VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Millimetre-wave Delta-Sigma modulators

This thesis presents a top-down design methodology for continuous-time delta-sigma modulators operating with mm-wave sampling clocks. The process begins at the system-level where a behavioural model is developed to investigate the tradeoffs between critical non-idealities. A set of transistor-level specification is derived by simulating the model and used as a guideline in the design of each circuit block. Finally, the design is implemented in layout, manufactured and measured. The methodology is employed to implement, for the first time, a continuous-time DeltaSigma modulator with conversion bandwidth up to 1GHz and enough resolution for 60GHz OFDM radio applications; marking the first oversampling ADC to compete directly with Nyquist converters in this passband range. While the ADC is realized in a 165 GHz production SiGe BiCMOS process, preliminary work towards an all CMOS implementation is presented.
Type IV collagen in development and disease: towards gene therapy for X-linked Alport syndrome

X-linked Alport syndrome (XLAS) is a disorder characterized by nephropathy and deafness that is caused by mutations in the COL4A5 gene, which encodes the alpha5(IV) collagen chain. A canine model of XLAS was studied to elucidate the pathogenesis of this disease in humans and to establish the feasibility of gene therapy for its treatment. The temporal and spatial expression of the alpha1(IV)--alpha6(IV) chains in basement membranes (BMs) of the kidney, inner ear and testis was documented and correlated to normal and pathologic changes in BM ultrastructure and function. The loss of the alpha3(IV), alpha4(IV) and alpha6(IV) chains from all BMs in affected dogs stems from a failure at the level of protein assembly, and is permissive to normal development in all tissues studied. In affected kidney, the alpha1(IV) and alpha2(IV) chains are sufficient for normal glomerular structure and function on a short-term basis, but not for their long-term maintenance. In normal inner ear, changes in the distribution of the alpha3(IV)--alpha5(IV) chains occurred co-incident with, but were not required for the acquisition of mature auditory function, and their localization led to a new theory on the etiology of deafness in XLAS. In affected testis, the absence of the alpha3(IV)--alpha6(IV) chains leads to structural changes of the seminiferous tubule BM that impairs, but does not prevent normal function. A cDNA encoding canine alpha5(IV) collagen was cloned and expressed in vitro in 293 cells. By Northern blotting, an alpha5(IV) mRNA transcript of sim;5.2 kb was expressed and the recombinant protein was detected by immunocytochemistry. The alpha5(IV) chain was secreted as a sim;190 kDa monomer that did not form homotrimers, nor heterotrimers with the endogenous alpha1(IV) or alpha2(IV) chains, a finding consistent with its requirement for the alpha3(IV) and alpha4(IV), or alpha6(IV) chains for triple helical assembly. An adenoviral vector for the alpha5(IV) chain was used to express the transgene in smooth muscle of affected dogs, which lacks the alpha5(IV) and alpha6(IV) chains. Expression of the alpha5(IV) transgene rescued expression of the alpha6(IV) chain and both assumed a BM distribution. This finding provides 'proof of principle' that gene therapy for XLAS may be feasible.
Strain measurement in vertebral bodies by image registration

The spine is a complex mechanical structure, understanding the mechanics of this structure is critical in developing new interventions to combat cancer and other diseases. The purpose of the study was to use image registration to measure strain allowing quantification the biomechanical response of vertebrae under axial compression. A rigorous validation for using image registration to measure strain in bone was presented, strain was accurately measured up to -0.2 with a detection limit of 0.001. Strain fields in rodent vertebrae were measured by image registration and compared to finite element analysis, which showed limited agreement. In a pilot study differences in the biomechanical responses of tumour involved and control thoracolumbar rat vertebrae were assed with image registration. The average axial strain in the tumour-bearing vertebrae group was 0.025 greater. Image registration was applied successfully to measure strain in whole bones in 3D, demonstrating the efficacy for assessing pathologies and treatments.
Benchmarking the impact of terminal development on airport performance

With both the growing importance of airport performance benchmarking, and the high frequency of terminal development, it is surprising that this research may be one of the first to address their affect on one another. With today's volatile aviation markets, and the need for efficiency in operations, there is value to be gained from a better understanding of how development impacts airport operation and business. In this research, a sample of 22 North American airports that had undergone passenger terminal development after 1990 were analysed. The methodology included data envelopment analysis (DEA) to uncover trends and changes in efficiency that occurred at the airports and discussion on why they might have occurred. Best performers in annual operations, changes in efficiency, and project efficiency were examined to identify factors and impacts that may be used as a reference for other airport projects and their post development planning.
Principal witness: Herbert Whittaker and Canadian drama, 1949-1975

In his career as a reviewer and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto from 1949 to 1975, Herbert Whittaker became arguably the most important critical figure in the history of Canadian theatre. This thesis attempts to define Whittaker as a principal witness of his time by examining his work and considering the sensitivity and knowledge that he brought to his reviews of Canadian and international plays. During these years at The Globe and Mail, Whittaker reviewed most of the plays and productions in Canadian theatre history that helped to produce an identifiably Canadian theatre. Critics have generally agreed that at the beginning of this period Canadian theatre was amateurish and derivative, but by the early 1970s had become much more professional and distinctively Canadian, attracting larger audiences. The theatre of this later period made a lasting contribution to the arts in Canada and extended beyond the Canadian border in its influence. As a child, Whittaker attended plays in Montreal and London, England. He developed his ability as a theatre designer through art classes, and as a designer and director through extensive work in little theatre in Montreal and later in Toronto. Whittaker's background, along with a genuine passion for art and interest in dramatists, directors and actors, enhanced his critical skills and made him much more than a journalist working his ‘beat’. He continually adapted his point of view to the changing times in Canadian theatre. In the 1950s in Canada, the Massey Report became the cornerstone of arts policies and procedures and many of its recommendations were followed. The Stratford Festival, the National Theatre School, a strong body of professional repertory theatres throughout the regions of Canada, and many alternative theatre companies changed the face of Canadian theatre. Also, in the period under examination in this thesis, Canadians wrote and produced plays that allowed Canadians to see and study themselves in new and sometimes challenging ways. Whittaker monitored these developments and more in his long career and did so with thoroughness, insight and dedication.

Keywords: Canadian drama, History and criticism
The power of magic: representations of women in selected contemporary magic realist fiction from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec

This study explores the representation of women in contemporary magic realist texts from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec. From a feminist standpoint, it examines how men and women writers represent women characters in texts that allegorically use supernatural power to denaturalize social power. Intracultural, and intercultural considerations of these New World texts reveal shared approaches, both positive and negative, to women's identities and roles. In the more progressive works—Isabel Allende's La casa de los espíritus, Jack Hodgins's The Invention of the World, Anne Hébert's Les fous de Bassan, and Michel Tremblay's La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte—women characters use naturalized supernaturalism (defined as the casual presence of the supernatural in the natural world) to affirm feminine subjectivity and freedom. The assumption of mythic forms or an engagement with the occult can give a female character mobility, spiritual freedom, and pleasure. But the power figuratively expressed through the supernatural is denied women in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad, Sheila Watson's The Double Hook , Anne Hébert's “L'ange de Dominique,” and Jacques Ferron's L'amélanchier. Moreover, masculine supernatural power is often affirmed through juxtaposition with a reduced form of feminine magic power. This latter form—in which a natural phenomenon is treated as supernatural—reinforces women's “natural” identities as passive, giving, and unpredictable beings. Indeed, the reader's sense of “nature” is disturbed so that s/he will re-examine, and thus confirm, what is “true”. Although issues of identity, resistance, and tradition unite the texts as they challenge Old World ideologies and assert a New World consciousness, a denaturalization of women's stereotypical identities is not a common trait. In fact, problematic aspects of other supernatural traditions—such as the universality and hierarchy of traditional myth, or the limited feminine roles within fairy tales—reappear with new vigour. The magic feminist texts, however, subvert tired forms and themes by using them to empower women characters. They take advantage of magic realism's ability to disrupt “reality” in order to challenge the reader's sense of the known and the possible.
Cuban cinema, politics and film audience reception in North America

This dissertation envisions a critical engagement and political rapport between Cuban films and North American viewers. With the aim of furthering the project of developing a new kind of politics in which knowing and learning are revealed as questions of power, a series of discussions and reflections are organized using two key concepts: interdisciplinarity and transculturation. I explore the notion of a pedagogical viewing practice in which moviegoers enter into the social processes of meaning production of which film production is a part. My focus is limited to sites that may be most amenable to change: to film festivals which accommodate alternative or, at the very least, a wider range of programming, to university classrooms where visual texts are increasingly becoming incorporated into practices of teaching and learning, and to film criticism as review. I speculate that the North American exhibition of Cuban film and related audience discussions could provide a viable means past the long-standing theoretical and political impasse, a cold-war polemic, which has characterized the text-based rhetoric and largely academic enterprise of Cubanology. Film is a distinctive means of cultural production in that it consists of a number of related productive sectors. Because the current historical moment confers a high status to visual media, film's related sectors, especially audience reception and review analyses, constitute spaces for learning about and from alternative approaches to culture and to popular education through filmic discourse. By comparing dominant EuroAmerican film theories and revolutionary Cuban film theory and practice, my aim is to tease out the differences, the challenges, the contradictions, and limitations to understandings of film audience reception and education. In so doing, I also want to feature the advances made in Cuban film practice and criticism as a way of informing North Americans about alternative cultural processes and products, and of signalling the possibilities for film audiences to constitute or, belong to a potentially productive culture in their own right.

Keywords: Motion pictures, Political aspects
Motion pictures, Cuba
Politics in motion pictures
Motion pictures in propaganda
Clients' perceptions of therapist self-disclosure as a therapeutic technique

Incidents that were lacking in skill could have potentially serious negative consequences. However, when the alliance was already strong, even less skilled incidents could be integrated into the clients' therapy experience. Eighteen people in two Canadian cities, ranging in age from 24 to 57 years, participated in this qualitative study. The interview data yielded 157 instances of disclosure and non-disclosure, which were coded and analyzed according to helpfulness or unhelpfulness. Disclosures were further analyzed in terms of two other variables, revelation/involvement and explicitness/emplicitness. All incidents were then analyzed according to themes. Participants were more likely to perceive their therapists' disclosures as helpful, and non-disclosures as unhelpful. The greatest effects involved the alliance; there were other positive effects as anticipated from the literature. Unhelpful non-disclosures ruptured the alliance and set clients up to manage the relationship by avoiding certain topics. Skills and skills deficits were associated with both disclosures and non-disclosures.

Keywords: Self-disclosure
Psychotherapy patients, Attitudes
Psychotherapists
Psychotherapy
The proliferative differentiative capacity of HUCPVCs in a xenogeneic skeletal muscle injury model

Introduction. The application of Human Umbilical Cord Perivascular Cells (HUCPVCs), a unique population of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), was explored for the treatment of skeletal myopathies. Methods . HUCPVCs were extensively sub-cultured as either whole or clonal populations and serially observed by phase microscopy to assess cell numbers. Cells were labelled with membrane dye, injected into the injured tibialis anterior of normal Wistar rats, and compared with sham controls. After sacrifice, tissue was harvested from 1 to 60 days for immunohistochemistry, PCR, and MicroCT analysis. Results. All populations demonstrated a limited lifespan in vitro. Significant infiltration of round cells occurred in the area of injection at all time-points of treatment groups, but sham controls healed normally. The dye was still present after 28 days, although PCR revealed no human cells beyond 3 days. Discussion. We have demonstrated the ease with which HUCPVCs can be tracked in vivo, and their limited lifespan in vitro. Although xenoreactive, these cells maintain their potential as a significant alternative source of cells for allogeneic cell-based therapies and tissue-engineering.
The heroic impulse and the heroic narrative in the works of Saul Bellow and Don DeLillo

Through the work of Saul Bellow and Don DeLillo this thesis looks at how these forced narrations of "authenticity" for non-heroes have actually become marketed, inauthentic images. A detailed analysis of Bellow's Henderson the Rain King and Mr. Sammler's Planet as well as DeLillo's White Noise and Mao II shows how these two authors strive to understand the development of the inauthentic in America and the role of the artist in its perpetuation. Bellow and DeLillo come to see creation of the heroic narrative not only as possible but as a responsibility of the artist. This responsibility extends beyond merely the destruction of previous identities; it entails the creation of a narrative of return---or at least the possibility of return---of the hero. One way to look at "the hero" is as one who sets out to shed circles of community identity hoping to arrive at a base layer of being or "truth." What the hero finds, however, is the unknowable and the unnarratable. The hero finds, not a void, but the chaos and white noise of everything at once where there is all possibility but no intrinsic pattern or boundaries. The hero's role is to choose an arbitrary pattern from infinite patterns and create a fiction as a way of building a barrier against this chaos for the non-heroes in the community to which he or she will return. In the post-war period of American literature, changes in the conception of "reality" have caused a crisis in the ability of the hero to return with this narrative of identity. For many authors, there is no believable narrative, and no believable pattern to give to their readers. The lack of new heroic narratives then forces the non-heroic audience to rely upon images of older narratives in order to continue to have some semblance of community identities. They are forced to wear the inauthentic costumes of identity, but no longer find any depth of narrative to pattern and to give boundaries to "reality." If the image is exposed as mere surface, the non-hero is thrown into crisis.
The effects of liver-specific angiopoietin-1 overexpression on the portal microcirculation and lymphatic network

Angiopoietin-1 (Ang1) is a growth factor critical to the maturation of blood vessels. Through the binding to its tyrosine kinase receptor, Tie2/Tek, this factor is thought to play a role in stimulating endothelial cell survival, endothelial cell migration, and also to recruit pericytes. These mechanisms are critical to the sprouting of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones, a process known as angiogenesis. The present study explores the importance of Ang1 in liver angiogenesis by conditionally overexpressing human Ang1 in the hepatocytes of mice, thus modulating hepatic vasculature. Arterial sprouting, enlarged arteries, loss of portal veins from the portal triads, and capillarization of sinusoids was observed. Most importantly, these phenotypic changes were completely reversed within 14 days of cessation of transgene expression. Through these animal studies, the elucidation of the "context-dependent" activities of the angiopoietins on endothelial cells may result in the design of novel therapies that target the Angiopoietin/Tie2 pathway.
A dynamic model of a high temperature arc lamp

The objective of this thesis is to develop a dynamic model of an argon arc lamp. A finite volume arc model was derived using averaging of the energy balance equation over spatial domains. The space averaging approach accurately models the partial differential equation form of the energy balance equation, under steady state and transient arc conditions. The model was tested assuming an argon gas at a pressure of 8 bar and with current pulser ranging from 400A to 40kA in amplitude and about 1 millisecond in duration. The model does not account for ignition. The method for deriving the model uses geometric and material data to calculate the coefficients of the equations. This model gives expected voltage versus current characteristics and optical output, and can be expressed in a circuit form. The degree of accuracy can be tailored by modifying the number of spatial regions used for averaging.
The use and significance of schematic figures in Pope's "An Essay on Man."

This thesis argues that the schematic figures which appear in An Essay on Man are significant because they form propositions rather than holistic images or symbols. Schematic figures, such as antithesis, are defined in distinction to representative figures, such as metaphor and allegory. Representative figures relate terms to one another according to a relatively simple model of predication, where one term may replace or be equated to another term. Schematic figures depend on relations between words which go beyond identity or simple comparison. A historical basis is found for this distinction. In the early eighteenth century a critical consensus emerged that metaphor and allegory, though aesthetically powerful, were untrustworthy in their ability to convey meaning. This belief was connected to the concern that language could not create true analogies between concepts available to man's limited experience and those concepts which were "beyond" him. This is a problem which is directly related to An Essay on Man. Pope seems to want to provide his readers with a holistic vision of the universe and Man's place within it; at the same time, the poem constantly demands that Man recognize that his scope of knowledge is restricted to his own sphere. A close reading of the poem is conducted to show how Pope uses schematic figures, antithesis predominantly, to form propositions about the universe and Man's state. The central linguistic and ontological quandary of the poem is how Parts might cohere in Wholes. Rather than attempt to create an image or allegory of Man's state, Pope places the central terms of his poem (such as Reason, Self-Love, Instinct) in such complicated relationships with one another that they seem unable to cohere into a "whole" picture of Man's state. Nevertheless Pope prompts us to believe we might eventually be able to produce holistic and accurate visions of the universe.
Learning gender, attaining capital, and demystifying the north: Brazilian women's experiences with the unofficial curriculum of the International Training in Environmental Leadership (ITEL)

This study analyses ways in which 22 Brazilian middle-class women experienced three objectives of the unofficial, implicit curriculum of the International Training in Environmental Leadership (ITEL), a non-formal environmental education program with components in Brazil and Canada, and run by the Nucleo Internacional de Educacao e Gestao Ambiental (NIEGA) (International Centre for Environmental Education and Management), a Brazilian NGO. The three unofficial objectives are those of participants' learning of gender and feminist issues, participants' experiences attaining cultural capital, and participants' experiences demystifying the North and reconceptualizing Brazil. While the study shows that the unofficial cultural capital and demystification objectives were realized for the majority of participants, the study suggests that the unofficial gender objective would be served better by being made explicit in ITEL. This study also engages in methodological debates in the realm of critical cross-cultural research, and reveals strategies for white, Northern researchers conducting research in cross-cultural contexts.

Keywords: Women, Attitudes
Women, Brazil
Women, Social conditions
Women, Brazil
Feminism, Brazil
Environmental protection, Study and teaching
Environmental protection, Canada