VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Motivational Deficits in Schizophrenia

Reductions in drive and goal-directed behaviour have long been described as key features of schizophrenia. This thesis contains several investigations into the motivational deficits present in people with schizophrenia. Despite not being required for the diagnosis, motivational deficits were found to be a highly prevalent feature of the disease, even among younger patients who were relatively early in their course of illness. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal follow-up study designs, and across two studies with different participants, motivational deficits were found to hold strong predictive value for the determination of functional outcomes. After establishing the importance of motivational deficits in terms of outcomes, underlying behavioural mechanisms were explored using experimental paradigms. Several candidate reward processes were examined concurrently, including valuation of outcomes, estimation of the costs associated with obtaining outcomes, and learning the association between actions and outcomes. Our results provide support for the proposal that individuals with schizophrenia have impairments in their ability to compute effort demands, and that these impairments translate into real-world reductions in goal-directed behaviour. Beyond mechanisms, this thesis also examined the inter-relationship between motivational deficits and another key domain of psychopathology in schizophrenia, namely, cognition. Although these two domains are thought of as distinct, two studies included in this thesis provide empirical evidence of an association, which is interpreted within a theoretical framework whereby poor motivation translates into reduced effort put forth during cognitive testing, which ultimately results in poorer submaximal test performance. Finally, the last study included in this thesis addresses the issue of treatment-induced symptoms. This study failed to find support for the contention that treatment with antipsychotic medications necessarily worsens the severity of motivational deficits in schizophrenia. Taken together, these investigations highlight the importance of motivational deficits in schizophrenia, and lay the foundation for a mechanistic understanding of these impairments.

Keywords: Apathy
Cognition
Motivation
Outcome
Psychosis
Schizophrenia
Advisor: Remington, Gary
Three Essays on Information Disclosure

My thesis consists of three chapters and each chapter studies a different aspect of how information is generated and diffused among different market participants. Chapter 1 and 2 study the impact of timing of 13(f) disclosures. Section 13(f) of SEC regulation requires any financial institution with \$100 million or more in assets to disclose its holdings on a quarterly basis within 45 days after the quarter end. Recently, the SEC was petitioned to shorten this 45-day period. In Chapter 1, I develop a model to examine the impacts of a shortened reporting period. Among other results, I demonstrate that a shorter reporting period results in more liquid markets albeit at the expense of reducing price informativeness. In chapter 2 we look at 14 years of form 13F filings between 1999 and 2012. We demonstrate that active institutions tend to file their holding disclosures with longer delays. We show that concerns about copycat investors do not cause the financial institutions to delay their filings; however, fears of presence of front-runners prompt the financial institutions to file their disclosures with longer delays. We also look at financial institutions' decision to delay around important corporate events for stocks in the institutions' portfolio and document that institutions delay their filings around these events possibly to hide their true voting powers. Chapter 3 studies the implications of SFAS No. 14 and SFAS No. 131, which require firms to disclose the existence of sales to individual customers representing more than 10\% of total firm revenues. We document that firms gain visibility by disclosing economic relationships with reputable trading partners. We find that supplier firms enjoy a boost in news coverage and a subsequent reduction in advertising expense when they disclose trading relationships with well-known customer firms. After relationship establishment, supplier firms are more likely to be held by the same institutional investor and covered by the same analyst following their customer firms. Our findings highlight the role of product-market network as an important channel through which small and young firms gain investor recognition and improve their operating environment.

Keywords: Disclosure Regulation
Information Disclosure
Investor Recognition
Product Market Relations
Advisor: Christoffersen, Susan
Defining the Role of the Apelin Receptor and Mesp in Zebrafish Cardiac Progenitor Development

Formation of the vertebrate heart requires a complex series of transcriptional and epigenetic events. The building blocks of this organ, cardiac progenitor cells, must be specified, migrate to the correct embryonic location and remain plastic for a period of time in order to form a number of different cell types. The molecular events responsible for these phenomena remain poorly understood. In this thesis I examine the role of the apelin receptor (aplnr) and the mesp family of transcription factors in cardiac progenitor development. I find evidence that the Aplnr is required to enhance Nodal signaling in order to activate appropriate transcriptional targets at the right time. In the absence of this receptor cardiac progenitor gene expression displays delayed induction kinetics and these cells do not migrate to the correct location in the embryo. I also find that the Aplnr regulates Nodal signaling in a non-cell autonomous manner and may do so by an effect on Nodal ligand cleavage. Finally, I find that a recently discovered ligand for the Apelin Receptor, Apela, may in fact act as an antagonist in this process. When investigating the role of mesp family transcription factors in zebrafish I find that only one of four family members possesses potent cardiogenic activity: mespaa. Surprisingly, the mesp transcription factors are not required for the proper specification of the heart, however they do appear to regulate left-right asymmetry. Finally, using mespaa over-expressing cells to model cardiac progenitor development, I find that the activation of gata5 (a critical downstream target in cardiac development) does not occur in the embryo until after the start of gastrulation, challenging previous views on the timing of this process. Altogether I have discovered a number of novel insights into the mechanisms of cardiac progenitor development. These have broad ramifications in the field of developmental and stem cell biology and will be critical in order to harness the potential of these cells towards treatment of congenital and adult heart disease.

Keywords: aplnr
cardiac progenitors
mesp
zebrafish
Advisor: Scott, Ian C
Making Good: Racial Neoliberalism and Activist Subjects in Toronto's Parkdale Neighbourhood

This dissertation examines the complex roles the Parkdale Activity-Recreation Centre (PARC), a progressive social service agency, has played in Toronto’s gentrifying Parkdale neighbourhood. Emerging from the author’s experiences as a PARC worker, this research juxtaposes the agency’s rhetorical and material investments in opposing gentrification and neoliberalism with its ongoing momentum towards privatization, and spatial and social enclosure. It suggests that the key to understanding these contradictions lies in the construction of the enlightened bourgeois activist, a subject whose genuine desire for personal and political “goodness” both reinforces and obscures racial and gendered violence. Relying on an existing textual archive, ethnographic observation, and extensive interview data, this dissertation tracks the racial and gendered strategies of gentrification and neoliberalism through descending scales: the Parkdale neighbourhood; the institutional and spatial environments of PARC; and the interpersonal and intrapsychical relationships between and among PARC staff. At every level, the enlightened bourgeois activist emerges as both an architect and an effect of existing power structures. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that so long as we leave race and gender uninterrogated in our external and internal lives, the social work that we imagine to be emancipatory will reinforce those systems of domination we hope to oppose.

Keywords: Activism
Bourgeois power
Gentrification
Racial neoliberalism
Subjectivity
Whiteness
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
Algebraic Cycles, Fundamental Group of a Punctured Curve, and Applications in Arithmetic

The results of this thesis can be divided into two parts, geometric and arithmetic. Let X be a smooth projective curve over C, and e, ∞ ∈ X(C) be distinct points. Let L n be the mixed Hodge structure of functions on π1(X – {∞}, e) given by iterated integrals of length ≤ n (as defined by Hain). In the geometric part, inspired by a work of Darmon, Rotger, and Sols, we express the mixed Hodge extension E ∞n,e given by the weight filtration on Ln/Ln–2 in terms of certain null-homologous algebraic cycles on X2 n–1. These cycles are constructed using the diagonal embeddings of Xn–1 and Xn. The arithmetic part of the thesis gives some number-theoretic applications of the geometric part. We assume that X=X0 ⊗k C and e,∞ ∈ X0(K), where K is a subfield of C and X0 is a projective curve over K. Let Jac be the Jacobian of X0. We use the extension E ∞n,e to associate to each &Zgr; ∈ CHn–1(X 02n–2) a point P&Zgr; ∈ Jac(K), which can be described analytically in terms of iterated integrals. The proof of K-rationality of P&Zgr; uses that the algebraic cycles constructed in the first part are defined over K. Assuming a certain plausible hypothesis on the Hodge filtration on Ln holds, we show that an algebraic cycle &Zgr; ∈ CHn–1(X02 n–2) for which P&Zgr; is torsion, gives rise to relations between periods of L2. Interestingly, these relations are non-trivial even when one takes Z to be the diagonal in X20. In the elliptic curve case, we show unconditionally that a certain relation between periods of L2 (which is induced by the diagonal in X20) exists if and only if e – ∞ is torsion. The geometric result of the thesis in n = 2 case, and the fact that one can associate to E∞ 2,e a family of points in Jac(K), are due to Darmon, Rotger, and Sols. Our contribution is in generalizing the picture to higher weights.

Keywords: algebraic cycles
fundamental group
mixed Hodge structures
rational points on Jacobians
Advisor: Murty, Kumar
CEO Characteristics, Disclosure Quality, and Innovation

Innovation is an important driver of economic growth. In this dissertation, I bring together two main streams of literature on the firm-level determinants of innovation: (1) CEO characteristics (CEOs directly influence internal processes that culminate in corporate innovation) and (2) information asymmetry between CEOs and investors (reduced information asymmetry may improve monitoring and increase corporate innovation). I show that disclosure quality plays a role in both cases: (1) a reduction of information asymmetry through higher disclosure quality is associated with more innovation; and (2) disclosure quality serves as a mechanism through which CEO characteristics also affect innovation (i.e., CEO characteristics’ “indirect effect”). Based on a path analysis, the indirect effect is shown to be statistically and economically significant, and accounts for as much as 33% of a CEO’s total effect on innovation. This implies that CEOs affect corporate performance not only by shaping internal processes, but also by utilizing disclosure quality to raise financial capital. Overall, my findings show the importance of disclosure quality for corporate innovation.

Keywords: Accruals earnings quality
CEO characteristics
Disclosure quality
Innovation
Readability
Advisor: Lu, Hai
Callen, Jeffrey L.
Culturally Responsive Leadership:How Principals Employ Culturally Responsive Leadership to Shape the School Experiences of Marginalized Students

This qualitative study research examines how 2 elementary principals in Ontario schools employ culturally responsive leadership (CRL) to shape the school experiences of marginalized students. In particular, it explores the strategies 2 principals use to enact this approach to leadership, the barriers and resistance they face that impede their social justice agenda, the supports that facilitate their work in schools, and the impact CRL has on various stakeholders. This study employed semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions guided by the conceptual framework derived from the literature review around culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally responsive leadership, social justice leadership, and educational leadership. Five teachers from each school were also interviewed in order to capture their insights as to how their principalâ s culturally responsive leadership practices impacted their teaching and understanding of cultural responsiveness. The findings in the study show that principal participants foster a cultural responsive culture, promote culturally responsive pedagogy, create a welcoming climate in their school and build authentic relationships with all stakeholders, to move their social justice agenda forward. They also advocate passionately on behalf of their community to access resources to benefit students and families in the school community. These administrators also endeavor to change unjust structures that serve to perpetuate inequity and deter students from reaching high academic standards. In doing so, these leaders encounter formidable resistance and obstacles, despite which they continue to respond to the needs of their community in order to create socially just and equitable schools.

Keywords: cultural responsive leadership
cultural responsive pedagogy
deficit thinking
equity
marginalization
social justice leadership
Advisor: Ryan, James
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Mixed-Model Interpretative Approach

This dissertation offers a distinctive means of reading the key international instrument for promoting indigenous peoplesâ rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. The current orthodoxy is to read the Declaration as containing human rights adapted to the indigenous situation. This is supported by a particular reading of the political history of the Declaration â that is, that initial claims based on anti-colonialism advanced by Northern indigenous advocates were abandoned in favor of a more pragmatic human rights model. However, this reading does not do full justice to the complexity and diversity of indigenous peoplesâ participation in the Declaration negotiations. I provide a fresh account of the political history of the international indigenous movement as it intersects with the Declaration negotiations. What this reveals is tension between two movements that can be broadly separated along the lines of the North and South. Northern indigenous peoples were the originators of the international movement and sought to shoehorn their sovereignty-based claims into an international project. They relied in particular on anti-colonial justifications drawn from the UN-directed decolonization movement (decolonization model). But they were soon joined by a vibrant and skilled Southern movement of indigenous peoples representing Latin America, Asia and Africa. This movement placed greater emphasis than their Northern counterparts on human rights and especially the right to culture (human rights model). One of my core arguments is that contrary to conventional accounts, the decolonization model was not eclipsed by the human rights model but maintained throughout the Declaration negotiations. And it is the decolonization model that accounts for what I describe as the self-determination framework in the Declaration. This argument is developed through chapters 1-3. As a result the Declaration reflects two normative models, aimed at the two different regions: human rights for the South; and decolonization for the North (the mixed-model). The principal benefit of this bifurcated reading of the Declaration is that it enables both the Northern and Southern indigenous movements to gain the rights they seek from the Declaration. But how, precisely, does this political history translate into a legal justification for this mixed-model? In Chapter 4, I argue that the mixed model is also supported by legal and political justificatory arguments. The challenge of my mixed-model is to avoid the decolonization model being absorbed by the human rights model through the practices of interpretation. I hope to assist advocates to reposition their arguments and set out two case studies in chapter 5 that seek to show the potential implications of the decolonization model.

Keywords: aboriginal
human rights
indigenous peoples
self-determination
Advisor: Knop, Karen
Wormholes

Wormholes is an orchestral work scored for a medium-sized orchestra (2222/4221/timp./3 perc./hp./str.). It is roughly 14 minutes in duration. The title refers to a journey through various musical universes. A wormhole is a theoretical connection between two separate points in space-time. The first universe utilizes a tonal musical language to create a more traditional sound world. The opening motives of the French horn melody and the bassoon return throughout the entire work in various guises. These motives are the connecting glue that transcends the stylistic nature of each particular universe. A downward dissolution of the first universe leads to the first “wormhole.” In this transitional passage the idea of moving through a wormhole is expressed by rising glissandi and chromatic clusters, resulting in a tension-laden texture. The second musical universe employs an atonal musical language to create 20th century textures and complex chromaticism. This chromaticism originates in the bassoon motive mentioned above, which is a chromatic fragment derived from the harmonies of the first universe. The French horn motive of the first universe makes several appearances here, as well. A sudden, downward collapse of the second universe initiates another wormhole. This passage also features the horn motive. A “delay effect” is now applied to the motive, heard in repeated utterances, each one softer than the one before. This repeating gesture foreshadows the musical world that the wormhole takes us to next. This final universe begins at the golden section of the music, with the French horn motive played by the harp in its original untransposed form in A major. Throughout this section, the motive is heard in faster and slower utterances that overlap in various manners. The first horn melody of the music returns here, as well, this time accompanied by the delay-effect figurations. In the next section of the music, fragments of all three musical universes interact, suggesting a kind of recapitulation. This synchronous interaction between the three universes implies that there is a shared “here” and “now.” This is ultimately what is being celebrated in the music, which finally reaches a triumphant ending based on the main melody.

Keywords: composition
Music
orchestra
Wormholes
Advisor: Hatzis, Christos
Unraveling the Clinical Efficacy of Probiotics in Pediatrics

Evidence have shown that manipulation of the intestinal microbiota with probiotics are promising therapeutic agents for restoring health, particularly in pediatrics, as probiotics holds a good safety profile. Focus has been on the treatment of a number of common pediatric gastrointestinal conditions, leading to a rise in the number of clinical trials and systematic reviews being published. Therefore, an overview of systematic reviews (OoSR) was conducted to consolidate the evidence on the clinical efficacy of probiotics as a therapeutic option to treat pediatric gastrointestinal conditions. Recent attention has been on probiotics for the treatment of infantile colic, as the etiology remains elusive with limited treatment options. Therefore, a 21-day randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted to determine the efficacy of Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 (108 colony-forming units; n = 24) versus placebo (n = 28) to treat colic. Final analyses revealed that colicky infants receiving L. reuteri cried/fussed (min/d) significantly less compared to placebo (Day 21, median [IQR]: 60(64) vs. 102(87); (P=0.045), respectively. Furthermore, more infants in the L. reuteri group showed a 50% crying/fussing time reduction compared to placebo (17 infants vs. 6 (P=0.035); RR: 3.3 [95% CI: 1.55 to 7.03]). Thus, L. reuteri was shown effective at treating colic in breastfed Canadian infants compared to placebo. However, contradictory results from a larger RCT concluded L. reuteri was ineffective. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted to determine the effectiveness of L. reuteri to treat colic by pooling treatment effects from five RCT (total n = 335; L reuteri n = 172, placebo n = 163). Pooled estimates revealed infants receiving L. reuteri cried/fussed significantly less (mean difference: 43.5 minutes; 95% CI: 54.3 to 32.6 minutes) and successfully responded to treatment by day 7 (RR = 2.43; 95% CI: 1.41 to 4.16; P

Keywords: Gastrointestinal
Infantile Colic
Meta-Analysis
Pediatrics
Probiotics
Systematic Review
Advisor: Koren, Gideon
Ito, Shinya
The Micro-Vasculature of the Cochlea: Studies in Animal Models of Sensorineural Hearing Loss

This thesis concerns the role of cochlear microvasculature in normal hearing function and in pathological conditions that result in hearing loss. In animal models we have investigated two major types of sensorineural hearing loss where degeneration of the stria vascularis has been implicated, namely presbyacusis and hearing loss associated with cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. The former eventual affects all aging humans; the latter is a common etiology for congenital hearing loss in infants. The focus of experimental work is on the capillary networks of the cochlea. We chose to use corrosion cast techniques to visualize and quantify capillary vessel parameters. For the small and delicate cochleas of our mouse models, this required extensive technical improvements to corrosion casting methodology. These innovations proved successful. Three experimental animal model studies were made. The first involved analysis, and modeling of strial feeding arterioles in normal subject. The hypothesis posed was that the highly convoluted structure of these vessels acts to dampen cardiovascular pulsations within the cochlea and thereby prevent self-stimulation by such biological noise. The results from this study support the hypothesis. In our murine models of presbyacusis and of CMV infection we correlated loss of auditory thresholds measured with ABR methods, with degenerative changes to cochlear microvasculature. In mice with age-related, high frequency hearing loss, we report significant vascular degeneration of stria vascularis in basal (high frequency) cochlear areas compared to more apical regions. After CMV infection in newborn mice, we observed at 6 weeks a wide range of auditory threshold changes. At 8 weeks post-infection, the cochleas had suffered a wide range of vascular damage. The most vulnerable structure was stria vascularis in the mid-apical cochlear turn. Our novel finding that vascular damage is the primary lesion after CMV infection is consistent with some clinical characteristics of this hearing loss type in infants.

Keywords: Cochlea
Cytomegalovirus
Imaging
Micro-Vasculature
Presbyacusis
Advisor: Harrison, Robert V