VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Poetic Inquiry Re-claiming Authority: Writing through Shame, Grief, and Silence

A story has a beginning. A poem begins. Beginning in the middle: our bodies hold our histories, in a wrestle with words. Typically, a thesis begins with an abstract, which summarizes and contextualizes the work. Poems begin differently: they may leap in with both feet or slip in gently, knowing some things are best approached cautiously. Emily Dickinson (1951/1976) says, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” (1129) (p. 349). Poems work with a sense of discovery and surprise: showing rather than telling. They might hint, tease, captivate, shout; they rarely explain. This arts-informed thesis draws on interdisciplinary reading and poetic play. Using critical autoethnographic writing and poetic inquiry, I inquire into dynamics of power and authority in family, church, and school. Drawing on feminist, activist perspectives, I explore the murky waters of memory, shame, trauma, grief, and silence as the underwaters of learning—mine and that of others. I inquire into a disquieted childhood and the challenges of adult literacy work. . Having grown up in small-town Ontario as the United Church minister’s daughter, I use the structure of the church service to inspire the form of my thesis. My inquiry borrows the language and movement of The Order of Service: Gathering, The Service of the Word, and Response. Underlying this work are questions about what it means to gather and respond, as well as a fundamental question about language: In what ways are words in our service and we in theirs? I examine how writing is entwined with power and authority, finding the writing process to be an embodied, spiritual quest(ioning). I grieve the death of my father, while releasing myself from the kind of authority he represented. The work of contemporary Canadian poet-essayists—including Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Maureen Scott Harris, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and Don McKay—helps me think about how the craft of poetry engages particular kinds of knowing which respect and work with the unknown and the limitations of language. Poetry gives me cupped hands: these words for you. A gesture of holding, presenting, and releasing―embracing the relationality, attention, and astonishment inherent in learning.

Keywords: Poetic Inquiry
Adult Literacy
Adult Learning
Shame
Grief
Silence
Don McKay
Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Marlene NourbeSe Philip
Don McKay
Poetic Writing Practices
Effects of Trauma on Learning
Advisor: Cole, Ardra L.
Design of a Three-component Force Sensor for Meso-milling Applications

Accurate measurement of three-component cutting forces in meso-milling applications is imperative for the manufacturing of miniaturized complex three dimensional (3D) components that are in demand for a wide variety of industries. Considering the limitations of commercial force sensors in sensing resolution and frequency bandwidth for such measurement task, a novel three-component piezoelectric force sensor is designed in this thesis to address these issues. The novelty of the research is in the investigation into the use of "hard" piezoelectric ceramic materials for the sensing elements in order to achieve high sensing resolution and sufficient frequency bandwidth for the force sensor. An analytical measurement model is developed for analyzing sensor performance, namely sensing resolution and frequency bandwidth, while measuring the cutting forces in proposed meso-milling applications. Simulations with respect to the analytical measurement model demonstrate that the designed force sensor can be used for meso-milling applications. The overall measurement system architecture is also implemented in the thesis for processing the sensor output signals.

Keywords: analytical measurement model
cutting forces
finite element analysis
meso-milling
piezoelectric force sensor
signal processing
Advisor: Nejat, Goldie
Beyond the Facade of Policy Implementation: Explaining Intractability and Occasional Success of Post-Communist Civil Service Reforms

Building on the prolific literature of post-Communist change, cross-country comparisons and an in-depth analysis of the Russian case, this dissertation identifies the sources of regional and cross-sectoral disparities in civil service reform implementation after the Soviet Union collapse. The study draws attention to the role of contextual variables of policy change, such as political leadership and institutional capacities of the post-Communist governments. It argues that quality improvements in bureaucratic organization emerge as a result of reforms, which pursue genuine rather than symbolic goals to improve the culture and operation of state institutions. Civil service reforms, in particular, require meaningful efforts to build support among various policy actors (public sector organizations). Thus, in order to succeed, these efforts have to rely on a coherent reform strategy, which starts from a smaller issue, or a juncture of issues (incremental rather than comprehensive approach), followed by efforts to create effective policy control and appraisal mechanisms. The study revists several generations of policy implementation research in order to bridge the division between Western policy literature and the body of the post-Soviet scholarly work. The main contribution of this work consists of aggregating various factors and variables of public policy change into a few broad categories, such as domestic and global pressures, state capacity, policy leadership and others. The study situates the discussion in a broader framework of agency-strcuture debate, which shapes the dynamics of post-Communist transition. This approach combines a variety of qualitative methodological instruments to assess the impact of key variables on civil service reform implementation. The basic research method employed is representative case study (Russia), which relies on the study of primary and secondary sources, the method of process tracing and original interviews collected in Russia in 2010.

Keywords: Civil service and public administration
Policy change
Policy implementation dynamics
Post-Communism
State
Advisor: Solomon, Peter H.
Understanding Perceptions of Health Following Hip Fracture: Using a Phenomenological Framework to Explore the Opinions of Patients, Caregivers, and Providers

The following study was guided by an overall research question: "What does it mean to have a hip fracture?". Using a phenomenological approach, I interviewed individuals who experienced a hip fracture, primary caregivers, and healthcare providers (HCPs) with the following objectives in mind: (1) to clarify meanings and conceptualization of prognosis for patients and caregivers following hip fracture as compared to HCPs treating them, (2) to enhance our understanding how these perceptions impact healthcare delivery at both ends of the spectrum, and (3) to provide a rationale for these perspectives. 25 participants participated in in-depth interviews that were audio-taped. The transcripts were coded separately for patients and for HCPs. This work was conducted without a-priori-hypotheses and through an inductive thematic analysis. Prognosis was the underlying phenomenon with four sub-themes identified for patients and caregivers: forecast, non-knowledge, sense of self-ownership, and enlargement. Four other sub-themes were identified for HCPs: interconnectedness, hip work, embodiment, and forecast. HCPs have the right to assign prognosis; however, patients' perceptions can be affected, not only through words, but also through the actions exerted by those in the healthcare profession. Viewing prognosis as a perspective (a Heideggerian concept) rather than a foreshadowing formed the main theoretical underpinning. Other theories informed this work: embodiment (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), body-self dialectic (Gadow, 1980), and body work and power (Twigg, 2011). Implications for HCPs consist in aiding the patient to develop insight on his or her symptoms and situation in addition to developing a therapeutic relationship that can effect clinical change. Implications for patients/caregivers emphasize using the patient's agency to enhance his or her quality of life. Future research in the area of prognosis will consider social context, while exploring variability, perceived value, and the impact on outcomes following discussion on hip fracture interventions between HCPs and patients/caregivers.

Keywords: embodiment
fracture
hip
phenomenology
prognosis
qualitative research
Advisor: Schemitsch, Emil H
The Body as a Traitor: Feminine Schizophrenia in the novels of Calixthe Beyala, Ananda Devi and Malika Mokeddem

Iconoclastic authors Calixthe Beyala, Ananda Devi, and Malika Mokeddem have generated a great deal of discourse on their radical feminist views through their Manichean portrayal of postcolonial societies. Relying on the female image as eroded, smothered, and dissipated, a figure gagged both by society and by her own helplessness, they describe postcolonial societies as patriarchal, corrupted, and apathetic as well as guilty of rejecting cultural recollection. In their novels, the symbolic authority held by the female body is conditional upon the desire, the gaze, the violence and the marginalized practices of the Other. The body in this case is uncoupled from the mind and experienced by the subject as an incoherent whole which brings about the presentiment of a transfigured existence. Despite the scars this rupture produces, the female protagonists still manage to redeem themselves, often by engaging in personal rebellions. Moreover, by disregarding the social torment they are forced to endure, women are able to reclaim the right to speak, to live, and to be free. This thesis advances the theory that most female protagonists are prone to schizophrenic behaviours as a means of survival. Marred by violence, anorexia, dissociation, withdrawal, anxiety, shame, self-mutilation, suicidal thoughts, sexual dysfunctions, amnesia or fragmented memory of traumatizing events, the female character has to negotiate her self-preservation. This work thus shows how such social torment is survived by resolving the affliction of physical and psychological trauma in the literary terms of schizophrenia. Consequently, this study analyses the literary manifestations of this affliction in Beyala, Devi, and Mokeddem's novels through the explosion of the corporal and the discursive modes of the female subject. By understanding survival as a "savoir-faire", we are thus able to restore an affective and powerful force to language, which ultimately allows for the reappropriation of the body to take place.

Keywords: Body
Language
Linguistics
Post colonialism
Trauma
Violence
Advisor: Tcheuyap, Alexie
Phonetic Cues and the Perception of Gender and Sexual Orientation

Phonetic variation is a well-established type of cue used in the construction and perception of social identities such as gender, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and sexual orientation. Less established is how cues indexed with inter-related identities are integrated or weighted relative to each other. Because the cues identifying gender and sexual orientation are potentially overlapping, (i.e., gay and lesbian speakers are often perceived as using cues indexed with the opposite gender), in this study, experimental methods are used to assess cue effects. Experimental cues used are fundamental frequency (f0), first and second vowel formants (Fn), and the center of gravity of the fricative /s/. These were chosen as all were significant in the perception of sex, gender and/or sexual orientation, or in terms of production by such groups in previous studies. In this study's experiments, three groups of participants (n=105) heard target stimuli consisting of /V/, /sV/ or /Vs/, created by combining altered and unaltered cues. Each participant heard a stimulus and chose a perceived gender and sexual orientation for that stimulus. Results indicate that the outcomes for the dependent variables of Perceived Gender, Men's Perceived Sexual Orientation (MPSO) and Women's Perceived Sexual Orientation (WPSO) result from the same cues but that cue integration strategies vary. The area of greatest overlap is for Perceived Gender and MPSO with F0 Up cues resulting in more women and gay men percepts, and FN Down cues resulting in more men and straight men percepts. For WPSO results the vocalic cues strongly affect each other, although F0 Up cues tend to result in more straight women percepts. These results suggest that listeners use experienced and stereotypic cues when determining gender and sexual orientation. The results also suggest that listeners use an androcentric template for all three dependent variables. Cue variants are not marked with specific indexical meanings such as "women" or "femininity", but are marked in terms of man-based norms. Crucially, cue integration involves both social markedness based on stereotypes and phonetic markedness based on cue ranges. Cue Integration Theory is proposed to account for the empirical results for all three dependent variables.

Keywords: cue integration theory
gender
indexicality
phonetics
sexual orientation
speech perception
Advisor: Nagy, Naomi
What Catches On? The Role of Evidence in the Promotion and Evaluation of Educational Innovations

The debate about and support for innovation in education has heated up. There is hype around the possibilities novel and disruptive innovations can have on changing education practice and providing more effective learning solutions. The advent of the Internet and social media technologies allows for an abundance of innovation to be promoted and shared with and between educators, and the increasing use of technologies like iPads in the classroom results in the advertisement of innumerous new education applications. For the educator, there is the difficult challenge of knowing how to sift through this material and separate those innovations that may hold value for their classroom situation from those that have gained wide appeal. In this thesis I take an interest in how certain education innovations catch on and are adopted on a large scale, and how the marketing of these innovations in various kinds of media as well as the ways they are evaluated by teachers, contribute to this process. I separate my findings into two articles and use a set of six qualities generated from the research use and social psychology literatures as a guide (evidence, compatibility, accessibility, practicality, credibility, appeal), focusing on evidence in relation to the other five qualities. In the article on media promotion, I find the kinds of evidence used rarely came from formal research studies, but from anecdotal forms of evidence and general statistics related to use of the innovation. In the article on teacher evaluation, I find the teachers were open to trying out innovations, but had different strategies for evaluating and selecting them. Evidence was often discussed as a low priority criterion on which to base judgments. Overall, the results of this thesis show how difficult it can be to make a quick and informed judgment about these innovations where the teachers lacked tools to evaluate them consistently and effectively and where a wide range of strategies were used in their promotion. This suggests an important need that is largely not addressed in teacher training programs and professional development around providing teachers with guidance and training in their search, selection and evaluation processes.

Keywords: Evaluation
Fads
Innovation
Marketing
Research Use
Teachers
Advisor: Gaskell, Jane
Metal Specificity in [NiFe] Hydrogenase Maturation Proteins

The maturation of [NiFe] hydrogenase is a multistep process that requires the participation of accessory proteins to assemble the NiFe(CN)2CO metallocluster at the catalytic center. HypA and HypB are two proteins that are necessary for the efficient incorporation of nickel into the bimetallic active site. The mechanism through which these proteins specifically insert nickel into the hydrogenase metallocluster is unknown. Escherichia coli HypB contains a high-affinity metal-binding site at the N-terminus that binds nickel with a sub-picomolar affinity. We investigated the nickel selectivity of this site by using a small peptide maquette and found that while the high-affinity site binds nickel tightly, it also binds other transition metals with affinities that are in line with the Irving-Williams series. We also examined the G-domain metal-binding site of HypB, and how it is connected to the nucleotide-binding properties of the protein. We find that nickel, but not zinc, is transferred from the low-affinity site of HypB to the N-terminal metal-binding site of HypA, and that this process occurs rapidly when HypB is loaded with GDP. Nickel transfer between proteins is also dependent on a protein-protein complex forming between HypA and HypB, and when that complex is abrogated through mutagenesis, rapid GDP-dependent transfer of nickel is no longer observed. Subsequently, the molecular basis behind the increased rate of nickel transfer was explored. We found that the affinity of HypB for nickel changes based on whether the G-domain is loaded with GDP or a GTP analog, as does the oligomeric state of the protein. Furthermore, GDP-loading of HypB promotes the formation of a HypA-HypB heterodimer, which breaks apart once nickel has been transferred to HypA. These findings shed light on the mechanism of nickel transfer, and help us better understand how nickel is specifically inserted into the active site of [NiFe] hydrogenase.

Keywords: E. coli
HypA
HypB
[NiFe] hydrogenase
SlyD
Advisor: Zamble, Deborah B
Laws of Unintended Consequences: The Impacts of Anti-Foreign Bribery Laws on Developing Countries

Over the past quarter-century, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the deleterious impacts of corruption on economic growth, governance institutions, political stability, social freedoms and opportunities, and overall equality and efficiency within and across countries, with the effects most pronounced in the developing world. Corruption's ascent as a priority on the international development agenda has led to the emergence of a global anti-corruption regime engaging governments, civil society, business, and international organizations. Among the most prominent of these multilateral anti-corruption efforts has been the agreement among most of the world's leading economic powers to create legally binding standards that criminalize the bribery of foreign public officials. However, the existing literature examining the impacts of these anti-foreign bribery (AFB) laws has focused nearly exclusively on the statutes' effects on the competitiveness, costs, and investment decisions of regulated firms and individuals, with little investigation of the consequences of the multilateral AFB regime for the countries ostensibly harmed most by corruption - those in the developing world. This dissertation fills that gap in current law and development scholarship, using theoretical, anecdotal, and empirical evidence to identify how AFB laws change the incentives of foreign investors as well as government officials and to analyze how those shifts may ultimately affect the levels, sources, sectors, and types of foreign investment flowing into developing countries. It further considers the consequences of AFB laws for governance institutions and the magnitude and forms of corruption within less-developed countries. Examining critically the range of potential effects, it concludes that, under certain conditions in certain environments, laws prohibiting foreign bribery may undermine the developmental conditions in and prospects for poorer countries.

Keywords: Bribery
Corruption
Foreign direct investment
Governance
International development
Transnational law
Advisor: Trebilcock, Michael J.
Speciation and Species Boundaries in Black Flies (Diptera: Simuliidae)

Comparative analyses of populations at different stages of divergence can yield insights into the process of speciation. In this thesis, I use members of a black fly species complex to investigate genetic and ecological divergence along a chromosomally defined continuum of speciation. Each thesis chapter moves along this continuum, focusing on lineages at different stages of chromosome differentiation. In Chapter 2, I assess population structure, gene flow, and maternal ancestry among allopatric and sympatric members of the Simulium arcticum species complex. For this chapter, I focus on the entire continuum of chromosome divergence. Using microsatellite and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers, I show that molecular divergence tends to track chromosome divergence along the continuum of speciation for black flies. In Chapter 3, I shift my attention to the intermediate stages of chromosome divergence with a case study of hybridization between two sibling species. Lineage diversification across a contact zone is investigated using both genetic and ecological tools, including microsatellites, mtDNA, and niche models. Although S. arcticum sensu stricto and S. saxosum maintain the potential to interbreed freely, I discover that habitat preferences and, perhaps, chromosome systems, prevent expansion of ranges and assimilation of lineages. In Chapter 4, I explore the role of ecology in diversification of members of the S. arcticum complex representing the entire spectrum of chromosome diversity. I find that all sibling species are ecologically unique based on niche models. At a finer geographic scale, chromosome forms show various degrees of ecological divergence, possibly associated with flow characteristics of streams. For members of the S. arcticum complex, ecological and chromosomal differences develop early in lineage formation, even before strong genetic differences at microsatellite and mtDNA loci are apparent. In Chapter 5, I shift my focus along the speciation continuum to intermediate and later stages of chromosome divergence. Using seven newly developed nuDNA markers, four mtDNA genes, and various coalescent-based methods, I investigate origins and relationships of sibling species. I find evidence for genetic divergence resulting from Pleistocene glacial cycles. However, admixture associated with geographic range expansions may be assimilating S. arcticum complex sibling species into a single genetic lineage.

Keywords: chromosome evolution
molecular evolution
phylogenetics
population genetics
speciation
species complex
Advisor: Currie, Douglas C
Murphy, Robert W
Laboratory Earthquakes: Analysis of Fractures and Acoustic Emission using Functional Acoustic Networks

Abstract- The central result of this thesis is the set of new algorithms for further analysis of acoustic excitations during cracking and an extension of defects in materials in particular interfaces. The key result is to transfer multiple acoustic emissions and frictional interfaces patterns to complextopological graphs and formulate the dynamic evolution of graphs regarding fast motion of microscopic cracks. This mapping led us to find that any microscopic crack evolve in three main stages corresponding to nucleation, weakening and decelerating regimes. Further investigation revealed classification of events (i.e., universal classes) in association with rupture regimes (velocity and crack-like or pulse-like) and in microscopic scales. As another result, I suggest thatweakening regime in microscopic events is strongly coupled with energy dissipation sources(toughness). The general theory of continuous phase transition -known as Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) -likely supports the findings and draws a universal power law between traversing rate to a critical zone (local ramp time per each acoustic excitation) and size of defects as well as freeze-out time. With this concept, dynamic of "static friction" is linked to KZM.

Keywords: Acoustic Emission and crackling noises
Complex Netwroks
Earthquakes
Fracture and Friction
Ruptures
Advisor: Young, R. Paul
Milkereit, B.