VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A Systematic Review and Appraisal of International Early Breast Cancer Guidelines for Systemic Therapy, and a Global Physician Survey Examining Practice Patterns by Resource Setting: Potential Implications for International Health Policy

Breast cancer is a growing international health epidemic, and patients in low and middle income countries (LMCs) have worse outcomes than those in high income countries. High quality, well-implemented guidelines help improve patient outcomes, but are often not resource-sensitive, and support therapies that may not be feasible in LMCs. A systematic review to address the content, quality, and resource-sensitivity of international breast cancer guidelines was completed. Also, a survey of global physicians evaluated the impact of resource setting on practice patterns and guideline use. Guideline use did not appear to be directed by quality (which was variable across guidelines) or resource-sensitivity (found in few guidelines). However, practice patterns were found to vary by resource setting and by continent, often due to the cost of certain therapies. In order for guidelines to better impact global breast cancer outcomes, they need to be of higher quality, more resource-sensitive, and better implemented.

Keywords: breast cancer
guidelines
adjuvant
therapy
international
global
practice
policy
low and middle income
resources
Advisor: Alibhai, Shabbir Muhammad Husayn
The Impact of Coagulation on Endocrine Disrupting Compounds, Pharmaceutically Active Compounds and Natural Organic Matter

Previous research indicates that pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) and endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are poorly removed during conventional drinking water treatment processes including coagulation; however, removal efficiency increases in the presence of natural organic matter (NOM). Therefore, this project investigates the link between various NOM types with EDC/PhAC removal. Bench-scale coagulation tests were conducted on three different source waters spiked with environmentally relevant levels (nominally 1000 ng/L) of EDCs/PhACs. Two different coagulants were used: polyaluminum chloride (PACl) and aluminum sulphate (alum). NOM was characterized using size exclusion liquid chromatography-organic carbon detection (LC-OCD). Results for Lake Ontario, Otonabee and Grand River water indicate that certain EDCs/PhACs are significantly removed during coagulation while others increase in concentration. Concurrently, particular NOM fractions (biopolymers and humic substances) are also being removed. Solvents used for EDC/PhAC spiking (acetone and acetonitrile) did not affect coagulation, but contributed to low molecular weight neutral and hydrophobic NOM fractions.

Keywords: Water treatment
Natural organic matter
Endocrine disrupting compounds
Pharmaceuticals
Coagulation
LC-OCD
Advisor: Andrews, Robert C.
Spatially Heterogeneous Prey Patterns may be Necessary for Predator Survival: a Model and a Review of the Aquatic Literature

The Allen Paradox is the observation that, in aquatic communities, there is insufficient prey production to support predator growth. An assessment of the literature reveals that this paradox remains apparent in one of every four studies. Here, a novel explanation for this paradox is proposed: predators that feed in a spatially-heterogeneous-prey environment (SHPE) may experience a greater net energy gain than in a corresponding uniform-prey environment (UPE), meaning that predators may require less food than has been traditionally perceived. A model was developed to simulate a predator’s energy gain while feeding in a SHPE rather than a UPE. According to the simulation, a greater net energy gain in a SHPE than a UPE is possible, but only under certain conditions. Since prey can be utilized more efficiently in a SHPE, a given amount of prey production can supply more predator growth, which can have positive implications in fish stocking.

Keywords: Allen Paradox
prey patches
energetic efficiency
Advisor: Sprules, W. Gary
A Spatially-filtered Finite-difference Time-domain Method with Controllable Stability Beyond the Courant Limit

This thesis introduces spatial filtering, which is a technique to extend the time step size beyond the conventional stability limit for the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method, at the expense of transforming field nodes between the spatial domain and the discrete spatial-frequency domain and removing undesired spatial-frequency components at every FDTD update cycle. The spatially-filtered FDTD method is demonstrated to be almost as accurate as and more efficient than the conventional FDTD method via theories and numerical examples. Then, this thesis combines spatial filtering and an existing subgridding scheme to form the spatially-filtered subgridding scheme. The spatially-filtered subgridding scheme is more efficient than existing subgridding schemes because the former allows the time step size used in the dense mesh to be larger than the dense mesh CFL limit. However, trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency are required in complicated structures.

Keywords: computational electromagnetics
finite-difference time-domain
spatial filtering
stability limit
CFL limit
CFL extension factor
subgridding scheme
FDTD
spatially-filtered FDTD method
spatially-filtered subgridding scheme
discrete cosine transform
discrete sine transform
discrete fourier transform
Advisor: Sarris, Costas D.
Osteopetrosis Mutation R444L causes Endoplasmic Reticulum Retention and Misprocessing of Vacuolar H+-ATPase a3 Subunit

Osteopetrosis is characterized by increased bone density and fragility. The R444L missense mutation in the human V-ATPase a3 subunit causes this disease. Modeling the R444L mutation in mouse a3 caused endoplasmic reticulum (ER) retention of a3 with attendant abrogation of maturation and trafficking of the glycoprotein and its degradation. The mutant protein also displayed altered conformation and increased degradation. Together, these data suggest that R444 is involved in protein folding or stability significant to mammalian a3, and that infantile osteopetrosis caused by the R444L mutation in the V-ATPase a3 subunit is another member of the growing class of protein folding diseases. We also ascertained that the N-Glycosylation sites of the a3 glycoprotein lie at position N484 and N504, data that help to refine the topology of the a subunit. Overall, this study sheds new light onto the role that R444 plays in a subunit structure, and refines a subunit topology.

Keywords: osteopetrosis
v-atpase
Advisor: Manolson, Morris Frank
An Investigation of Outcomes in Relation to Thiamin Status of Ambulatory Patients with Heart Failure

Thiamin is a required coenzyme in energy producing reactions that subsequently fuel myocardial contraction. Therefore, thiamin deficiency (TD) might contribute to the reduction in myocardial function observed in patients with heart failure (HF) by limiting the available energy and subsequently aggravating cardiac performance. While the prevalence of TD as well as the impact of supplementation has been examined in patients with HF, none of these studies to date has examined the impact of TD on clinical outcomes. Therefore, this study investigated the associations between erythrocyte [TPP] levels and outcomes in ambulatory patients with HF. Time-to-event probabilities were found to be not significant for acute decompensated heart failure, mortality, all-cause hospitalizations, arrhythmias, myocardial infarctions and other adverse events. Further investigations into the longer term impact of TD on outcomes and the effects of thiamin supplementation as an adjunct therapy in delaying the disease progression are needed.

Keywords: thiamin
heart failure
Advisor: Keith, Mary E.
Adapting S. cerevisiae Chemical Genomics for Identifying the Modes of Action of Natural Compounds

Natural compounds have been largely excluded from characterization via high-throughput profiling strategies due to their limited abundance. Herein, I describe the modification of high-throughput yeast chemical genomic (CG) interaction profiling to permit identifying the modes of action of natural compounds. The previous assay proceeded by evaluating the genome-wide yeast deletion collection for drug-hypersensitivity in a volume of 0.7mL. Compound consumption was minimized with the adapted approach by reducing the assay volume 70% through simplifying the complexity of the yeast deletion pool screened. By recreating each yeast mutant in a drug-hypersensitive background, I created a novel resource that increases compound efficiency and further diminishes compound use. Evaluating a series of characterized compounds analyzed previously by the traditional CG approach validated the adaptations incorporated did not negatively affect the quality of data yielded. Ultimately, this modified strategy will be used to screen thousands of natural compounds contained within the RIKEN NPDepo library.

Keywords: chemical biology
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
natural products
chemical genomics
Advisor: Boone, Charles
Gingival Microleakage of Class V Resin Composite Restorations with Fiber Inserts

This study investigated the effect on microleakage of different bonding agents and glass and polyethylene fibers inserted at gingival margins of class V composite restorations. Sixty premolars were sterilized. Class V cavities were prepared, 1 mm below the cementoenamel junction. Prepared tooth were randomly divided into 12 groups (n=10). In experimental groups fiber inserts were inserted at the gingival seat. The control groups had no inserts. Restorations were incrementally placed and polymerized. Specimens were then stored in water and thermocycled for 500 cycles, then immersed in 2% procion dye and sectioned buccolingually, then dye penetration was assessed. Data were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test and analysis of variance of ranks. No significant differences were found among the types of fiber or the two types of composites. Significant differences were found between the bonding agents. SE and LS show significantly lower microleakage than NT in class V composite restorations in dentin.

Keywords: Class V
Composite restorations
Fiber inserts
Microleakage
Advisor: El-Mowafy, Omar
El-Badrawy, Wafa
Understanding the Racial Consciousness of White Women in Interracial Families

This thesis is an examination of how white women in interracial relationships and/or white mothers of biracial children understand race. Through interviews with six self-identified white women who have black-white biracial children, I seek to understand what role racism plays in their lives and whether these women have a heightened consciousness about race as a result of being in an interracial family. Using their narratives and a spatial framework, I explore the concept of white supremacy, whiteness and blackness, representations of white femininity and black masculinity in the media, and how white women in interracial relationships cross the colourline in their everyday lives. I suggest that white women learn about colourlined spaces in public, but that they also learn about blackness and teach their biracial children about antiracism in private spaces. Overall, white women need to negotiate rules and norms within racial hierarchies in order to navigate white supremacy.

Keywords: biracial
colourline
interracial
racism
race
whiteness
blackness
women
white
supremacy
space
anti-racist
education
consciousness
negotiate
femininity
spatial
racial
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
Everyday Tension between Collegiality and Managerialism: Administrators at a Canadian Research University

This thesis is an exploratory study focusing on the tension between managerialism and collegiality experience by mid-level academic administrators in Canadian higher education. The study is a constructivist analysis of the every day, lived experiences of the participants working in a single, large university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 academic administrators that report directly to a Vice-President Academic. The analysis of these detailed interviews suggests that collegiality appears to be alive and well at the university included in this study. Administrators described consultative, collegial processes with shared decision making. However, the activity of developing and managing budgets was described by participants as the responsibility of the dean and these processes were neither collegial nor consultative. There is a need for further research on the experience and work of academic administrators in Canadian higher education.

Keywords: managerialism
collegiality
administrators
corporatisation
higher education
Canadian higher education
higher education management
Advisor: Jones, Glen A.
Storying for Social Justice: A Professional Learning Journey

This thesis was an examination of my own practice in critical literacy teaching for social justice in Language Arts. The intention was to evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher inquiry process in improving social justice based instructional practice. Particularly, developing critical literacy skills with students was a focus. Emphasis was placed on the role of “text analyzer”, who “understands that texts are not neutral, that they represent particular views and perspectives, that other views and perspectives may be missing, and that the design of messages of texts can be critiqued and alternatives considered” (Freebody & Luke, 1990). By examining perspectives and points of view in text, students moved toward understanding agency, oppression and empowerment. Learnings included identifying an operational framework for developing a social justice orientation to teaching and integrating social justice teaching across a variety of curriculum areas.

Keywords: social justice education
developing agency
empowering of students from marginalized communities
curriculum integration
writing
Advisor: Broad, Kathy
Feuerverger, Grace
Workplace Learning of Canadian Retail Bank Branch Workers in Conditions of Organizational Restructuring

This thesis examines retail bank workers’ informal learning practices in a major Canadian bank under conditions of rapid organizational restructuring and ongoing automation during the mid- to late-1990s. Based on a national survey of bank workers’ learning practices and ethnographic fieldwork in three branches, the thesis’s key findings are as follows. The poor learning environment in the branches, combined with the bank’s adoption of a formal study training policy, are at odds with both empirical surveys of adults’ informal learning practices and with adults’ preferred ways of learning at work – which are predominantly informal in nature. There is also evidence that informal on-the-job learning is being displaced and crowded out by work-related formal study via the “substitution effect” (Livingstone, 2010, 424). The heavy formal study pressures are heightened by the lack of trade unions and job security, and the vulnerable position of many women workers, particularly those without higher education.

Keywords: Workplace Learning
Bank workers' learning practices
Financial Sector
On-the-job learning practices
Learning and restructuring
Learning and automation
Advisor: Livingstone, David W.
The Effects of Body Violation on the Lived Experiences of Young Women

The experience of one’s self as ‘living in and through the body’ has been coined embodiment. The interactions between felt inner states and interactions with one’s environment mutually construct the level and quality of this experience. Embodiment relies on a sense of safety and ownership over one’s body territory. Existing research cites the emotional, psychological,physical, and interpersonal effects of violence against women, yet the underlying disruption to body ownership that follows such violation has largely remained unidentified. Using the framework offered by the groundbreaking Developmental Theory of Embodiment, this study examines the effects of a broader spectrum of violation to body ownership than what has been examined to date. Three interviews of each of seven women, over a period of two years, provide insights into experiences of living in and with the female body as this relates to various forms of trauma.

Keywords: Embodiment
women
body
violation
Advisor: Piran, Niva
Tee Peez, Totem Polz, and the Spectre of Indianness as Other

The purpose of this thesis is to destabilize notions that representations of ‘Indians’ as they appear in contemporary Switzerland, Germany, and France are benign. Rather, Europeans in this region rely on ‘playing Indian’ and consuming Indianness to understand themselves as white modern subjects. I demonstrate how this operates through two case studies and argue that colonialism persists through symbolic dialectical processes between North America and Western Europe. Colonial discourse, and regimes of representation, concerning Indianness circulate across geographical locations. I link these symbolic representations to ongoing material struggles of Indigenous peoples for self-determination and land rights. Switzerland’s foreign investments and free trade with Canada for natural resources on unceded Indigenous territories implicates them in a neoliberal colonial paradigm that continues to dispossess peoples of their land. I turn to Indigenous artists and international solidarity networking as potential strategies that address both symbolic and material processes of colonization.

Keywords: Race
Indigenous people
Switzerland
self-determination
power
Foucault
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
The Career Re-training Experience of Professional Immigrants to Canada: An Existential Perspective

New professional immigrants, who come to Canada with significant education and work experience, often find themselves underemployed after immigration. As a result, many immigrants undergo some form of re-training post-immigration. This study was a sub-study of a larger Canada Research Chair project exploring the career development and re-training experiences of new professional immigrants to Canada. This particular study focused on exploring such experiences from an existential perspective. Within a qualitative research framework, 10 semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with new professional immigrants to Canada. A grounded theory approach was adopted for data analysis. Several themes emerged and key findings, including participants’ relationship with the core existential concepts of death, freedom, and meaning are introduced. Results also compare how existential considerations were related to participants’ level of career satisfaction in Canada. Results have theoretical implications for career and vocational psychology and implications for practice, including professional and self-helping.

Keywords: career development
new immigrants
existential psychology
Advisor: Charles, Chen
Exploring the Influence of Optimism and Self-efficacy on New and Professional Immigrants' Retraining Experiences in Canada

The purpose of this study was to examine the retraining and career development experiences of new and professional immigrants in Canada. The study intended to provide an in- depth perspective into the influence of immigrants’ optimism and self-efficacy on their retraining and career development experiences. Using a qualitative methodology, in-depth interviews were conducted and a grounded theory approach was employed to analyze the data. Central themes within participant narratives emerged and key results were introduced. Participants’ experiences included a myriad of barriers and challenges, yet many viewed this experience as a positive opportunity for growth and development. The results explored differences between optimists’ and pessimists’ retraining and career development experiences, as well as the role of self-efficacy within immigrants’ career development. Results have implications for career and vocational psychology literature, practice, and career counselling, and include suggestions for future researchers.

Keywords: Immigrants
Retraining
Optimism
Self-Efficacy
Advisor: Chen, Charles
Whose Classroom Is It? Unpacking Power and Privilege in University Women's Studies Classroom Spaces

Women’s Studies students’ accounts of their experiences academically, emotionally and politically in feminist university classrooms will be investigated in this thesis. Central to my work, through an anti-racist feminist and intersectional analysis, is to demonstrate the ways in which Women’s Studies university classroom spaces are neither ‘innocent’ nor are they devoid of racism/white supremacy as it is present in the bodies who are allowed to enter the space, voices allowed to speak and knowledge being taught. As this research is informed by a personal experience in an undergraduate Women and Gender Studies course at a local university, I will use both auto-ethnography and interviews as method in and through anti-racist feminist research methodology. Highlighting the importance of anti-racism education as a call to action in attending to this disjuncture and also to erode superficial notions of sisterhood will demonstrate white feminist supremacy as an implication for the sociology of race.

Keywords: racism
white supremacy
feminism
Women's Studies
sisterhood
anti-racism
education
classroom
Advisor: Dei, George Jerry Sefa
Cannon, Martin
The Effects of Polo-like Kinase 4 on Cancer Cell Motility

Polo-like kinase 4 (Plk4) has been identified as a molecular marker of resistance to therapy in cancer. Our laboratory has recently shown a motility defect in Plk4+/- murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) compared to Plk4+/+. I hypothesized that Plk4 augments cancer cell motility. Plk4 depletion with siRNA in Plk4+/+ MEFs and HeLa cells suppressed invasion compared to control. Transient over-expression of Flag-Plk4 in cancer cell lines did not consistently increase invasion. However, modest Plk4 over-expression using stable clones showed higher invasion rates than non-induced. The RhoGEF Ect2, an important Plk4 substrate, transiently localized to protrusions in MEFs, suggesting a RhoA-based signalling cascade in motility. The effect of Plk4 heterozygosity on metastasis was tested in a transgenic mouse model but there was no significant difference in developing metastasis compared to wild type. Further studies are required to characterize the effect of Plk4 on motility, and its potential as a therapeutic cancer target.

Keywords: Plk4
motility
cancer
Advisor: Swallow, Carol
A Low-power Pipeline ADC with Front-end Capacitor-sharing

This thesis presents the design and experimental results of a low-power pipeline ADC that applies front-end capacitor-sharing. The ADC operates at 20 MS/s, resolves 1.5 bits/stage, and is implemented in IBM 0.13um technology. The purpose of the technique is to reduce power consumption in the front-end S/H. This work is a proof-of-concept and it concentrates on the front-end design. A comparison is conducted between a capacitor-sharing ADC and a regular ADC and as a result, the technique reduces the power consumption in the front-end S/H by 39%. At an input frequency of 9.53 MHz and a sampling rate of 20 MS/s, the fabricated capacitor-sharing ADC consumes 4.7 mW at 1.2 V, and it achieves an ENOB of 8.5 bits and a FOM of 0.68 pJ/step. It has an ENOB as high as 8.67 bits at 0.4 MS/s and a FOM as low as 0.6 pJ/step when sub-sampling at 20 MS/s.

Keywords: pipeline ADC
20 MS/s
10-bit
front-end capacitor-sharing
Advisor: Johns, David A.