonic cortical RPs and that by inhibiting this pro-proliferative receptor, facilitates the transition of NSCs into the quiescent-like state. The second part of the thesis asks what determines the oligodendrogenic potential of adult V-SVZ NSCs during white matter repair. To address this, single-cell transcriptomic profiling was coupled with lineage tracing to follow the V-SVZ NSC response to a demyelinating injury. This analysis showed that quiescent-like V-SVZ NSCs become activated and undergo increased oligodendrogenesis without changing their transcriptional identity, suggesting that extrinsic cues in the injury environment activate NSCs to promote injury repair. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of the environment in influencing the V-SVZ NSC fate and identify mechanisms that modulate the NSC response to niche cues.

Advisor: Miller, Freda
Fluid Realms: Chinese Visions of Maritime Space in the South China Sea Islands

This dissertation explores the historical convergence between modernity and maritime space in China by analyzing the formation of its island claims in the South China Sea during the early 20th century. Drawing from largely unused Qing and Republican Chinese archival sources on the islands, it examines how Chinese notions of space and sovereignty in the maritime frontier since the late 18th century intersected with global ideas of political and legal modernity to shape China’s policies and positions in the contested Pratas, Paracel, and Spratly Archipelagos. Specifically, this dissertation traces a deeper transition between two discursive frameworks that predominantly guided political understandings of maritime space and sovereignty in China. This transition, I contend, fuelled the formation of China’s island claims. The first of these spatial modes, which I term “islands of sovereignty,” prioritized political control over imperial subjects and the boats they used to traverse the seas. Maritime space was thus only ever understood within and supplementary to this goal’s fulfillment. Following the advent of foreign imperialism in China with the First Opium War, however, “islands of sovereignty” was gradually repurposed to effect a second maritime spatial mode. This framework, labelled “markers of effective occupation,” increasingly centred Chinese conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty upon precisely-defined national territory using conceptions of international law and modern geography. Maritime peoples, formerly the target of Qing efforts to order the largely non-delineated sea, instead became a means towards ‘evidencing’ the emerging Chinese nation-state’s maritime borders. This dissertation ultimately argues that non-official actors such as fishermen, geographers, and community organizations were central to this spatial transition, and thus, to the formation of China’s island claims. It details how these non-official actors compelled government adoption of their understandings of the sea by fusing disparate Qing notions of maritime space with incoming Western and Japanese ideas of geography, international law, and the nation-state. Qing and Republican government actors were accordingly forced to negotiate their political worldviews with the non-official narratives they relied on to understand the islands, their place within the emerging nation-state — and indeed, what constituted China itself.

Keywords: Qing and Modern China
South China Sea Islands Dispute
Pratas
Paracel
Spratly
Maritime Frontier
Sovereignty
Territory
Spatiality
Nation-Building
Border-Making
Geo-Body
Modernity
Global History
Advisor: Chen, Li
Leveraging Associations to Influence the Organization, Quantity, and Quality of Episodic Recollection

Episodic memory enables us to situate ourselves back to the place and time of specific personal events in the past, affording us the ability to re-experience them in rich detail. Previous work suggests that our episodic memories are roughly organized along the dimensions of space, time, and concepts. This organizational structure is critical in guiding memory search, as assessed by studying the order in which we retrieve items from memory. However, less is known about how this organization can be leveraged to influence memory recall, both in terms of its quantity (i.e., how much is recalled) and quality (i.e., how richly they are recalled). Across three behavioural studies, I examined how facilitating the associations between the contents of episodic memory affected how those memories are later recalled. In Chapter 2, I modified the traditional word list-learning paradigm by introducing an intermediate review phase that emphasized either the temporal or semantic associations between encoded items prior to retrieval. This review led to increased clustering along the emphasized dimension at recall. Moreover, emphasizing semantic associations boosted overall memory recall, with the degree of semantic clustering at recall predicting memory performance. In Chapters 3 and 4, I investigated how facilitating associations between adjacent events at recall affects the detailed recollection of more naturalistic stimuli. Participants described their memories for personal life events in Chapter 3, or events from the movie Forrest Gump in Chapter 4. In Chapter 3, I found that event similarity had no effect on the episodic detail of recall—however, participants provided more extraneous information for cued events when the preceding event was both semantically similar, yet simultaneously distant in time or space. In Chapter 4, I found that recall had both more episodic information and false details when the preceding event was within the same life period. Furthermore, participants provided more intrusions from outside a cued event when the preceding event was temporally distant—these intrusions were likely provided to help scaffold memory for a cued event. Together, these studies further our understanding of the organization of episodic memory by elucidating the influence that associations have on later recollection.

Keywords: autobiographical memory
context
episodic memory
recall
Advisor: Barense, Morgan D
The Development of a Cerebral Hemispheric Surgery Simulator and its Evaluation for Epilepsy Neurosurgical Education

The origins and scope of this research thesis stems from the alarming statistic that 10.1 million people worldwide are potential surgical candidates. This number is projected to increase by 1.4 million annually. Epilepsy surgery requires mastery of an eloquent set of skills which are sometimes hard to acquire in a work-hour restricted surgical training environment. Simulation in surgical education has been endorsed as a valid supplement to clinical surgical training through a reduction in the technical learning curve. The scope of the research within this manuscript, on a macro-scale, spans both the biomedical engineering sciences and the field of surgical education. On a micro-scale the concepts of fractals, dimensions and material properties are harnessed to develop a simulator which is subsequently evaluated as a tool for the behaviorist, cognitivist and constructivist learning of a spectrum of epilepsy surgery techniques.The aim of the research was to develop a high fidelity cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator utilizing 3D printing- based technology and re-engineering the use of existing materials, to promote surgical education through hands-on-training of surgical epilepsy techniques. Leonardo da Vinci’s ingenuity of injecting hot wax into the cerebral ventricles of an ox is the earliest documentation of the use of a solidifying medium to recreate a phantom of an internal body organ. Over 500 years later similar techniques are still popularly used. This thesis describes ways of addressing this materials innovation gap. Over time the research project evolved from a focus on the novelty of designing a simulator to an emphasis on practical application of the technology through qualitative analysis. The thesis title: ‘The development of a cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator and its evaluation for epilepsy neurosurgical education’ encompasses both design and validation aspects and introduces the broad nature of epilepsy surgery procedures captured within this single simulator. The core methods consisted of two parts: the engineering process of the cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator and the evaluation of the invention for face, content, construct, and criterion validity. Ultimately, the results and conclusions are supportive of an invention that harnesses the strengths of biomedical engineering for the advancement of neurosurgical education.

Advisor: Drake, James M
Hamiltonian Geometry of Generalized Kahler Metrics

Generalized Kähler structures are a natural generalization of Kähler metrics. In this thesis, we pose and investigate the question of finding a generalized Kähler metric with a prescribed volume form in a given generalized Kähler class. This is a natural generalization of the famous Calabi conjecture. We define a generalized Kähler class as a homotopy class of bisections in a holomorphic symplectic Morita equivalence between holomorphic Poisson manifolds. To answer this question we introduce holomorphic families of branes, a novice concept to study variations of generalized complex branes with a complex parameter. We then apply this to families of Lagrangian brane bisections in a symplectic Morita equivalence to analyze variations in generalized Kähler metrics. We construct an almost Kähler metric on the infinite-dimensional space of prequantized generalized Kähler metrics and set up a Hamiltonian group action by gauge transformations. This setup leads to a downward gradient flow of a functional on the space of generalized Kähler metrics towards the metric with prescribed volume form.

Keywords: Generalized geometry
Kähler geometry
Ricci flat
Symplectic geometry
Advisor: Gualtieri, Marco MG
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Ontario’s Long-term Care Homes

Ontario long-term care home residents have experienced disproportionately high morbidity and mortality, both from COVID-19 and from the conditions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 16, 2022, a total of 4,286 long-term care home residents have died of COVID-19, totaling 43.0% of all 9,245 COVID-19 deaths in Ontario. The most important risk factors for whether a long-term care home will experience an outbreak is the daily incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the communities surrounding the home and the occurrence of staff infections. The most important risk factors for the extent of an outbreak and the number of resulting resident deaths are older home design, chain ownership, and crowding. Many Ontario long-term care home residents have experienced severe and potentially irreversible physical, cognitive, psychological, and functional declines as a result of precautionary public health interventions imposed on homes, such as limiting access to general visitors and essential caregivers, resident absences, and group activities. There has also been an increase in the prescribing of psychoactive drugs to Ontario long-term care residents during the pandemic. The accumulating evidence on COVID-19 in Ontario’s long-term care homes has been leveraged in several ways to support public health interventions and policy during the pandemic. Several further measures could be effective in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitalizations, and deaths in Ontario’s long-term care homes. This includes improving staffing, minimizing long-term care worker infection, reducing crowding in long-term care homes, enhanced infection prevention and control (IPAC) measures, a more balanced and nuanced approach to public health measures, and additional strategies to promote COVID-19 vaccine acceptance amongst residents and staff.

Keywords: Clinical Epidemiology
Coronavirus Disease 2019
Geriatric Medicine
Long-Term Care
Nursing Home
Advisor: Rochon, Paula A.
Bell, Chaim M.
Data Profiling, Machine Learning, and Data Visualizations for a Multilingual Crowdsourced Knowledge Graph: The Case of Wikidata

Wikidata is a well-known collaborative knowledge graph containing multilingual data for hundreds of language locales, ranging from Arabic (ar) to Zulu (zu). As the largest publicly accessible multilingual knowledge graph on the internet, it is important to understand the kinds of entities and the range of multilingual data that exist on Wikidata. However, research on the kinds of subject matters and topics in Wikidata and the distribution of multilingual data in the labels, descriptions, and aliases has been relatively limited. This dissertation presents a suite of tools that apply data profiling, machine learning, and data visualization techniques to Wikidata in order to organize it into subject-matter domains and to identify areas for multilingual data augmentation. After an overview of a similar collaborative knowledge graph, Freebase, is provided, the research outputs are organized as follows. First, we present WikiMetaData Profiler, a data profiling tool where the input is the entire Wikidata data dump and the outputs are (1) a series of datasets containing descriptive statistics on the distribution of items, properties, and language and (2) the raw triples in the Wikidata knowledge graph. The output is presented through interactive dashboards using Google Data Studio. Second, we present WiDAR, or Wikidata i18n Data and Ranging, another suite of tools to (1) implement machine learning techniques and manual processes that identify subject-matter domains in Wikidata, (2) generate data visualizations in the form of heatmaps to help gain a sense of "the lay of the land'' with regards to the distribution of multilingual data, and (3) programmatically generate SPARQL queries that provide recommendations for multilingual data augmentation. Finally, a demonstration with a graph visualization tool and various knowledge graph embedding techniques is presented. The research presented in this dissertation works to advance the Wikidata and research community's understanding and use of Wikidata's data and multilingual aspects.

Keywords: data profiling
data visualization
knowledge graphs
machine learning
multilingual
wikidata
Advisor: Andritsos, Periklis
Agent, Equilibrium and Learning: A Quest Towards Taming the Master Dynamics of Games

Unified analysis of multi-agent decision processes has garnered an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Out of this unification literature, a set of ordinary differential equations called mirror descent (MD) has emerged as the progenitor of many decision processes. In particular, MD provably converges to the Nash equilibrium (NE) of large classes of games, namely, games with strict monotonicity or strict variationally stable state (also known as VSS, a specific type of NE). However, outside of these settings, MD can fail to converge, thus greatly restricting the scope of its applications. In light of this challenge, this thesis is concerned with the design of a set of theoretically-guided methodologies that overcome such convergence barriers. These methodologies preserve the beneficial aspects of MD while bringing about convergence in broader classes of games. Our methods can also be used to create new decision processes. We begin our analysis by studying a reinforcement learning procedure based on MD, called discounted exponential learning (or DXL). We show that DXL can approximately converge to the NE of non-strictly monotone mixed-strategy finite games. Using the idea of energy dissipation, we design higher-order variants of DXL, which possess better robustness properties. We then generalize DXL to an entire class of dynamics, which we call discounted MD (or DMD), and show that DMD converges in non-strictly monotone continuous concave games. Afterward, we provide a new game characterization called relative monotonicity, which allows us to provide the convergence rates of MD-based dynamics. Combining these ideas, we design a class of second-order MD (or MD2), which can achieve exact convergence towards non-strict VSS. Finally, we consider discrete-time algorithms extracted from MD2 and provide convergence guarantees in two challenging setups: the semi-bandit case, where an agent's feedback is corrupted by Martingale-difference noise, and the full-bandit case, where each agent only receives a payoff signal which indicates its current performance. Illustrative examples are drawn from a broad set of literature with a special focus on several recent applications arising from machine learning, such as the generation of adversarial attacks and generative adversarial networks.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence
Control Theory
Dynamical Systems
Game Theory
Machine Learning
Reinforcement Learning
Advisor: Pavel, Lacra