VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Punishment and Necessity: On the Problem of the Mastery of Nature in the First and Second Treatises of Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality

This dissertation investigates Nietzsche’s critique of punishment in the first two treatises of his On the Genealogy of Morality. It argues that the critique of punishment clarifies Nietzsche’s understanding of the relationship between nature and human will. Central to this project is a reconstruction of a uniquely Nietzschean understanding of punishment as the attempt to transform or eradicate both nature and human nature. While punishment has been most recently viewed as the attempt to discipline or control nature, Nietzsche views the antagonism between punishment and nature even more radically: punishment is the attempt to replace the order of nature with an order of will. Consequently, this study argues that attending to Nietzsche’s more comprehensive view of punishment reveals the true scope of his critique of morality. For it reveals punishment as the chief instrument of morality, which aims to change and therefore correct that which it finds defective in the world. This project is situated in ongoing debates in the fields of political theory and philosophy about the role that mastery of nature plays in Nietzsche’s thought. The critique of punishment provides a novel resource for understanding this role, clarifying Nietzsche’s attitude towards mastery of nature in at least four ways. First, and contrary to the standard interpretation, it shows that Nietzsche is a critic of projects, both moral and scientific, that attempt to master nature. Second, by highlighting the relationship between morality and change, the critique of punishment encourages a critical reexamination of Nietzsche’s own call for a new noble morality. Third, it clarifies Nietzsche’s critical attitude toward the will to power. By highlighting the will to power’s drive to fit the world to its own needs and desires, Nietzsche shows the will to power to be far from an unmitigated good, but instead a potential barrier to knowledge. Finally, Nietzsche’s critique of punishment points to his view of the supremacy of the contemplative life. Nietzsche seeks to understand nature not in order to transform the world, but rather to understand it and, most importantly, himself.

Keywords: Genealogy
Mastery of Nature
Nietzsche
Punishment
Revenge
Advisor: Orwin, Clifford
Who Decides and Why it Matters: Institutions, Differentiation and Northern Rural Higher Education

The purpose of this research was to study the impact of institutional forces on higher education policy processes. The project involved a case study analysis of the alignment between intention and perceived impact, focused specifically on the implementation of higher education differentiation policy within two of Canada’s provincial norths (Northern Alberta and Northern Ontario). These provinces were chosen because they represent two of the largest jurisdictions in Canada by population, and because they have both implemented differentiation policy frameworks within the last decade and a half. The research was undertaken within a theoretical framework that combined elements of new institutionalism (North, 1990; DiMaggio Powell, 1991; Thelen, 1999; Peters, 2012; Lowndes Roberts, 2013; Scott, 2014), strategic reaction theory (Oliver 1991), pragmatism (Allison Pomeroy, 2000; Duemer Zebidi, 2009; Anderson Shattuck, 2012; Kaye, 2013), and power (Foucault, 1980; Mills, 2003). Through examination of the ways in which similar policy goals were implemented in Northern and Rural Central Alberta, and in Northern Ontario, it was possible to identify institutional forces that impacted the policy process in each jurisdiction. The central argument of this study was that, in order to improve alignment between policy intentions and policy outcomes, policy makers (political decision makers) and policy implementers (organizational decision makers) must take these institutional forces into account at every stage in the higher education policy process.

Keywords: Canadian Provincial Norths
Differentiation
Higher Education Policy
New Institutional Theory
Power
Strategic Reaction Theory
Advisor: Sa, Creso
Developing Combined Optical Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometry Tools to Probe the Conformation of Double-Stranded DNA in the Gas Phase

Mass spectrometry (MS) has long been a popular analytical technique for the characterization of gas-phase molecules. Beginning in the late 20th century, the coupling of MS with soft ionization techniques such as electrospray ionization (ESI) and the development of various gas-phase methodologies facilitated the structural analysis of intact biomolecules. To that end, this dissertation describes the coupling of MS with optical spectroscopy for the characterization of isolated DNA-binding dyes and non-covalent double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) complexes in the gas phase. MS and optical spectroscopy analysis is performed using a quadrupole ion trap (QIT) that has been modified to perform photodissociation (PD) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) on mass-selected ions. First, fluorescence measurements on trapped rhodamine 640 ions are performed to visualize the cloud of trapped ions inside the QIT. Second, the intrinsic photophysical properties of the classic dsDNA intercalator, ethidium bromide, is presented via photodissociation action spectroscopy, dispersed emission spectra, and time-resolved measurements. Finally, latter chapters describe the use of non-covalent DNA-binders that exhibit “turn-on” fluorescence responses in solution and Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) methodologies to probe the conformation of dsDNA ions in the gas phase. The work described in this dissertation serves to develop methodologies that use MS and optical spectroscopy techniques to investigate the intrinsic intra- and intermolecular interactions present in biomolecules, without competing solvent effects.

Keywords: DNA
Ethidium
FRET
Laser-induced fluorescence
Mass Spectrometry
turn-on fluorophore
Advisor: Jockusch, Rebecca A.
Targeting Acetyl-CoA Metabolism in Bacteria - Structural Characterization of Pantothenate Kinases and Lipoate-Protein Ligases

Antibiotics are regarded as one of the most important medical discoveries of all time. Since their clinical implementation in the early 20th century, countless lives have been saved, rates of infectious disease have plummeted, and medical advancements such as surgical implantation have flourished. However, the rise of antibiotic resistance has mirrored the rise in antibiotic use, and we are now running out of reliable drugs. At a time when there is a negative correlation between the rise of resistance and the approval of new drugs, the future of antibiotic development needs to embrace novel treatment strategies and target pathways to help turn the tide in the arms race against bacterial drug resistance. In the present study, we propose the central axis between coenzyme A (CoA) biosynthesis and acetyl-CoA (AcCoA) production to be a viable target for future antimicrobial development. AcCoA and CoA are central to pyruvate oxidation, the TCA cycle, biofilm

Keywords: Antimicrobial
Lipoate-protein ligase
Pantothenate kinase
Structure-based drug design
X-ray crystallography
Advisor: Park, Hee-Won
Grant, Denis
A "Time When Principles Make Best Politics"? The Western Response to "Genocide" in East Pakistan

This study examines the formulation of and interplay between the US, Canadian, and British policies generated in response to the mass atrocities perpetrated by Islamabad authorities in East Pakistan during 1971. It focuses on the reactions of these three closely-connected North Atlantic powers to the gross human rights abuses, analyzing the decision-making processes in Washington, Ottawa, and London during the crucial first few months of the crisis, identifying the forces at play in determining policy, and investigating the nature, development, and resolution of debates over national interests and ethical concerns. The analysis is built primarily upon documentary evidence from the US National Archives, the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In Washington, President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, exerted great personal influence over the determination of policy and favored a strategy of appeasement. Importantly, their secret initiative to secure rapprochement with China, which only sprang into life at the end of April, did not drive their thinking during the vital first month after the clampdown began as Kissinger has previously claimed. In Ottawa, the Canadian government developed a tentative four-strand response, unwilling to hazard bilateral ties with Islamabad or draw attention to its own separatist issue in Quebec. In the UK, notably strong public sympathy for the victims of the clampdown only influenced policy to a limited extent. Nevertheless, Londonâ s response, though similar in form to that of Ottawa, in substance demonstrated a greater willingness to coerce Islamabad into ending its oppressive action. This work considers the limited interplay between the North Atlantic powers in determining their reactions, discussing the collaborative opportunities both accepted and spurned. The overall conclusion compares policies and their determinants, assesses the alternative options available, considers the blinkered nature of government institutional cultures formed around the protection of national interests narrowly construed, and explains the techniques of obfuscation and excuse employed by officials to avoid demands for firmer action.

Keywords: British foreign policy
Canadian foreign policy
East Pakistan
Genocide studies
South Asia
US foreign policy
Advisor: Pruessen, Ronald
The Dialogical Element in Machiavelli's Works

This dissertation will examine the dialogical element in NiccolĂ˛ Machiavelli's works including his two dialogues Arte della guerra and Discorso intorno alla lingua, as well as those which do not belong to the dialogic genre, namely Il principe and Mandragola, but which display many of the key elements of the genre. This will be accomplished using contemporary theories, with the addition of Marshall McLuhan's work on the medium. By treating the dialogue not only as a genre, but also as a medium, this opens up a new avenue of study with which to analyze and evaluate not only some of Machiavelli's most celebrated works, but also how his legacy is tied to modernity.

Keywords: Dialogue
Marshall McLuhan
NiccolĂ˛ Machiavelli
Advisor: Guardiani, Francesco
Shelter from the Storm: Asylum in American Narratives of Natural Disaster

America's origin story depicts the nation as sanctuary incarnate. From the Puritans seeking religious refuge to generations of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, to slaves fleeing north across the Ohio River, in the national imaginary America functions as asylum extant -- as the end of the story. This dissertation interrogates this iconic narrative at a critical historical moment. Reading narratives of natural disaster -- accounts of historical drought, flood, and hurricane -- it produces a nuanced theory of refuge which counters the myth of nationalized sanctuary. In an era of normative catastrophe, narratives of 'natural' disaster problematize the discourse of the nation-state as the exemplary guarantor of refuge. This theory of asylum constitutes a vital prehistory for increasingly urgent current engagement with vulnerable citizenship and the emerging canon of eco-catastrophe narratives. Chapter One examines the Dust Bowl as represented in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), Woody Guthrie's folk song 'This Land is Your Land' (1940) and documents of the National Park Service (1936). These disaster narratives demonstrate that asylum is defined both by an inviolable border, and by imaginative expansion beyond that defensible perimeter to borderless, abstracted, and infinite refuge. Chapter Two examines the texts of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. Flood Relief Chairman Herbert Hoover's memoir (1952), President Calvin Coolidge's 1927 State of the Union Address as well as 'Saving the Day' (1928) -- a sermon by Rev. Sutton E. Griggs -- constitute a trenchant critique of the nationalized provision of refuge. Delving further into the 1927 flood, Chapter Three considers Richard Wright's short stories 'The Man Who Saw the Flood' (1937) and 'Down by the Riverside' (1938) as well as William Faulkner's novella Old Man (1939). These texts demonstrate how racialized asylum subverts the conventions of the disaster narrative's promise of catastrophic renewal. Concluding with a contemporary disaster, Chapter Four examines Dave Eggers' Zeitoun (2009), James Lee Burke's short story 'Jesus Out to Sea' (2006) and Spike Lee's documentary film When the Levees Broke (2006). In these Hurricane Katrina narratives, refuge's doubled nature is revealed, and asylum is re-configured as perilous as well as sheltering.

Keywords: Asylum
Disaster narratives
Hurrican Katrina
Natural disaster
Refuge
Advisor: Most, Andrea
Exploring the Role of the School in the Development and Course of Problem Behaviour in Adolescence

Problem behaviour during adolescence is a pressing societal concern. While extensive work has been conducted to identify relevant risk and protective factors, comparatively little attention has been paid to the role the school may play in protecting against maladaptive outcomes. Employing a socio-ecological framework, this dissertation began by exploring trajectories of problem behaviour and school connectedness across the early to mid-adolescent period in a sample of 2,396 youth drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Three trajectories of problem behaviour were identified, with the large majority of youth showing little to no problem behaviour over time. Two trajectories of school connectedness were also identified as well as a general downward trend in connectedness across the study period. Multivariate analysis was used to explore the impact of risk and protective factors on trajectory group membership. Results were generally consistent with existing literature though importantly this study established a strong association between school connectedness and problem behaviour. Specifically, youth on the decreasing trajectory of school connectedness were between 2.2 and 4.5 times more likely to fall onto either of the concerning problem behaviour trajectories. The second paper followed a sample of 139 youth with matching teacher- and principal-report data to examine factors at the level of student, classroom, and school that predicted change in school connectedness two years later. While much of the variance in connectedness at time two was accounted for by individual-level variables, several classroom and school factors emerged. Specifically, teacher support for managing discipline problems within the classroom was found to predict improved connectedness whereas low school socioeconomic status was associated with worse connectedness by time 2. As well, an interaction was identified between student problem behaviour trajectories and the percentage of low income families within the school such that students attending lower socioeconomic status schools who engaged in delinquent behaviour were significantly less likely to report feeling connected to their school. Taken together, these findings underscore the importance of considering school connectedness as a key protective variable for adolescent problem behaviour. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.

Keywords: Adolescence
Developmental trajectories
Problem behaviour
School connectedness
Advisor: Scott, Katreena
Towards Legal Interoperability in International Health Research

Interoperability is the ability to exchange meaningful data across complex systems. Connectivity is essential for international health research, but can be hindered by incompatible laws and legal tools. First, this paper considers compatibility between intellectual property law regimes and research data licenses. Second, it reviews data privacy law regimes and how treaties, codes of conduct, and standard safeguards can maintain interoperability across borders. Third, it reviews health research regulation, seeking to reconcile the tension between openness and participant/community control over research data. This paper concludes with a critique of two generic strategies for promoting legal interoperability. The first is access governance, where policies and due diligence processes interface between different legal and organizational contexts. The second is algorithmic access, where researchers submit algorithms to run on secure datasets. Ultimately, interoperability is an essential consideration when designing norms and legal tools to support international health research.

Keywords: Data Sharing
Intellectual Property
Interoperability
Licensing
Privacy
Research Ethics
Advisor: Lemmens, Trudo
Law and Halakha as Ideas of Reason: Immanuel Kant's Legal Philosophy and Shimon Shkop's Halakhic Theory

The purpose of this paper is to explore possible relations between the works of Immanuel Kant and Rabbi Shimon Shkop. My main argument is that although Shkop and Kant share the basic idea that the law is based on reason, each reaches different conclusions regarding specific legal areas. In this paper, I examine their approach to the idea of ownership, property law, unjust enrichment and contract law.

Advisor: Weinrib, Ernest Jacob
“Mr. Big” Confessions, R v Hart, and a Proposal for a New Right of Appeal based upon Fundamental Post-conviction Changes to the Law

In a 2014 decision, R v Hart, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) held that confessions obtained from undercover “Mr. Big” sting operations would henceforth by presumptively inadmissible as evidence in criminal trials. The new exclusionary rule was motivated by concerns about wrongful convictions arising from this type of confession, which is often unreliable and highly prejudicial to the accused. The advent of this new rule, however, casts doubt upon the reliability of past criminal convictions based upon “Mr. Big” confession evidence. Presently, there are only very limited avenues for post-conviction review based on subsequent fundamental changes to the law. Accordingly, a new statutory right of appeal is proposed to allow for reopening past cases when merited by fundamental post-conviction changes to the law.

Keywords: appeal
Fundamental change to law
Mr. Big
Post-conviction relief
R v Hart
R v Mack
Advisor: Stewart, Hamish
Characterizing the Role of Spegless, a Novel Inner Nuclear Membrane Protein required for spermatogenesis and oogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster

Fat is a large cadherin that plays a role in both tissue growth and planar cell polarity (PCP). How Fat regulates these cellular processes is not fully understood. A yeast two-hybrid screen previously identified proteins that can bind the cytoplasmic domain of Fat. Using genome-wide RNAi libraries of transgenic flies, I knocked down the function of each gene identified through the screen in the Drosophila eye. Through analysis of adult eye size and photoreceptor organization, several genes were identified as having possible roles in PCP or tissue growth. One gene, which I analyzed further, was a previously uncharacterized gene, CG9723, which I have named spegless (speg). When disrupted, speg had overgrowth phenotypes similar to Hpo pathway mutations in the eye. Speg is a multi-pass transmembrane protein with a conserved domain of unknown function that I have confirmed is an inner nuclear membrane protein. I generated a null allele of speg and subsequent in depth analysis of speg null mutants revealed that Speg is essential for the development of the testes and ovaries. In Drosophila, testes development is a complex process regulated by the interplay between germline stem cells and somatic (cyst) stem cells. Sperm develop in units called cysts and flies lacking speg had small testes that lacked proper cyst structure and cyst cell membrane markers. Speg is important in the cyst cells as cyst cell expression of Speg could largely rescue speg mutant phenotypes. speg mutant testes had fewer differentiated sperm cells and rarely produced late stage sperm. Speg mutants did not disrupt overall nuclear membrane structure. Also, speg mutant ovaries contained no germ cells. Thus, Speg is a novel, conserved, inner nuclear membrane protein with an essential role in the development of Drosophila testes and ovaries.

Keywords: Fat
Germ cells
Nuclear membrane
Oogenesis
Spermatogenesis
Advisor: McNeill, Helen
“The Life of a Reserve”: How Might We Improve the Structure, Content, Accessibility, Length Timeliness of Judicial Decisions?

This thesis explains how judicial decisions may impact access to justice and how might we make decisions a better source of data while also making them more timely, concise, accessible, and consistent. It examines the historical and theoretical underpinnings of Canadian decisions and the relationship of decision-writing to decision-making. It then discusses the results of an original empirical study of the evolution of British Columbia trial decisions over the last forty years and a survey of Canadian courts. It argues that the current process for writing and issuing Canadian judicial decisions likely does not further the goals of access to justice and may even hinder them. To improve access to justice, it suggests that governments, academics, and judiciaries should rely on human-centered design to design standardized structures and templates for decisions, and it provides a design plan for such reforms and examines the ways judicial independence may impact such reforms.

Keywords: Empirical legal research
Human-centered design
Judicial decision-making
Advisor: Green, Andrew
Structural Characterization of Amyloid Assemblies and Amyloid Protein-lipid Interactions

Amyloids are insoluble aggregates rich in β-structure that result from the self-assembly of polypeptides in a non-native structural fold. The deposition of these aggregates onto organs has been traditionally linked to many human diseases, however the discovery of functional amyloids in nature suggests there may also be beneficial roles for this self-assembly process. Pathogenic and functional amyloids both contain a cross-β backbone composed of β-sheets that run perpendicular to the fibril axis, but there lacks clear molecular details on the structural differences to explain their divergent biological behaviours. Solid-state NMR (SSNMR) has become an invaluable tool for structural determination of amyloids, as poor solubility of these assemblies make them challenging for traditional X-ray crystallography and solution NMR methods. This thesis aimed to identify key structural features between cytotoxic and non-cytotoxic amyloid fibrils using SSNMR, and to examine the effects of protein-lipid interactions on membrane disruption and amyloid formation that can reflect amyloid cytotoxicity. First, three amyloid fibrils formed from fragments of the human prion protein were examined, with the findings that a parallel β-sheet arrangement and packing of hydrophobic residues into the fibril core defined the basic structure in these assemblies. Next, these three peptide amyloids were sonicated to explore fragmentation-associated cytotoxicity of these amyloids. The results here highlighted the importance of solvent-exposed hydrophobicity on amyloid-membrane interaction, linking the increased surface hydrophobicity of fragmented fibrillar species to greater membrane disruption and cytotoxicity. Finally, SSNMR experiments were applied to characterize the structure of human apolipoprotein serum amyloid A when associated with high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-like particles and when misfolded into amyloid fibrils. The results led to a preliminary model that can explain functional differences between lipid-free and HDL-associated SAA. Together, these findings highlight the differing effects of lipid interaction on the pathogenicity of amyloid fibrils.

Keywords: Amyloid Fibrils
Lipid Membrane
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Peptide
Structural Biology
Advisor: Sharpe, Simon J