VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Troubling the Teacher Diversity Gap: The Perpetuation of Whiteness Through Practices of Bias Free Hiring in Ontario School Boards

Teaching staff in Ontario schools do not reflect the increasing diversity of the students who occupy Ontario classrooms today. School boards across Ontario have come under considerable scrutiny regarding the lack of diverse teacher representation that adequately reflects Ontario’s demographic composition (Childs et al., 2010; Ryan, et al., 2009; Turner, 2015). This thesis addresses the Ontario teacher diversity gap (James Turner, 2017; Turner 2015; Turner, 2014; Ryan, et al., 2009) in relation to provincial equity and inclusive educational policies, which have been created to address the dominance of white teachers in publicly-funded education in Ontario. However, findings from the research indicate that these policies have not had the desired results, and in some ways have contributed to perpetuating the status quo, and the ongoing overrepresentation of white teachers in schools. The thesis furthermore addressed the notion of bias-free hiring (Fine Handlesman, 2012; Hassouneh, 2013) practices through narratives of Ontario teachers themselves. The predominant assumption of bias-free hiring is that one can divorce themselves from their unconscious biases and preconceptions of groups who are dissimilar to them in order to recruit the so-called “most qualified applicant”. The narrative of the “most qualified applicant” is a term invoked when racialized people seek access to employment opportunities. School administrators have great influence on who is hired; therefore it is important for administrators to interrogate their own social locations and positions of power, and unconscious bias in terms of how they recruit teachers. Findings from the research indicate that teachers from racialized groups have different experiences when seeking employment as teachers in publicly-funded school boards in Ontario. In response to this the EHT Equity Hiring Toolkit for Ontario School Administrators has been developed to support school administrators to recruit more diverse teachers. The EHT provides a framework for school administrators to engage in antiracist praxis and action, by examining their social location, and ways that their positionality impacts the hiring decisions they make. School administrators can use the creation of the Toolkit based on the findings of the data that emerged from the research as a Creative Professional Activity (CPA). I consider this to be my contribution to the field of social justice education and leadership.

Keywords: Colour-blindness
Equity
Inclusion
Leadership
Policy
Settler-colonialism
Advisor: Wane, Njoki N
Lopez, Ann E
Essays in the Study of Large-scale Survey Data

For the study of politics, the recent growth in the size, affordability, and availability of data and computational resources has been staggering. Large and novel data sources are now beginning to figure prominently in the work of some of the most impressive current research. This dissertation builds on these developments by demonstrating how the growing availability of large-scale survey data can open up new opportunities to answer questions that have, until now, remained difficult to address. To this end, this dissertation (1) proposes new methods for the analysis of large-scale survey data, and (2) seeks to answer theoretically important questions that can benefit from these methods and/or data. In the first paper, I seek to answer why some survey respondents answer truthfully to sensitive survey questions, while others do not. I propose a solution to this problem by developing a multivariate regression-based technique to model whether survey respondents provide one response to a sensitive item in a list experiment, but answer otherwise to a direct question. The method is applied to a large-scale list experiment to investigate misreporting about prejudice concerning women in politics. In the second paper, I examine how researchers can measure the ideology of ordinary citizens and political actors on the same scale. I propose a Bayesian Aldrich-McKelvey scaling method that both incorporates survey respondentsâ ideological self-placement into the scaling model and accounts for the fact that typical ideological placement scales are ordinal. The model is applied to large-scale data from recent Cooperative Congressional Election Studies to investigate whether Bernie Sanders was ideologically out of step with the national electorate during recent Presidential elections. In the final paper, I examine the effects of major terrorist attacks on public attitudes toward refugees. Using data from a large-scale natural experiment, the paper shows that the 2015 Islamic State terrorist attacks in Paris increased (1) anxiety over refugee resettlement; (2) perceptions of refugees as a security and cultural threat; and (3) opposition to resettlement. The findings are highly relevant to our understanding of public reactions to major terrorist attacks, and the responses of political entrepreneurs in their aftermath.

Advisor: Loewen, Peter
The Identification and Characterization of Evolutionarily Conserved Transcription Factors Required for Brain Regeneration in Flatworms

Powerful genetic tools in classical laboratory models have been fundamental to our understanding of how stem cells give rise to complex neural tissues during embryonic development. In contrast, adult neurogenesis in our model systems, if present, is typically constrained to one or a few zones of the adult brain to produce a limited subset of neurons leading to the dogma that the brain is primarily fixed post-development. The freshwater planarian (flatworm) is an invertebrate model system that challenges this dogma through its continuous neuronal cell turnover and the ability to rapidly regenerate a brain de novo after injury. My aims in this thesis were to identify and characterize regulators of flatworm regenerative adult neurogenesis to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of unlimited adult regenerative neurogenesis. I found that members of the basic helix-loop-helix gene family are required to regenerate a brain. Additionally, I identified a planarian TCF/LEF transcription factor Smed-tcf1 as required for the proper regeneration of several dorsal-lateral neural populations including GABAergic neurons.

Keywords: Brain Regeneration
GABA
neural progenitor
Planaria
TCF/LEF
WNT signaling
Advisor: Pearson, Bret J
Audiovisual Processing and Integration in Amblyopia

Amblyopia is a developmental visual disorder caused by abnormal visual experience during early life. Accumulating evidence points to perceptual deficits in amblyopia beyond vision, in the realm of audiovisual multisensory perception. This thesis presents a systematic psychophysical investigation of audiovisual processing and integration in adults with unilateral amblyopia. Study I examines audiovisual spatial integration and reveals amblyopic deficits in localization precision for unisensory visual and auditory stimuli, but statistically optimal integration according to the maximum likelihood estimation model of multisensory integration. Study II confirms the novel deficit in sound localization described in Study I, and reveals a non-uniform spatial pattern of sound localization deficits that implicates the superior colliculus as a primary neural locus affected by abnormal visual experience. Study III measures audiovisual simultaneity perception, and shows that asynchronous audiovisual pairs are perceived as synchronous over wider temporal intervals than normal, regardless of which eye is viewing. Study IV examines audiovisual temporal integration using the temporal ventriloquism effect, and reveals successful temporal integration in amblyopia, but possibly over a wider interval of audiovisual asynchrony. In sum, the findings suggest that the capacities for spatial and temporal audiovisual integration are intact in amblyopia, but that non-integrative multisensory processes, including cross-modal temporal matching and cross-sensory calibration of sound localization, are impaired.

Keywords: Amblyopia
Audiovisual integration
Audiovisual processing
Multisensory integration
Multisensory processing
Psychophysics
Advisor: Wong, Agnes M. F.
Goltz, Herbert C.
Elucidation of the Mechanisms of Transcellular and Paracellular Endothelial Permeability -- Towards its Therapeutic Manipulation

Every blood vessel in the body is lined on its luminal aspect with a single layer of interconnected cells, known as endothelial cells. Together, these cells form a tissue known as the endothelium, a tightly regulated system that physically segregates the fluid in the blood from the peripheral tissues, and orchestrates the passage of nutrients, xenobiotics, immune cells, and fluids between distinct compartments in the body. In healthy, quiescent vasculature, passage of compounds across the vasculature occurs by two separate, yet equally important mechanisms. In the paracellular route, compounds that are small enough to pass between endothelial cell junctions freely diffuse down their concentration gradient, reaching equilibrium between the blood and sub-endothelial compartments. In contrast, transcytosis involves the regulated transit of compounds through endothelial cells by endocytosis, subcellular trafficking, and exocytosis, and in doing so, allows for the transport of larger compounds through the use of a number of specialized proteins. Under normal circumstances, these two mechanisms of endothelial permeability work in concert to maintain homeostasis. However it has recently become apparent that dysregulated endothelial permeability is the cause of a number of pathological conditions. Increased paracellular permeability of the lung endothelium leads to the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a potentially fatal condition involving acute lung edema, respiratory failure, and death. Endothelial transcytosis of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) leads to the accumulation of LDL in the subendothelial intima, the initiating event in atherosclerotic lesion development. Although dysregulated endothelial permeability is central to the pathophysiology of these diseases, the paucity of literature on the subject highlights the need for a detailed, mechanistic investigation. In this thesis I present a body of work that uncovers several novel mechanisms that regulate endothelial permeability in the pathological contexts of pathogen-induced ARDS and LDL transcytosis as a precursor to atherosclerotic lesion development. Results from these studies suggest that targeting endothelial permeability is novel and viable therapeutic strategy for management of these common diseases.

Keywords: Atherosclerosis
Endothelium
Inflammation
Influenza
LDL
Permeability
Advisor: Lee, Warren L
L'Inhumain poétique: Ghérasim Luca et Henri Michaux face à la ''crise'' de l'humain

Cette thèse examine la problématique éveillée par le désir et le besoin d’exprimer et de construire une subjectivité dans le contexte des crises langagières et identitaires qui marquent la littérature et la culture françaises après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Face à cette crise, Ghérasim Luca et Henri Michaux développent des poétiques parallèles où le premier met en œuvre une « ontograffie » visuelle, et le second une ontophonie orale. Pour l’un comme pour l’autre, le langage structuré et alphabétisé renvoie aux délimitations rigides – sociales, psychologiques et même physiologiques – imposées à l’être. Au moyen de leurs explorations graphiques et phoniques, ils arrivent à remanier le langage poétique de sorte qu’il puisse exprimer leurs êtres. Leurs projets témoignent donc de ce que nous appelons l’inhumain poétique ; de même que le langage subit une décomposition, il est nécessaire de défaire les structures de l’humain pour donner la parole au sujet poétique. Pour notre analyse nous nous penchons sur une gamme de textes critiques, notamment ceux de Walter Benjamin (pour sa théorie de la traduction et du langage), de Jean Laplanche (pour son concept de construction de la subjectivité) et de Georges Bataille (pour son esthétique de l’informe et ses pensées sur le sujet souverain). Ces trois figures et les thèmes que nous leur empruntons forment la base de l’inhumain poétique que nous analysons par la suite chez Luca et Michaux. Ce projet trace les manifestations de sujets souverains que les deux poètes à l’étude offrent au moyen de traductions perpétuelles du soi vers des formes d’expression inattendues et radicales, mieux disposées à formuler l’être en crise. Afin d’encadrer les propos théoriques et les analyses textuelles, cette thèse considère ces poètes et ces théoriciens du XXe siècle qui font partie d’une constellation qui questionne la valeur de l’homme moderne et son expression.

Advisor: Michelucci, Pascal
Natural and Anthropogenic Influences on High Arctic Aerosol

The Arctic is a harbinger of global change, and is warming at a rate twice the global average. While Arctic warming is driven by increased greenhouse gases, short-lived climate forcers such as tropospheric ozone and aerosol are important drivers of Arctic climate. Aerosol impacts on Arctic climate are insufficiently understood, largely owing to poor constraints on the physical and chemical processes controlling aerosol. This thesis presents observations of sub-micron aerosol in Arctic summer and spring, which capture different regimes of the Arctic aerosol seasonal cycle. Aircraft-based observations of aerosol physical and chemical properties address various aspects of Arctic aerosol sources, removal and chemical processing. Under chronic Arctic Haze conditions in spring, we observed evidence for vertical variations in both aerosol sources and removal mechanisms. We show evidence for sources of partially neutralized aerosol with higher organic aerosol (OA) and black carbon content in the mid-troposphere and sources of acidic sulfate in the lower troposphere. With support from model calculations, we demonstrate that mid-tropospheric air influences the Arctic Boundary Layer (ABL) on ~1-week time scales. We observed evidence for aerosol depletion relative to carbon monoxide, both in the mid-to-upper troposphere and within the ABL. Dry deposition, with low removal efficiency, contributed to aerosol removal in the ABL while precipitation scavenging contributed to efficient aerosol removal during transport at higher altitudes. Under clean Arctic background conditions in summer, we observed evidence for marine influenced secondary OA formation. We demonstrated a relationship between methansulfonic acid and OA with the residence time of air over open water. Sea salt aerosol was externally mixed from a larger number fraction of OA, sulfate and amine-containing particles. High OA fractions coincided with elevated cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations, suggesting a role for secondary OA formation in growing particles to CCN-active sizes. A case study of aerosol growth over open water supports these observations. This work contributes to our understanding of aerosol vertical variability and its connection to observations made at the surface in Arctic spring and, to our understanding of aerosol sources and composition in Arctic summer.

Keywords: aerosol
aerosol mass spectrometry
Arctic
long range transport
organic aerosol
Advisor: Jonathan, Abbatt PD
Detecting Protein Variants within Mass Spectrometry Datasets

An important aim of cancer proteomics is to understand how the cancer proteome, with all its variation in both protein sequence and protein abundance, emerges from aberrations characterized within cancer genomic and transcriptomic datasets. A challenge in reaching this goal is that standard mass-spectrometry-based onco-proteomic strategies typically ignore variations in protein sequences, instead characterizing cancer proteomes in terms of changing abundances of standard reference proteins. In this thesis, I assess strategies for incorporating information about protein sequence variation within standard proteomics analysis strategies. I develop a pipeline for the characterization of variations within protein sequences and assess the best methodology to do so.

Keywords: Integrative -omics
mass spectrometry
Proteogenomics
Proteomics
Variant protein detection
Advisor: Kislinger, Thomas
Boutros, Paul C
Collective motion of chemically powered nanomotors

Self-propelled chemically powered synthetic micron- and nano-scale motors are being intensively studied because of the wide range of potential applications that exploit their directed motion. The collective behavior of chemically powered sphere-dimer motors made from linked catalytic and noncatalytic spheres in a quasi-two-dimensional confined geometry is studied using a coarse-grain microscopic dynamical model. Chemical reactions at the catalytic spheres that convert fuel to product generate forces that couple to solvent degrees of freedom as a consequence of momentum conservation in the microscopic dynamics. The collective behavior of the many-body system is influenced by direct intermolecular interactions among the motors, chemotactic effects due to chemical gradients, hydrodynamic coupling, and thermal noise. Segregation into high and low density phases and globally homogeneous states with strong fluctuations are investigated as functions of the motor characteristics. Factors contributing to this behavior are discussed in the context of active Brownian models. Like their larger micron-scale counterparts, Angstrom-scale chemically powered motors use asymmetric catalytic activity to produce self-generated concentration gradients that lead to directed motion. Unlike their micron-scale counterparts, Angstrom-scale motors are dominated by fluctuations, molecular reorientation often occurs on picosecond time scales limiting the regime where ballistic motion dominates, and solvent sizes are often comparable to those of the motor, so structural effects come into play and solvent depletion forces are very strong. These new features are studied using full molecular dynamics simulations of an Angstrom-scale sphere-dimer motor. The properties of an Angstrom-scale sphere-dimer motor confined between two planar walls separated by distances of tens of nanometers are investigated. The simulations were carried out on many tightly-coupled graphics processing units (GPU) using two massively parallel codes, Nano-dimer and Angstrom-dimer that have been published under a free-software license.

Keywords: Collective motion
GPU
Molecular dynamics
Multiparticle collision dynamics
Nanomotor
Self-propelled particles
Advisor: Kapral, Raymond
Insane in the Membrane: The Functional Assembly of a G Protein Coupled Receptor at the Single-Molecule Level

Many aspects of cellular signaling pathways regulated by G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are not completely understood. In particular, two questions have been the focus of much attention and debate: the oligomeric status of the receptor-G protein signaling complex, and the coupling state between the receptor and the G protein in response to external stimuli. Using single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy, we investigated these two questions with a focus on the M2 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor and the attendant Gi protein. The oligomeric status of the M2 receptor and of the Gi protein was first determined using dual-color fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (dcFCS). Positive cross-correlation between differently labeled M2 receptors and differently labeled Gi proteins was observed for samples either purified in detergent solution or expressed in live cells, indicating the existence of oligomeric M2 receptors and oligomeric Gi proteins. The oligomeric sizes of both proteins were then quantitatively measured by single molecule photobleaching (smPB) on a total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope. Upon surface immobilization, M2 receptors were found to exist primarily as tetrameric complexes, whereas Gi proteins were found to exist as hexamers in the basal (inactive) state, and were reduced in size upon binding of GTP. Further evidence of oligomeric M2 receptors was found using smPB in fixed cells, in conjunction with an assessment of the fluorescence brightness analysis of single particles tracked in live cells. The coupling state between the M2 receptor and the Gi protein was first investigated using dcFCS. In the basal state without the receptor agonist, the amplitude of the cross-correlation was statistically close to zero between co-expressed and differently labeled M2 receptors and Gi proteins. This trend was the same for samples either purified in detergent or expressed in live cells. After receptor agonist was added, the amplitude of the cross-correlation curve increased significantly, indicating that the coupling between the M2 receptor and the Gi protein is transient and only induced by the agonist. The same agonist-induced MÂŹ2-Gi coupling interaction was also observed in our single particle tracking (SPT) studies of fluorescently labeled M2 receptors and Gi proteins in live cells.

Keywords: fluorescence microscopy
fluorescence spectroscopy
GPCR
G protein
oligomerization
Advisor: Gradinaru, Claudiu C
Decomposing Trait and State Aspects of Regulatory Focus in Daily Life

Regulatory focus theory describes two independent motivational systems, promotion and prevention focus, that regulate behavioural strategies toward desired goals (Higgins, 1997). Promotion focus prioritizes nurturance needs and achieving goals related to oneâ s hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Promotion focus also sensitizes a person to the presence and absence of rewards where success and failure are experienced as happiness and sadness, respectively. This is contrasted with prevention focus, which prioritizes safety needs and fulfilling oneâ s duties, responsibilities, and obligations. Prevention focus sensitizes a person to the presence and absence of losses where success and failure are experienced as calm and anxiety, respectively. The present study assessed emotion in daily life related to trait regulatory focus and success and their daily fluctuations in an experience sampling experiment. Participants completed a daily experiences survey every day for a month that measured their emotions and regulatory focus and success. The Big Five Personality dimensions were also measured to examine associations with individual differences in emotion. Regulatory focus predictions were only partially supported. In fact, regulatory focus was a consistently stronger predictor of daily emotion than success. Importantly, promotion focus was consistently related to more positive emotions and less negative emotions. In contrast, prevention focus was consistently related to more negative emotions and less positive emotions. Promotion focus also buffered against the negative emotions associated with goal failure as well as boosted the positive emotions associated with success. Conversely, prevention focus exacerbated the negative emotions of goal failure and attenuated the positive emotions associated with success. Personality also moderated different aspects of regulatory variables to predict different emotions. Decomposing regulatory focus and success into traits and daily fluctuations from trait levels predicted different emotions. Thus, to fully understand how regulatory focus influences emotion, success and focus must be differentiated at both the trait and day level.

Keywords: Emotion
Motivation
Personality
Psychology
Regulatory Focus
Advisor: Cunningham, William A