VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Differential Effects of Prolonged and Short-term Lipid Infusion on Hepatic Insulin Sensitivity

To investigate if the mechanisms of free fatty acid (FFA)-induced hepatic insulin resistance differ depending on duration of plasma FFA elevation, i.v. infusion of Intralipid plus heparin (IH) was utilized to augment plasma FFAs and rats were administered short-term (7h) or prolonged (48h) i.v. infusions of saline, IH, IH co-infused with an inhibitor, or inhibitor alone. Sodium salicylate, an inhibitor of IκBα kinase β (IKKβ), and the antioxidant N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) have been previously found to prevent hepatic and peripheral insulin resistance caused by short-term IH infusion and these results were confirmed in Study 1 and Study 2. In Study 1, co-infusion of sodium salicylate prevented peripheral, but not hepatic, insulin resistance caused by prolonged IH infusion and in the liver, neither markers of IKKβ activation nor a target of IKKβ, namely serine 307 of insulin receptor substrate (IRS)-1, were altered by prolonged IH infusion. Previously, oxidative stress was found to be upstream of IKKβ in hepatic insulin resistance caused by short-term IH infusion. Furthermore, in Study 2, it was shown that apocynin, which is an inhibitor of the reactive oxygen species (ROS)-producing enzyme NADPH oxidase, prevents hepatic and peripheral insulin resistance caused by short-term IH infusion. In Study 2, insulin resistance caused by prolonged IH infusion was prevented by NAC in the periphery, but not at the level of the liver, and prolonged IH infusion did not affect markers of hepatic oxidative stress. Since short-term IH infusion has previously been shown to induce hepatic oxidative stress, the current results suggest that as the duration of plasma FFA elevation increases, hepatic oxidative stress is normalized, which may explain why IKKβ becomes inactivated. Chemical chaperones such as 4-phenylbutyric acid (PBA) have been reported to improve chronic obesity-associated insulin resistance and in Study 3 it was found that PBA partially prevented hepatic and completely averted peripheral insulin resistance caused by prolonged IH infusion. The protective mechanism of PBA, however, remains to be completely elucidated because IH did not alter commonly used markers of endoplasmic reticulum stress. Therefore, the hepatic insulin resistance pathways activated by FFAs depend on the duration of FFA elevation.

Keywords: free fatty acids
insulin sensitivity
liver
Advisor: Giacca, Adria
Anna Karenina Illustrated: Russian and Soviet Illustrated Editions of the Novel, 1878-1982

This dissertation discusses illustrations of Anna Karenina created in Russia and the USSR in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It first considers Mikhail Vrubel’s illustration from 1878 and then examines four illustrated editions published in in 1914, 1933, 1953 and 1982. It accomplishes the following: it attends to the lack of attention illustration receives, generally in literary studies, but especially in Russian; it fills in a part of the history of publication practices in Russia and the USSR, as it pertained to illustration; it describes the intended audience for these works; and it offers close readings of the artists’ illustrations, thereby demonstrating the changing reception of Tolstoy’s novel over time. Tolstoy’s novel attracted serious artists whose work offers intricate interpretations. Since most of these illustrations were commissioned during the Soviet period, they reveal a great deal about how that regime intervened in the reception of Anna Karenina and its author. For example, Piskarev’s illustrations, aimed at American readers, show that even though Tolstoy was considered to be one of Russia’s great geniuses, there were important distinctions to be drawn between his ideas and those of the CPSU. Samokhvalov’s illustrations of 1953 also emphasize Tolstoy’s importance as a genius and try to formalize Anna Karenina’s pertinence to some of the main tenets of communism. Vereiskii’s illustrations reveal the readership’s turn away from the Marxist view of the epic dialectic of history and turn towards the intimate sphere of the family and the household. The broader implication of my dissertation is its hint at the rich tradition of illustration in Russia in the 20th century. It thereby takes a preliminary step into outlining the progression of this history and into describing its characteristics.

Keywords: Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina
Illustration
Publishing -- Russia
Vrubel', Mikhail
Samokhvalov, Aleksandr
Korin, Aleksei
Vereiskii, Orest
Piskarev, Nikolai
Shcheglov, Mikhail
Advisor: Orwin, Donna
S100B Expression Modulates Diabetic Myocardium following Myocardial Infarction and Development of Diabetes

S100B regulates left ventricular (LV) remodelling following myocardial infarction (MI) by interaction with the receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE). Since S100B and RAGE are induced in diabetic vasculature, we hypothesized that i) hyperglycemia will augment expression or functional impact of S100B and RAGE post-MI and ii) abrogated or forced expression of S100B will alter post-MI structure and remodeling specifically in diabetes. Also, as S100B Knockout (BKO) mice appear resistant to streptozotocin (STZ)–induced diabetes, we postulated a role for S100B in development of diabetes. In mouse, post-MI remodeling in diabetes exhibited an attenuation of LV dilation, myocyte hypertrophy, S100B expression and matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) activity, increased apoptosis and fibrosis. Despite reduced LV dilation, impairment of cardiac function was similar to non-diabetic controls. Following MI, diabetic BKO demonstrated increased LV dilation compared to S100B transgenic (BTG) and WT with greater impairment of cardiac function, decreased glucose transporter type 4 (GLUT4) mRNA expression and increased AGE levels. These data suggest that S100B expression may serve to limit adverse diabetic post-MI remodeling and regulate associated metabolic changes in the heart. In addition, we have defined a novel role of S100B in the development of diabetes. As BKO mice were resistant to STZ induced-diabetes with lower value for food and water intake and urine volume and increased body weight compared to WT mice, we hypothesized that S100B played a role in islet cell damage and/or insulin sensitivity. BKO exhibited enhanced glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity with increased insulin in serum. S100B deficiency prevented β-cell disruption and functional impairment in response to STZ. Expression of S100B was increased in the WT islet after induction of diabetes and S100B induced apoptosis in β cells. These findings indicate that S100B expression is involved in islet dysfunction and in peripheral insulin resistance, at least in an STZ model. In conclusion, our findings support a differential, paradoxical effect of S100B signalling in post-MI diabetic hearts, serving to limit dilation and functional impairment. Moreover, S100B may play a role in diabetes itself contributing to β-cell loss in pancreas and peripheral insulin resistance.

Keywords: S100B
Myocardial Infarction
Diabetes
Left Ventricular Remodelling
RAGE
Advisor: Parker, Thomas
Adult Children's Experiences of Caring for Elderly Chinese Immigrant Parents Managing Chronic Illness: A Qualitative Study

Research on Chinese families documents the importance of the family in providing informal health support and caregiving to elderly members. This research was guided by a phenomenological approach using in-depth interviews with individuals (N=23) to explore the experiences of adult Chinese-Canadian children who assist their elderly immigrant parents manage their chronic illnesses. The results from this study suggest that the experiences of caregivers who are Chinese are not necessarily different from those who are not Chinese; yet, Chinese identity was used by participants to frame their descriptions of their experiences. The Power Resonance Framework was developed to represent the dynamic nature of the relationships between patients, caregivers and healthcare providers. Finally, using vignettes developed from participant narratives, current conceptualizations of cultural competency among healthcare providers can be explored and critiqued. Many of the adult children in this study struggled with the dual roles of child and lay healthcare provider, referencing what they perceived as cultural norms to explain the conflict they experienced.

Keywords: Qualitative Health Research
Cultural Competency
Cultural Diversity
Healthcare
Medical Education
Gerontology
Advisor: Boon, Heather
Grief, Gender and Mourning in Medieval North Atlantic Literature

This dissertation explores the relationship between grief, cultural constructs of gender, and mourning behaviour in the literatures of medieval Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Iceland. The Introduction situates my analysis within an ongoing conversation about the relationship between gender and mourning in classical, medieval, and modern cultures. In the first two chapters I consider the representation of mourning men in medieval texts, arguing that male grief has been neglected as a field of study, and that male weeping and lament in these cultures are incorrectly assumed by modern scholarship to have been considered effeminate. Through a careful reading of primary sources, I argue that there was a broader range of mourning behaviour available to men in these cultures than is typically assumed to have been the case. My third chapter, “Perilous Grief,” is a comparative analysis of the gendering of death from grief and suicide. I consider the portrayals of male and female deaths related to bereavement, focusing on the contexts in which suicide and death from grief occur. I conclude this chapter with a discussion of the relationship between emotional distress and the gendered body, demonstrating that the somatic response to negative emotions is heavily gendered in medieval Scandinavian texts. In female bodies the negative emotion remains centralized in the chest, often causing death by bursting, while male bodies swell outwards in their grief, permitting release. The only men who die from grief in these texts are presented as old and infirm. In contrast, medieval Irish texts show the same range of somatic responses to grief in both women and men. My final chapter, “Envisioning the Afterlife,” offers a sustained comparison of the development of the idea of the afterlife and the otherworld in medieval Irish and Norse literature. I argue that the connection between female supernatural figures, death, and the erotic is strongly established in Old Irish and Old Norse-Icelandic texts, and that the pairing of the macabre and the erotic in these traditions is related to a well-established association between female sexuality and the pollution of death occurring in many cultures.

Keywords: Medieval
Old Irish
Old Enlish
Old Norse-Icelandic
Middle Welsh
Grief
Mourning
Gender
Death
Lament
Weeping
Advisor: Dooley, Ann
Internationalism and Global Governance in Canadian Public Law

Globalization presents domestic lawmakers with a dilemma. Because of internationalist moral commitments, they may be inclined to use domestic law to protect the rights or interests of people beyond their borders. But globalization also challenges conventional assumptions about the primacy of state law. The increasing global interconnectedness of economic, social, and cultural life raises doubts about the governance capacity of state institutions. And new forms of global governance, based on international organizations and global networks, have become more prominent. In the last few decades, Canadian lawmakers have enacted a number of statutes and regulations that appear to mobilize domestic law for the pursuit of internationalist values. These include the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act (2008), legislation providing for the environmental assessment of projects outside Canada, and Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (2004). In this dissertation, I apply post-realist analytic techniques to these legal texts and to the legislative debates surrounding them. These techniques include the analysis of indeterminacies, distributive and constitutive effects, background rules, and historical contingencies. I argue that these law reform projects are less Canadian than they might appear. They draw on a wide variety of discourses, policy models, and norms imported from other countries, from international organizations, and from expert networks. Rather than reflections of Canadians’ moral and political choices, these legislative regimes appear as nodes in larger configurations of global governance. I also examine the specific legal and institutional techniques used by Canadian lawmakers to deal with claims of global justice. A number of themes appear in multiple case studies. These include the use of a paired set of arguments about non-discrimination and sovereignty; reliance on procedures; deference to expertise, and the invocation of a public/private distinction. On the whole, Canadian internationalist legislation in the post-Cold War era reflects the influence of neoliberalism.

Keywords: internationalism
Canada
globalization
law
regulation
administration
development assistance
environmental assessment
pharmaceuticals
Advisor: Rittich, Kerry
An Archaeology of Cicero's Letters: A Study of Late Republican Textual Culture

This dissertation examines the hermeneutic role of the material epistula in the correspondence of the Roman elite at the end of the Republic. Through close readings of descriptions of the physical letter in Cicero’s Letters and with reference to the papyrological record and later epistolary cultures, I reconstruct the meaning of the material epistula for Cicero and his social cohort. Elite epistolography was not only a site of intricate discursive strategies, but also of complex material politics. Physical aspects of the epistula – such as whose handwriting (the author’s or a scribe’s) the recipient reads, the choice of medium for the epistle, and the identity of the letter-carrier – constituted a complex social performance on the part of the epistolographer that helped to delineate both his status in the community and his relationship with the letter’s addressee. By examining how the material form of an epistula could influence the reception of its linguistic contents, this dissertation also facilitates a more nuanced understanding of Cicero’s correspondence, in particular his epistolary relations with such figures as Atticus, Caelius, Plancus, and Antony. The first two chapters demonstrate that the mode of production for an epistula was a key material feature that republican epistolographers used in constructing and negotiating their relationships with each other. This investigation also shows how republican epistolography functioned as a symbolic economy, which covertly interacted with the commercial economy. The third chapter examines Atticus’ handwriting practices in his correspondence with Cicero as a means to engage in a larger discussion regarding Atticus’ place and function in Roman elite society. The fourth chapter examines the cultural genealogy and larger social perception of wax-tablets and papyrus (the two forms of media for republican epistolography) in order to better appreciate why Roman epistolographers would employ each medium in particular epistolary transactions. Chapter five explores how Cicero and his correspondents deployed particular letter-carriers to affect the reception of a letter. Finally, the conclusion briefly examines the letter-writing practices of the epistolographers from the Roman fort at Vindolanda in order to review the findings of this dissertation, while also suggesting avenues for future research.

Keywords: Roman History
Cicero
History of the Book
Latin Literature
Ancient Letters
Roman Republic
Advisor: Gunderson, Erik
Feasting on the Aam of Heaven: The Christianization of the Nisga'a, 1860-1920

The Nisga’a of British Columbia’s rugged Pacific Coast have long forged their spirituality from both a relationship with the supernatural and other beings with whom they share the Nass Valley, and practices and beliefs brought in from abroad. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the Nisga’a began a period of intense engagement with the different Christianities that began to appear at the margins of their world. British and later Canadian missionary societies set their sights on the inhabitants of the coast while the Nisga’a themselves were exploring the newly available religious rituals and ideas they found in the emerging settler society. By 1905, the year after which ninety percent of the Indians of British Columbia were reported to be Christian, the long-serving Anglican missionary to the Nisga’a James McCullagh jubilantly declared that there was “not a heathen left” on the Nass River. This dissertation explores the process of Christianization that lay beneath such observations, focusing on how the Nisga’a understood this change in their religious life. Using missionary and government sources, as well as interviews conducted with contemporary Nisga’a, I argue that Nisga’a Christianization was a much more complex and multi-stranded endeavour than conventional framings of the subject allow. Nisga’a eagerly sought out the new Christianities on offer after mid-century, and began a long engagement with their ideas, rituals and forms. Their response is best understood as being informed by a Nisga’a cultural stance that valued new knowledge with the potential to improve their lives and respected the ability to create wealth. The religious change that occurred through their interaction with Protestant Christian forms and their promoters was marked by contingencies, the discovery and negotiation of both congruencies and differences, as well as impositions. Effects of this period of Christianization were far-reaching; the Nisga’a’s incorporation of Christianity into their religious framework significantly changed it. Influences also went both ways. As Nisga’a engaged with them, the particular forms, practices and meanings of the Christianities transplanted from Anglo-Canadian societies were tweaked and even transformed. Through this dialogical process, Christianity became a Nisga’a religion. Finally, this dissertation draws on contemporary Nisga’a memories of Christianization gleaned from interviews to examine the different ways this historical process is remembered in the Nass today, and how these understandings shape current cultural projects—including this one—that require plausible pasts.

Keywords: Nisga'a
Christianization
Aboriginal
Religious Change
British Columbia
Christianity
First Nations
Canada
Advisor: Greer, Allan
Bohaker, Heidi
Beyond Set Theory: The Relationship between Logic and Taxonomy from the Early 1930 to 1960

In this dissertation I look at the relationship between logic and taxonomy as taxonomists responded to double attack: an attack on their methodology from the biological community during the 1930s and at the start of a methodological civil war that erupted in late 1950s. According to the usual story, the relationship between logic and taxonomy could not have been worse. Taxonomists were thought to be either mired in Aristotelian essences or lost in some dubious set-theoretic wasteland. This story, however, is now recognized as being a political tool rather than an accurate history and the time is ripe for something new. I examine four cases: British botanist John Gilmour, American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, German entomologist Willi Hennig, and American philosopher Morton Beckner that help illustrate the richness of this relationship. These cases will show how different branches of logic successfully played roles in taxonomy’s methodological reform, rather than set-theory playing the dominant and ultimately failing role as the old paradigm. In addition, it will become clear that one reason why this could be done was because many of these taxonomists were part of transient interdisciplinary groups willing to relax the standards of authority within interdisciplinary communities. These changes in authority helped facilitate communication and promote knowledge production during this complex time. Taxonomists without the traditionally recognized expertise in logic chose to read logic on the fly, and likewise philosophers and other biologists without established training in taxonomy could enter the debate in significant and productive ways.

Keywords: History and Philosophy of Biology
History and Philosophy of Logic
Advisor: Winsor, Mary
Bernardino Licinio: Portraiture, Kinship and Community in Renaissance Venice

Bernardino Licinio was a painter of Bergamasque origin active in Venice from c. 1510 to c. 1550. Licinio was a prolific painter of portraits, concert scenes and religious images for the home and headed a prosperous family workshop. Yet the artist is largely denied importance within the current art historical narrative, being conceived as “minor,” “provincial” or “second-rate.” My dissertation questions the “constructedness” of historical identities and presents the first nuanced understanding of Licinio’s place within Venetian culture. I argue that his status as “minor” is a modern construct rather than a reflection of his contemporaries’ perception. My dissertation inscribes itself within endeavours to “de-centre” the Renaissance conceptually, and is especially indebted to recent studies of material culture that challenge art historical hierarchies and aesthetic biases. The dissertation provides a multilayered reading of Bernardino Licinio’s artistic identity through frameworks that stem from what I consider unique aspects of his practice, while others arise from problems posed by his historiographical reception. The artist’s position between Venice and Bergamo provides the line of enquiry for chapter one, where I engage with the Bergamasque community conceived, on the one hand, as a form of historiographical framing, and on the other, as a social reality. In chapter two, music as a cultural phenomenon provides a frame for exploring Licinio’s intellectual world. I contend that his engagement with musical themes suggests an involvement with the communities of interest fostered by music as a social act. Chapter three addresses Licinio’s hitherto unrecognised contribution to shaping a tradition of female portraiture. The chapter thus challenges the accepted conceit of women’s “artistic invisibility” in Venetian art, while simultaneously highlighting Licinio’s role in forming the genre of family portraiture. Chapter four presents a case study of two images where the artist talks about himself and his family: the Portrait of Arrigo and Agnese Licinio with their Children and the Self-Portrait with Workshop. Through these portraits, I explore the convergence of familial and professional identities, the conceptual ties between the home and the family, and the structures of kinship that provided the foundation for the Renaissance workshop.

Keywords: Early Modern Art
Venice
Bernardino Licinio
Portraiture
Bergamo
Kinship
Immigration
Painting
Renaissance
Advisor: Sohm, Philip