VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Factors Influencing the Acute Subjective and Cognitive Effects of Smoked Cannabis in Young Adults

Cannabis is associated with acute and chronic harms, including cognitive impairment and addiction. Legalization of non-medical cannabis led to increased number and diversity of cannabis products and users, challenging the generalizability of previous human laboratory studies of the mood and cognitive effects of cannabis. Study 1 examined the acute and residual effects of higher-potency smoked cannabis (12.5% THC vs. placebo) on mood and cognition in 91 young adults (cannabis use 1-4 days/week). Cannabis had acute effects on mood, with minimal evidence of cognitive impairment, and little evidence of a “hangover” effect 24 or 48 hours after exposure. Study 2 used data from this sample (26 females, 64 males) to examine sex differences in the acute subjective, physiological, and cognitive effects of cannabis, as well as THC concentrations and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationships. Females smoked less of the cannabis cigarette and reached lower blood concentrations of THC and metabolites than males, yet experienced similar acute effects, suggesting sex differences in the relationship between peripheral THC concentrations and pharmacodynamic outcomes. iii Study 3 explored relationships between gender and cannabis use in qualitative interviews conducted with two men and one woman who identified their cannabis use as problematic. We identified numerous relevant themes, including the greater masculine presence in the cannabis community, increased stigma faced by women cannabis users, and the important relationship between initiation of cannabis use and affiliation with same-gender peers. Study 4 examined the acute and residual effects of alcohol (target breath alcohol content of 0.08%) on mood and cognition in 30 young adults. Alcohol had acute effects on all cognitive tasks, yet no significant effect on mood, and no residual effects 24 or 48 h after alcohol consumption. The acute effects of alcohol were nearly opposite to the cannabis effects in Study 1, which likely relate to differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. These findings highlight the importance of cannabis potency, smoking behaviour, sex, and gender as factors that contribute to variability in the acute mood and cognitive effects of cannabis, and caution against straightforward comparisons of the effects of single doses of cannabis and alcohol.

Keywords: Alcohol
Cannabis
Cognition
Gender differences
Residual effects
Sex differences
Advisor: Brands, Bruna
Viral Hepatitis Among Immigrants: A Population-based Comparison using Linked Laboratory and Health Administrative Data

Viral hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) are two of the most common causes of hepatitis disease and are among the most burdensome infectious diseases in Ontario, Canada. HBV is found predominantly among foreign-born individuals, whereas HCV is more of an issue among long-term residents. The health administrative data provides a potential avenue for identifying disease incidence and prevalence that can be leveraged as a public health assessment tool. In this dissertation, I examine whether it is appropriate to use the health administrative data for this purpose and then quantify the population-level cascades of care for HBV and HCV, in Ontario, Canada. Through a validation study, I found there to be few health administrative diagnosis codes for HBV/HCV infections, and the diagnostic performance of these codes were sub-optimal for population-level health assessment. Expanding on these conclusions, through a data mining study, I included additional health administrative data and developed case finding algorithms for the identification of laboratory confirmed HBV/HCV infections. This exercise showed that the additional information improved diagnostic performance, but was still sub-optimal for use as a population-level health assessment tool. I quantify the HBV cascade of care and show that HBV was predominantly observed among immigrant groups, more specifically those from HBV endemic countries. Additionally, I present estimates of the population level HCV cascade of care and show that HCV is more prevalent among long-term residents, but those from HCV endemic countries were important to consider since they represent a non-negligible portion of the population. These findings show that diagnosis and engagement with care is an issue experienced in both cascades of care and that there is significant heterogeneity between and within immigrant subgroups. I commented on the incremental contribution of this dissertation and the general use of health administrative data as a health care assessment tool for viral hepatitis in Ontario, Canada. Future work should be aimed at improving the Ontario’s health care diagnosis and fee management system. Both cascades of care models outline provide population-based benchmarks for future work geared at evaluating the efficiency and uptake of policies and initiatives for reducing HCV burden in Ontario.

Keywords: Health administrative data
Immigrants
Infectious diseases
Sexually transmitted and blood borne infections
Viral Hepatitis
Advisor: Crowcroft, Natasha S
Kwong, Jeff C
Investigation of Human Umbilical Cord-derived Perivascular Cells (HUCPVCs) to Target Vascular Dysfunction after Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of morbidity and loss of life years in the developing world with limited therapeutic strategies. TBI can result in motor and cognitive impairments as well as the development of mental health disorders. Human umbilical cord perivascular cells (HUCPVCs) are a source of mesenchymal stromal cells with neuroprotective and vascular-protective capacities. The role of pericytes in vascular dysfunction following FPI are numerous and understudied. Here we investigated two pericyte-mediated signalling pathways that contribute to neuronal and vascular protection. The novel finding of this thesis is that TBI is associated with upregulation of the pro-angiogenic gene ang-2 that likely underlies pericyte loss at the endothelial barrier, and that HUCVPCs modulate the angiogenic response that rescues vascular leakage. A moderate TBI was generated using a rodent fluid percussion injury (FPI) model; HUCPVCs were systemically infused through the tail-vein 1.5 hours post-injury. At acute time points (24 and 48 hours), qPCR analysis demonstrated that HUCPVCs were associated with a significant reduction in the gene expression of angiopoietin-2 and the tie-2 receptor compared to FPI. Using immunofluorescence assessment of RECA-1 to identify endothelial cells and PDGFR to identify pericytes, HUCPVC-administration correlated with preservation of the vasculature density. Additionally, the co-localization of the two cells were increased with HUCPVC administration relative to FPI. These acute HUCPVC-mediated protective effects were associated with less permeability to Evans blue dye, suggesting less vascular leakage. Furthermore, at four weeks post-injury and compared to FPI, HUCPVC administration was associated with reduced anxiety as measured by the light/dark box test and decreased -APP accumulation, suggesting better protection of neuronal function. However, HUCPVCs did not have any protective effect on long-term memory as assessed by the novel object recognition test. An increase in PDGFR expression as well -APP accumulation in the somatosensory cortex of FPI and HUCPVC-administered rats might account for these observations. In summary, HUCPVCs promoted pericyte-endothelial barrier function that was associated with long-term neuroprotective effects on anxiety.

Advisor: Baker, Andrew J
Special Judicial Treatment on Sensitive Cases: Institutional Judicial Deviation from Law in China

Sensitive cases exist in different historical periods, and they are closely linked to the economic and social environment of the times in China. For now, sensitive cases are those involving group disputes that may affect social stability. Special judicial treatment on sensitive cases is the embodiment of the social governance model with a preference for stability in the judicial system. In China, judges are responsible for assessing social risks of all the cases in their hands in China. There are a series of institutions with regard to how to handle sensitive cases within Chinese judicial system, including judges’ preliminary screening, judge meetings and judicial committee. This special treatment to sensitive cases manifests the institutional excessive defense in the judicial system, might legalize some judicial results that violate laws and legal logic, and would damage public trust in and respect to the rule of law and the judiciary in China.

Keywords: China
Rule of law
Sensitive cases
Special judicial treatment
Advisor: Yoon, Albert
The Law, Policy, and Ethics of Migrants’ Health Care Entitlement

This dissertation examines laws and policies in Western receiving countries concerning migrants’ health care entitlement and queries their defensibility. Using Canada as a case study and drawing international comparisons where appropriate, it is shown that Western receiving countries often provide migrants with a level of health care coverage inferior to what is bestowed on their respective citizens. Proponents of such unequal health care entitlement between migrants and receiving-country citizens have commonly rationalized it as a measure to reduce public spending and to deter immigration-related fraud. Available evidence, however, challenges the validity of these claims. Instead, migrants’ lesser health care entitlement is more appropriately understood as a product of their social exclusion in receiving societies. To characterize all migrants as “others” fails to appreciate the reality that certain migrants constitute rightful members of receiving communities according to the theory of social membership. Like their citizen counterparts, migrants who are ordinarily resident and those whose establishment of ordinary residence can be confidently foretold are closely linked to Western receiving countries given their communal affiliations, involvement in social cooperation, self-identification, and subjection to the relevant state’s coercive authority. As their members, Western countries ought to afford these migrants the same extent of health care entitlement as they do their citizens in order to satisfy the dictates of equality and reciprocity. In contrast, differential health care entitlement between citizens of Western receiving countries and migrants whose residence therein is not ordinary in nature is morally permissible. In a world that largely depends on broad-based, ongoing resource redistribution within each nation to realize individuals’ right to health care, membership in these political communities is key to generating the solidarity needed to sustain such communal resource sharing. The inclusion of migrants who are not members of receiving societies in these redistributive processes raises concerns about illegitimacy. Nevertheless, given their territorial presence, pursuant to the principles of causation and remedial capacity, even non-member migrants should be entitled to a basic set of health care rights in Western receiving countries, including, at minimum, coverage for primary care and provision of medical treatment that cannot be deferred.

Keywords: entitlement
health care
international migrants
membership
solidarity
Advisor: Flood, Colleen M
Contested Rights: Abortion and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the United Nations

This dissertation examines how contentious issues emerge as norms within international organizations (IOs). To do so, I use the case studies of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and abortion in the United Nations (UN) from 1994 to 2019. I develop a theoretical model that addresses how normative claims experience contestation during the process of emergence within IOs. This model demonstrates how differences in the breadth of state support required by different venues influence how, whether, and where a norm emerges. These structural factors also present norm entrepreneurs and norm “antipreneurs” (opponents) with different strategic choices and trade-offs. This research is informed by 59 elite interviews, participant observation at various UN proceedings, and archival research. I demonstrate how the differences in abortion’s emergence and SOGI’s non-emergence in consensus-driven UN conferences in the 1990s was partially a result of abortion entrepreneurs’ greater willingness to compromise their proposed norm’s clarity, strength, and scope. I then demonstrate how normative gains related to SOGI (but not abortion) have become more attainable in contemporary vote-driven UN venues as a result of differences in how these two issues map onto pre-existing normative communities/negotiating blocs and as a result of abortion’s greater vulnerability to “framejacking” on the part of antipreneurs. Turning to UN agencies and mechanisms, I highlight how SOGI and abortion can attain a surprising degree of support within the technical/expert-driven components of IOs – irrespective of state support – when norm entrepreneurs link their prospective norm with agency-relevant issues and objectives. This research advances the literature on norm emergence by conceptualizing the early stages of emergence and contestation, and by specifying how a norm is likely to change in the process. My research also contributes to the IO literature by demonstrating how decision-making rules and norm entrepreneurs’ and antipreneurs’ strategic choices influence a contested norm’s trajectory. Empirically, my research offers detailed analyses into the often-inaccessible nuances of UN negotiations and venues. Finally, this dissertation provides in-depth insights into the trajectories of abortion and SOGI within the UN over the past twenty-five years.

Keywords: abortion
contestation
norms
sexual and reproductive health rights
sexual orientation and gender identity
United Nations
Advisor: Hoffman, Matthew
Age-related Differences in Work Outcomes: Developing a Better Understanding of Variations in Return-to-work, Wage-replacement and Retirement Outcomes using Better Methods and Data

Background: Age-related differences in work outcomes, such as return-to-work after work injury (RTW) and early labour market exit, are of renewed interest because they can impact organizational planning and worker well-being. Yet, age-related variations in work outcomes have yet to be fully understood. While existing data sources often do not contain items specifically intended to measure other age dimensions (e.g., functional, psychosocial, organizational, life-stage), they can contain items that could be used to assess these dimensions. If age dimensions could be assessed using existing data sources, which also contain relevant work outcomes, this can provide a feasible and efficient approach to examine the relationships between chronological age, age dimensions and outcomes of interest in existing large samples. Objectives: 1) Better understand the overall association between chronological age and wage-replacement duration, RTW and retirement expectations; 2) demonstrate a methodological approach that could be used to create indices of age dimensions using existing data sources; 3) examine the extent to which each age dimension explains the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes. Methods: This research used a combination of survey and administrative data collected from samples of working-age individuals across Canada and Australia. Regression and path models examined the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes, and the proportion mediated via age dimensions. Results: Older versus younger age was associated with greater wage-replacement duration, non-RTW and earlier retirement expectations. Differences in wage-replacement duration and non-RTW also varied as a function of follow-up time. Path models found that 25-30% of the overall relationship between older chronological age and work outcomes was mediated through functional age, life-stage age and RTW status at earlier time points (for non-RTW) and through life-stage and organizational age (for earlier retirement expectations). Conclusions: Findings indicate that both individual and contextual factors play a role in explaining relationships between older age and work outcomes. We derived novel measures of age dimensions using a variety of existing data sources and demonstrated the utility of an analytic approach to examine the relative contribution of age-related factors. This approach can be employed in future studies, although conceptual and measurement work needs to be refined.

Advisor: Smith, Peter M
Extending Carceral Control Pre-conviction: the Reception, Resistance, and Repercussions of Being Legally Responsible for People Accused of a Crime

In Canada and the United States, the control, supervision, and rehabilitation of criminalized people often falls on the shoulders of non-state agents and organizations. Surety bail releases are a seemingly clear embodiment of this trend as the courts call upon relatives, friends, and employers to supervise the pre-conviction activity of people accused of a crime. The resulting diffusion of responsibility is said to increase the penal state’s power and control over criminal justice involved individuals while minimizing reputational risks. However, by analyzing data from a year’s worth of bail court observations from a mid-sized jurisdiction in Ontario and interviews with sureties, I find that how friends and family assume the role of surety varies considerably and regularly diverges from court expectations. Because sureties are not legal professionals, their understanding of and ability to enforce court-ordered conditions and report bail violations is primarily shaped not by court instructions and legal mandates but by their ever-changing relationship with the accused, existing biases towards the law, and extenuating life circumstances. In this way, carceral control is not just assumed by sureties but also resisted, ignored, and subsequently transformed in the context of their everyday lives. Under surety bail releases, the governance of accused individuals therefore represents a patchwork of different and sometimes competing modalities that are stitched together by both state representatives and ordinary citizens. Yet, for accuseds and their sureties, this involvement can come at a cost. While surety releases have the potential to improve the accused’s relationship with their friends and family and increase their surety’s willingness to continue their support, the rules of the court are like an omnipresent force that continually threaten to disrupt the ties that bind. Indeed, the constant pressure of having to enforce court-ordered conditions subjects sureties to a more punitive experience, demonstrating punishment drift in action. The results of this study inform a series of recommendations geared towards offsetting the pains of pre-conviction for accused and their loved ones.

Keywords: Bail
Community supervision
Punishment
Social Support
Surety
Advisor: Kruttschnitt, Candace
Serving Stories: Servant Characters in Twentieth Century Japanese Literature

While the servants who appear in twentieth-century Japanese literature are often minor characters, they are far from insignificant. Rather, these servant characters in fact play a vital role in the narrative discourse seemingly out of proportion with the attention that their class, gender, and employment status—as well as a surface reading of the story—might lead us to expect. By exploring some of the different kinds of structural ‘work’ they do, then, as well as the ways in which their very literary nature grants them a degree of authority beyond that of their real-life corollaries, this dissertation aims to construct a narrative about a type of character whose impact on literary fiction well exceeds the bounds of the textual space they occupy. With this in mind, I take up an examination of servant characters in the works of three canonical authors who themselves experienced life with servants, Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965), and Mishima Yukio (1925-1970). An analysis of servant characters offers an opportunity to explore issues of representation, power, and authority in modern Japanese fiction. From the ethical question of how to acknowledge those we cannot speak for, to examining the connections between domestic spaces and literary spaces, to uncovering the latent power of traditionally undervalued forms of labor, this dissertation proposes a narratological examination of the role of servants in twentieth-century Japanese fiction as a means for rethinking questions of representation and the plurality of perspectives in literature. Over three chapters, I discuss questions of literary ethics and what it means to respect and acknowledge the blind spots that always accompany difference, how servant characters share and construct the domestic space with their employers, and how the embodied intimacy and unbridled access afforded servant characters might empower them even to take control over their employers’ narratives. In doing so, I argue for a reconsideration of what it means for the minor to assert itself from within the canon, proposing new ways of thinking about the structural dimensions of representation, power, and authority as revealed through the roles of minor servant characters.

Keywords: Character
Japan
Literature
Narratology
Representation
Servant
Advisor: Sakaki, Atsuko
Enacting Social Justice Leadership in the Division of Student Affairs

Heads of Student Affairs in the Ontario College sector are leaders who hold responsibility for services and programs designed to serve diverse student populations, outside of the classroom. In the College of Applied Arts and Technology system, these administrators are typically VPs of Student Affairs and Services, Deans of Students or Executive Directors of Student Services. Given their location in the institutional hierarchy these leaders can play a significant role in challenging and disrupting policies and procedures that reproduce dominance and oppression yet how they express and enact social justice leadership is significantly understudied in the higher education and student affairs literature. Grounded in two large bodies of literature in higher education, and informed by critical theory, eleven student affairs leaders were asked to reflect on ways their work related to social justice and then to discuss when and how their work reflected social justice; the central research question was: How do Heads of Student Affairs enact social justice in their leadership practice? The findings from this study reveal how student affairs leaders, who self-identified as leading from a social justice perspective, enacted social justice in their leadership practice as they attempted to transform student operations, policies and structures of power, by calling into account, seemingly unproblematic practices in efforts to reveal problems, strengths, and possibilities for sustainable change. The data also highlights that those leaders who were able to articulate a deeper understanding of how their identity impacts and informs their leadership practice tended to be more critical in their approach and, as a result, were more likely to face barriers and consequences to enacting social justice leadership. As a result, this study has the potential to provide timely insights for current and emerging leaders to develop robust policies and programs that advocate, and transform educational spaces, for our increasingly diverse student populations from a social justice perspective.

Keywords: Community College
Educational Leadership
Social Justice Leadership
Student Affairs
Advisor: Portelli, John P