VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Struggle for WHOIS Privacy: Understanding the Standoff Between ICANN and the World's Data Protection Authorities

This dissertation examines the struggle over privacy rights in WHOIS, the public directory of registrants of Internet domain names. ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the non-profit corporation established by the U.S. government to run the Domain Name System and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, functions essential for Internet operations. Through contractual obligation, ICANN requires registrars to collect and publish personal data in the WHOIS directory, contravening many national data protection laws. My research first asked how ICANN managed to avoid the demands of authorities mandated to enforce data protection laws. Analyzing extensive documentary records maintained by ICANN, I demonstrate that the organization refused to effectively accommodate privacy concerns in their policies. I found that, since its inception, ICANN rebuffed repeated complaints by data protection authorities that WHOIS requirements violate national laws and continue to avoid privacy compliance. I provide evidence of a clash of values in the emerging commercial Internet. Business enterprises with strong intellectual property interests, supported by the U.S. government, initiated the focus on an open WHOIS policy to ensure they could identify suspected copyright and trademark violators. Law enforcement agencies represented at ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee also demanded open access to registrant data. A growing information services industry depended on the sale of this data to domain businesses and cybercrime fighters in both the public and private sectors. In combination, these stakeholders have prevented privacy advocates from gaining a foothold. Data Protection Authorities have also declined to exercise their powers, and they have remained outsiders and unsuccessful interveners in ICANN’s multi-stakeholder process. The dissertation then explores the implications of this failure of privacy law from the perspectives of Internet privacy scholarship and accountability issues in multi-stakeholder governance. Establishing WHOIS as a wide-open information resource not only erodes legitimate expectations of privacy in telecommunications directories, it undermines our ability to negotiate personal space and speech on the Internet. This research contributes to understanding challenges to Internet privacy, law enforcement access to personal data, and the prospects for developing international Internet governance regimes that promote the public interest while protecting the rights of individuals.

Keywords: data protection
Domain name system
ICANN
Internet governance
Multi-stakeholderism
privacy
Advisor: Clement, Andrew
Phillips, David J
A Study of Four Single-Witness English Texts from the 14th and 15th Centuries in Manuscript, Early Print, and Modern Editions

This dissertation examines four single-witness manuscripts, written in English, dating from between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the third quarter of the fifteenth: London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, which contains the Pearl poems; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ll.iv.14, containing the fragmentary poem Richard the Redeless; London, British Library MS Additional 41666, which holds the fragmentary poem Mum and the Sothsegger; and London, British Library Additional MS 61823, which contains The Book of Margery Kempe. Each chapter traces the editorial and scholarly history of a single-witness medieval literary text from its first manuscript inscription through its various later forms, including manuscript marginalia, early printed versions, as well as modern editions from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day. What unites each of these studies is a central interest in the relationship between the single manuscript version of each text and the various other versions of the text that have emerged since its medieval composition. I interrogate the decisions made by individual agents as they read, transcribed, edited, and critiqued these texts across time, and in the way that these decisions reflect contemporary scholarly, social, and political concerns. I am interested in the intractability of certain kinds of editorial decisions, even long after the assumptions that preceded them have changed or disappeared, and in the way that certain decisions—many of them built on editorial principles of authority and textual stability—become cemented in the editorial tradition of the texts, sometimes against manuscript evidence or to the exclusion of other, equally possible readings. Throughout, I hope to enact a kind of criticism that is mobilized by curiosity: curiosity about why editors and critics made the choices that they did, and curiosity about what else might be possible if we could get out from under the weight of already-inscribed interpretations. I am interested in seeing what happens when the editorial tradition of these texts is cracked open: when texts whose form has seemed to be settled can be unsettled again, even temporarily, in order to generate new ways of seeing them.

Keywords: Editing
Editorial theory
Manuscript and Book history
Advisor: Gillespie, Alexandra
Biological Differences or Social Constructions? The Entanglement of Sex and Gender in Health and Physical Education

Increasing concern over the wellness of young people has placed an increased emphasis on health and physical education as part of the schooling process for young men and women (13–18 years). An increasing number of policies have been implemented in schools in a consorted effort to address student wellbeing. This dissertation explores the discourses that shape the experiences of young men and women in secondary school. Specifically, I explore biological assumptions and social behaviours of young people which influence their eating behaviours and physical activities. Using a biopedagogical theoretical perspective combined with a sex and gender framework, this analysis engages with the complex relationships between biological understandings and resulting social behaviours with the intention of determining whether or not one is a predictor or resistor of the other. Data collection occurred in three phases (interviews with participants in policy implementation and dissemination, focus groups with secondary students, and policy analysis) and was conducted in a public school board in the Greater Toronto Area. I demonstrate that young people’s own understandings of about natural biological differences between young men and women are reinforced and (re)produced in social behaviours. Dominant discourses and constructions about sex and gender create binary categories and give rise to behaviours which impede the experiences and expressions of some young men and women. This research demonstrates the need to understand sex and gender as a continuum instead of binary categories. This would broaden the expressions of eating behaviours and physical activities for both young men and women.

Keywords: Adolescents
Gender
Health and Physical Education
Nutrition
Physical Activity
Sex
Advisor: MacNeill, Margaret
Super-Resolution Fluorescence Microscopy Studies of Protein Association and Higher-Order Structure

The spatial organization and interaction of proteins within cells fuels a myriad of biological processes. Protein modification, transport, signaling, polymerization and membrane remodeling are just a few examples. In cellular pathways, such as the endocytic membrane transport pathway, the recruitment of specific proteins and protein complexes to the membrane are hallmarks of the maturation and progression of the process. Interaction of membrane proteins from different organelles is of great importance as well. Recent discoveries have suggested that organelles may communicate with each other and exchange lipids and metabolites through the association of tethering proteins. Their proliferation may also be directly dependent on inter-organelle cooperativity such as the interaction of the endoplasmic reticulum with mitochondria and peroxisomes. Protein polymerization allows the creation of large macromolecular foundations that are mediators of diffusion and compartmentalization. The organizational motifs by which these assemblies are built are of interest for structure-function relationships. The interaction and association of protein complexes as described above takes place at the nanoscale, below the optical diffraction limit. Although the colocalization of proteins can be visualized via traditional forms of fluorescence microscopy, many biological questions require a finer level of resolution. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy has revolutionized optical imaging by harnessing advances in hardware, software and the modulation of light. Variations in illumination and emission can be used to break the diffraction limit and observe a new level of detail in the cell. This thesis focuses on two of these techniques, Structured Illumination Microscopy and Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy, and their application to questions of nanoscale protein interactions in the endomembrane system, peroxisomal division and the supramolecular arrangement of septin proteins. The work concludes with a novel technological extension of Single-Molecule Localization Microscopy.

Keywords: Hyperspectral imaging
Membrane contact sites
Protein interaction and association
Super-Resolution Microscopy
Supramolecular protein structure
Advisor: Yip, Christopher M
Kim, Peter K
Mutagenic Gene Trapping to Study Novel Genes in Zebrafish Cardiovascular Development

Cardiovascular development is a finely tuned process involving multiple conserved signaling pathways. Perturbation of this process can lead to congenital malformations. Despite the considerable progress, the entire suite of genes and regulatory pathways involved in cardiovascular development are unknown. In this study, we utilized to a Tol2-based gene trap system, a transposition-based forward genetics tool, to mutate and functionally characterize genes involved in cardiovascular development in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Zebrafish exhibit the anatomical and physiological complexity of a closed circulatory system, with arteries, veins and lymphatic vessels. Of the 51 generated mutant fish lines, we expounded on a mutant line, in which the Tol2 transgene was incorporated into the platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (pdgfra) gene, resulting in truncation and fusion of the native transcript to monomeric red fluorescent protein (mRFP). PDGFRα is a highly conserved tyrosine kinase receptor essential for development and organogenesis. Disruption of PDGFRα function in murine models is embryonic lethal due to severe cardiovascular defects, thus, necessitating the use of alternative models to explore its precise function in cardiovascular development. Our results demonstrate that zebrafish pdgfra mutants develop cardiac defects as a result of abnormal endocardial and myocardial precursor migration to the midline during the process of cardiac fusion, an essential step for cardiac assembly and development. Moreover, we show that the Pdgfra-mRFP fusion protein is initially expressed in venous-derived endothelial cells, including lymphangioblasts, followed by progressive specification into lymphatic endothelial cell fate. Investigation of blood and lymphatic vessels in pdgfra mutants revealed significant defects in venous and lymphatic vessel development. Together, the results acquired from this project reveal a hitherto unknown expression of Pdgfra in developing lymphatic vessels and uncovers a functional role for Pdgfra signaling in regulating cardiac fusion and lympho-venous sprouting events. Broadly speaking, the content of this research will advance our knowledge in fundamental processes of cardiac and lymphatic development, with potential diagnostic and therapeutic utility.

Keywords: Cardiovascular
Genetics
Gene trapping
Heart
Lymphatic
Zebrafish
Advisor: Wen, Xiao-Yan
Game Changers: Everyday Gamemakers and the Development of the Video Game Industry

This dissertation examines the emergence of everyday gamemakers and their roles in transforming the cultural norms and practices of the global video game industry. Everyday gamemakers are digital game creators who share multiple professional and leisure-based gamemaking identities, including developers, “indies,” modders, user-generated content creators, and writers of interactive fiction. Since the Apple App Store opened in 2008, game engines and digital venues have developed and enabled widespread production and distribution of digital games. Game engines such as Unity3D, GameMaker Studio, and Construct 2, which simplify the process of making a digital game using “drag-and-drop” tools and editors, have enabled a range of gamemakers with no programming or artistic experience and training to create digital games. The simultaneous release of digital platforms such as Google Play, Steam, and itch.io, has also streamlined the process of distributing digital games into new and traditional communities of players. These developments have emerged because the video game industry perceives everyday gamemakers to be innovators in diversifying and producing products, creating jobs, and increasing profits. However, I argue that the inclusion of the everyday gamemaker has simultaneously enabled local and grassroots norms and practices to transform the production process of digital game creation in the global video game industry. To demonstrate how these gamemakers are changing norms and practices across the industry, I focus on gamemakers’ work and leisure identities as creators of digital games; the cultural activities of the scenes in which they participate; the game engines and tools of production they use to make their games; the working conditions in which they build their games; and the distribution platforms on which they release their games. I argue that gamemakers wear many labour hats within their craft of gamemaking, which not only diversifies the work and leisure contexts of digital game production, but also enables the mixing and transformation of cultural norms and practices within the mainstream industry and the places of leisure more broadly.

Keywords: Creative Workers
Cultural Industry
Digital Games
Digital Game Workers
Scenes
Video Game Industry
Advisor: Grimes, Sara M
Tissue Engineering Architectural Cues for in vitro Models of Respiratory Epithelium

Diseases affecting the respiratory system are one of the major leading causes of death worldwide. Epithelial dysfunction is associated with many lung diseases and therefore tools for primary cell culture are important for generating models of human lung epithelium. Respiratory epithelium is comprised of many diverse cell types that inhabit structurally distinct regions in the lung and airways. In vitro approaches to generate or repair epithelium are inadequate as they do not incorporate the specific architecture that lung and airway tissues exhibit in vivo, resulting in disorganized and dysfunctional epithelial cells. We hypothesized micropatterned biophysical cues, in the form of stiffness and topography, will induce alignment of airway epithelial cells along a defined tissue axis. We also hypothesized that culture of distal lung epithelial cells in biomimetic architecture will extend the maintenance of viability and phenotype. We employed three scaffolding approaches with microengineered biophysical cues to control epithelial behaviour. In the first two approaches, we applied micropatterning techniques to create hydrogel systems that were compatible with air-liquid interface (ALI) culture of airway epithelium. Although our stiffness-patterning platform did not support primary culture, we found that primary epithelial cells can be cultured on collagen vitrigel membranes and groove topography induces morphological alignment for up to 14 days of ALI culture. In the third approach, we generated a poly-dimethylsiloxane culture substrate with alveolar-mimetic curvature for culture of lung epithelial cells. Specifically, primary mouse cells grown in cavity culture conditions remain viable (96 ± 4% vs. 2 ± 1% on flat controls) and maintained expression of phenotypic markers (surfactant protein C, aquaporin-5) over one week. These findings demonstrate the profound influence of biophysical cues on epithelial behaviours including spreading, polarization and phenotype. Our rationally-designed biomaterial substrates are able to mimic numerous aspects of the extracellular matrix and direct the behaviour of adult primary cells derived from mammalian trachea and lung epithelial progenitors. Biomaterial scaffolds with defined architectural cues advance the capabilities of lung and airway epithelial models to instruct tissue function and provide platforms for understanding mechanisms of lung disease and repair.

Keywords: Alveolar
Architecture
Epithelium
Fabrication
Topography
Trachea
Advisor: McGuigan, Alison P
Waddell, Thomas K
Israeli Jazz Musicians in the International Scene: A Case Study of Musical Transculturation in Contemporary Jazz Performance and Composition

This dissertation is a case study of transculturation in jazz composition and performance through the examination of the practices of Israeli jazz musicians who began to operate on the international jazz scene starting in the 1990s. An impressive number of Israeli jazz performers have received widespread exposure and acclaim over the last twenty years. Artists such as Omer Avital (bass), Anat Cohen (woodwinds), Avishai Cohen (bass) among many others have successfully established themselves on a global scale, creating music that melds various aspects of “American” jazz with an array of Israeli, Jewish and Middle-Eastern influences and those from numerous other non-Western musical traditions. While each musician is developing his or her own approach to musical transculturation, common threads connect them all. Unraveling these entangled sounds and related discourses lies at the center of my study. While this is the first comprehensive study of the contributions of Israeli musicians in the international jazz scene, it is also intended to engage with the “global” phenomenon of transcultural jazz practice more broadly. By considering the performers discussed in the study as multi-local musicians, I offer an alternative to both American exceptionalist views of jazz, for instance, jazz as America’s gift to the world, and to “jazz nationalism”, a scholarly outlook that emphasizes the localization of “jazz” in (non-American) nation-states, and that continues to hold sway around the world, especially in Europe. In so doing, I also aim to invite explorations of the multi-local music making practices of jazz musicians worldwide. Thus, this project simultaneously provides insight into the nature and role of transcultural music making in contemporary jazz practice while enhancing knowledge of modern Israeli society and culture.

Keywords: composition
Israel
jazz
Jewish
performance
Advisor: Packman, Jeff
Resistance Along the Rails: Confronting Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Neoliberal Socio-Ecological Fix through Social Movement Alliance-Forming in Toronto, Canada

This dissertation analyzes post-Fordist social movement coalitions between labour, community and environmental groups that responded to, but also helped constitute, processes of deindustrialization and so-called urban renewal in Toronto, Canada between 2004-2015. I theorize this urban restructuring not only as a spatio-temporal fix but as a more encompassing “socio-ecological fix” that better accounts for the socio-ecological constraints and opportunities placed on the production of urban space for and by capital, labour and a wider range of social (movement) actors. The emergence, development, efficacy and impacts of two labour-community coalitions in Toronto are analyzed by integrating macro-scale theories of coalitions (i.e., eco-Marxist and Gramscian approaches) with social movement theory and ethnographic approaches. The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2007-2012) sought to create “green jobs” on a brownfield site before scaling-up into the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN). The TCBN (2013-2015) aimed to win Ontario's first “community benefits agreement” (CBA) as a tool for leveraging rapid transit infrastructure investments to achieve other social and environmental policy objectives (e.g., employment equity, social procurement, environmental design, etc.). I appraise these coalitions as efforts to demand a right to the city—i.e., more democratic and egalitarian production of urban space (including the regulation of the urban metabolism)—and in terms of social movement alliance-forming that I define as a two-way shift in scale: an institutional broadening (or organizational scaling-up) and an ideological deepening (i.e. praxis). These social movement processes require more extensive on-the-ground organizing within neighbourhoods and unions without which coalitions risk becoming coopted and confined to negotiating minor concessions and trade-offs that deepen socio-ecological tensions and contradictions. In this way, discourses around “green jobs,” “sustainable cities,” and “community benefits” have been used by the state and corporations to organize consent for neoliberal urban governance (i.e., increased privatization and deregulation of the transit and energy sectors, and transit-led gentrification).

Keywords: community benefits agreement
green economy
labor-community coalition
participatory community-based research
social movement coalitions
urban restructuring
Advisor: Prudham, Scott
Optimizing Geotechnical Data Collection Campaigns in Open Pit Mines

Open pit slope design requires sufficient geotechnical data to establish a representative geotechnical model for slope stability analyses. Geotechnical data uncertainty can result in a poor performance of the pit slopes with potential adverse consequences (loss of life, increased costs, operational delays, etc.). It is generally accepted that different confidence levels in the collected geotechnical data are targeted per project stage, with an increased confidence level from the early stage to the more mature stages of a mine. The absence of quantitative guidelines is an important issue due to the risk associated with data uncertainty that can be quite high. This thesis proposes a methodology to quantify the confidence level in the employed geotechnical data for open pit slope design. It furthermore provides quantitative guidelines for the minimum number of boreholes, laboratory tests and joint orientation data required to reach targeted levels of confidence in the collected geotechnical data. Three South African mine sites were selected to construct comprehensive case studies. The analyses of the collected geotechnical data allowed to quantify the impact of collecting additional data in the slope design process for different project stages in the life of a mine. The minimum number of boreholes to minimize the variation of the interpreted geological model from the real rock mass was evaluated by progressively increasing the number of boreholes simulated in 3D geological models. Statistical analyses, using the small-sampling theory, were performed to determine the minimum number of specimens required to reach targeted levels of confidence in the normally distributed laboratory testing results. A new methodology was developed to accommodate for lognormally distributed data. Structural data were analysed using discrete fracture networks (DFN) by simulating sampling boreholes in the models. The minimum number of joint orientation data required to reach targeted levels of confidence was evaluated by progressively increasing the simulated drilling density. The principal contribution of this thesis is an innovative methodology for planning geotechnical data collection campaigns to insure to reach targeted levels of confidence in the collected data. These quantitative measures can eventually replace subjective measures in subsequent risk analyses.

Keywords: confidence level
data variability
geotechnical model
open pit design
quantitative guidelines
slope stability
Advisor: Hadjigeorgiou, John