VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Perceiving Temporal Structure

Perceptual experience seems to present us with not only objects and their ‘static’ properties such as shapes, colours, and positions but also with events and their temporal structure: that is, their temporal relationships such as simultaneity and temporal order. This dissertation aims to defend the claim that we perceptually experience temporal structure from recently revived challenges, and to show how a theory of temporal perception bears on central issues in the philosophy of mind. Experience manifestly possesses its own temporal structure. If we have perceptual experiences of the temporal structure of external events, it seems natural to ask whether there is a deep explanatory connection between the temporal features of the experiences themselves and the temporal features that they are experiences of. Accordingly, much of the philosophical debate about temporal perception focuses on the matching thesis: the claim that the temporal structure of perceptual experience always matches the temporal structure that one experiences events as having. Debate between critics and proponents of the thesis can sometimes appear to be stuck in a clash between experimental results and strongly held introspective intuitions about experience. I do not directly argue against the matching thesis, but I show how we can improve upon existing experimentally-based arguments against it. I also show how its critics can explain (rather than simply disregard or deny) the intuitions that allegedly support it. Trying to explain these intuitions from the critic’s perspective suggests new ideas about temporal perception that are not only coherent but independently plausible. I develop these ideas and show how they can deepen our understanding of how temporal perception fits with other issues central to the philosophy of mind: our introspective awareness of our experiences, the connection between perception and the temporal present, and perception’s role in guiding action.

Keywords: Consciousness
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Temporal Experience
Time
Advisor: Matthen, Mohan
Continuum and Microscopic Descriptions of Diffusiophoresis and Chemically Self-Propelled Nanomotors

Since their discovery in 2004, chemically self-propelled nanomotors have been studied in the hopes that one day they might find utility in a wide variety of applications. These motors extract energy from their environment through chemical reactions that occur on their surface, and concentration gradients that are self-generated are used to propel the motor in a directed fashion. Despite efforts into understanding the general behaviour of chemically self-propelled nanomotors, many aspects of their dynamics remain unclear. Their behaviour in various complex environments is not well understood and, as these motors are synthesized on the submicron scale, questions arise on the applicability of current phenomenological models at smaller scales. In this thesis two main themes arise in the study of chemically self-propelled nanomotors. The first theme addresses the behaviour of nanomotors in more complex environments. Using a combination of coarse-grained molecular dynamics and Langevin dynamics, chemically self-propelled sphere dimers are investigated in two different types of realistic environments. The first study is an investigation of a single nanomotor in a medium with a background oscillatory reaction network which is coupled to the chemical reaction on the motor. These simulations show that the motor's propulsion velocity follows an oscillatory pattern and the oscillations in the reaction network are weakened or completely destroyed. The second study is an investigation of many nanomotors whose center-of-masses are pinned, but allowed to rotate. These rotors do not directly interact, but may influence one another through chemical and hydrodynamic interactions that occur due to reactions at the motor's catalytic surface and fluid pumping. These simulations show that a high degree of correlations amongst rotor orientations exist and that these structures largely arise due to chemical interactions between rotors. The second main theme addresses the need for a microscopic approach in understanding diffusiophoresis at smaller scales. Using a nonequilibrium projection operator approach combined with a technique which separates the dynamics into bulk and interfacial hydrodynamics, balance equations and boundary conditions are derived microscopically that compare to known phenomenological theories of diffusiophoresis. In addition, microscopic expressions for the transport properties important in characterizing diffusiophoresis are found.

Advisor: Kapral, Raymond
Integration of Cellular Analysis Methods into Microphysiological Vascular Models

Microphysiological systems, also known as organ-on-a-chip systems, possess significant potential as organotypic models of human tissues, including vascular tissue interfaces that are ubiquitous throughout the human body. As microfluidic systems, organs-on-chips also possess significant untapped analytical potential. Cellular analysis in organs-on-chips, however, currently relies on standard methods designed for traditional in vitro cell culture vessels like microtiter plates. These methods disturb the cell culture environment, rely on multiple manual steps and are not designed to operate in small microfluidic volumes. The aim of this thesis was to design and develop online cellular analysis methods that are suitable for integration into the organotypic microenvironment of microvessel-on-a-chip models. Cellular analysis methods for cell secretion and barrier function monitoring were specifically considered. For integrated cell secretion monitoring, a numerical study correlated physiological shear flow to biosensor reaction kinetics in a microfluidic vascular model with online biosensing. Three critical parameters (critical shear stress, Peclet and Biot numbers) in conjunction with the numerical analysis enabled the minimization of biosensor response times while preserving physiological shear flows. For integrated barrier function monitoring, endothelial permeability was measured online in a Transwell-based microfluidic vascular model using a novel electrochemical permeability assay. Unlike the standard fluorescence-based permeability assay, this enabled endothelial permeability to be measured directly on-chip inside an incubator without the need for manual sampling, or bulky and costly optical instrumentation. Finally, the electrochemical permeability assay was implemented in a hydrogel-based microfluidic vascular model with gel-embedded electrodes. Online endothelial permeability measurements were performed in a 3D culture environment, demonstrating the ability of the assay to operate in the low volume organotypic microenvironments characteristic of microphysiological systems. The miniaturized electrochemical format is furthermore suitable for parallelization and higher throughput analysis. In summary, the integration of cellular analysis methods is critical to fulfilling the tremendous promise of microphysiological systems. The capability to perform multiparametric online analysis at the cellular level has the potential to set these systems apart from current models of the human organism.

Keywords: biosensor
endothelial permeability
in vitro cell culture
integrated system
organ on a chip
TEER
Advisor: Simmons, Craig
The Pepaideumenoi and Jesus: Ancient Education and Marginal Intellectuals in Paul’s Corinth and the Gospel of Thomas

My dissertation is concerned with the types of people that produced and consumed early writings about Jesus, specifically the Gospel of Thomas and 1 Corinthians. I argue that literary forms and features within both texts demonstrate contact with and influence from Graeco-Roman education, encyclia paideia. Other scholars of ancient Christianity have noted similarities between particular gospels or letters and Graeco-Roman paideia, but their conclusions have tended to either compare a certain text with a particular Graeco-Roman moral philosophy, or argue that early Christian texts are dramatically different from those produced by Graeco-Roman intellectuals. The former approach posits borrowing from Graeco-Roman philosophical writings and the latter presents Christianity as an entity distinct from the Graeco-Roman intellectual world: either the producers and consumers of early Christian texts were among the educated elite, or they rejected Graeco-Roman paideia altogether. This dissertation changes our understanding of how early Christian writings were influenced by Graeco-Roman paideia by focusing on the masses of marginally educated people produced by Graeco-Roman education. Education was not standardized in the ancient world, and for every Quintilian or Plutarch who completed their educations, there were hundreds more who received some education, but not enough to participate in the discourses of the educated elite. These people were what I call marginal intellectuals, in that they possessed some skill in reading, copying, and perhaps composition, but most importantly, recognizing the virtue attached to the possession and performance of paideia. The Gospel of Thomas and 1 Corinthians both contains sayings, lessons, and discussions that we would expect from marginal intellectuals. The texts contain literary forms taught in ancient schools, use metaphors distinct to ancient schools, and focus on the performance of their own virtues and knowledge in a way that mimics the discourses of the intellectual elite. By identifying the Gospel of Thomas and 1 Corinthians as products of marginal intellectuals, I am not simply positing a social class of people, I am demonstrating the ways in which these early Christian texts were deeply intertwined with the world of Graeco-Roman paideia.

Advisor: Kloppenborg, John
Sleep and Cognition after ICU Admission

As survival rates from critical illness improve, strategies to return patients to their pre-morbid cognitive and functional status are important research priorities. Upwards of 9 out of 10 ICU survivors will suffer some degree of cognitive impairment at hospital discharge and approximately half will have decrements that persist for years. While the mechanisms for this newly acquired brain injury are poorly understood, several risk factors have been identified. Unfortunately, it is unclear how to accurately predict long-term cognitive impairment. We undertook a multisite, prospective, longitudinal cohort study of sleep, electroencephalography and cognitive outcome in survivors of critical illness. Our hypotheses being that sleep and circadian disruption would negatively impact long-term cognitive impairment in survivors of critical illness, a relationship that may be modified by Apolipoprotein E genotype. Further, cortical electrophysiological activity may predict, and therefore serve as an intermediate endpoint, long-term cognitive outcomes. In our cohort, the quantity and quality of sleep remained poor on the ward after ICU but was not terribly dissimilar to that experienced by patients hospitalized for noncritical illness by literature review. A number of risk factors for poor sleep including admission diagnosis (sepsis, post-operative admission, higher severity of illness). The other key finding of our cohort study was that rest-activity fragmentation was associated with worse cognitive impairment shortly after ICU discharge. This relationship, however, was lost at 6- and 12-months follow-up. Sleep and circadian variables studied did not seem to predict cognitive impairment at 6- or 12-months after ICU discharge. As the first multisite study to comprehensively examine the relationship between sleep, circadian function, and long-term cognitive impairment in survivors of critical illness, the single greatest limitation of this study is its internal validity as we experienced high losses to follow-up and unanticipated deaths. A larger study with more frequent covariate sampling might better elucidate the trajectory of recovery between sleep, circadian rhythm and long-term cognition. Promising preliminary analyses of electroencephalography data would suggest that early poor cognitive performance after ICU discharge correlates with changes primarily seen in subcortical white matter. Further analyses of this data are ongoing.

Keywords: Cognition
ICU
Outcomes
Sleep
Advisor: Rubenfeld, Gordon D
Neuroimaging Studies on Familiarity of Music in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The field of music neuroscience allows us to use music to investigate human cognition in vivo. Examining how brain processes familiar and unfamiliar music can elucidate underlying neural mechanisms of several cognitive processes. To date, familiarity in music listening and its neural correlates in typical adults have been investigated using a variety of neuroimaging techniques, yet the results are inconsistent. In addition, these correlates and respective functional connectivity related to music familiarity in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are unknown. The present work consists of two studies. The first one reviews and qualitatively synthesizes relevant literature on the neural correlates of music familiarity, in healthy adult populations, using different neuroimaging methods. Then it estimates the brain areas most active when listening to familiar and unfamiliar musical excerpts using a coordinate-based meta-analyses technique of neuroimaging data. We established that motor brain structures were consistently active during familiar music listening. The activation of these motor-related areas could reflect audio-motor synchronization to elements of the music, such as rhythm and melody, so that one can tap, dance and “covert” sing along with a known song. Results from this research guided our second study. This work investigated the familiarity effect in music listening in both TD and ASD children, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). This technique enabled us to study brain connectivity and characterize the networks and frequency bands involved while listening to familiar and unfamiliar songs. TD children recruited a similar brain network as those in typical adults during familiar music listening, in the gamma frequency band. Compared to TD, children with ASD showed relatively intact processing of familiar songs but atypical processing of unfamiliar songs in theta and beta-bands. Atypical functional connectivity of other unfamiliar stimuli has been reported in ASD. Our findings reinforced that processing novelty is a challenge. Overall, this work contributes to the advancement of both fields of music neuroscience and brain connectivity in ASD.

Keywords: Autism
Children
Familiarity
Magnetoencephalography
Music
Neuroimaging
Advisor: Anagnostou, Evdokia
Sung Russian for the Low Male Voice Classical Singer: The Latent Pedagogical Value of Sung Russian

Low male voice classical singers (LMVs) are a statistical rarity (R. Miller 2008). Their relative scarcity notwithstanding, the research undertaken in this thesis shows that LMV-specific voice pedagogy resources do exist, including a rich body of Russian vocal literature suitable for the LMV. This thesis positions singing in Russian as beneficial for LMV classical training by examining how secondary palatalization and the presence of the [i] vowel in sung Russian promote a fronted tongue, and how the prevalence of its default dark-a allophone [ɑ] facilitates a low, stable larynx. Both of these vocal tract configurations are hallmarks of fine classical singing technique (Bozeman 2013). To measure how much of net phonation time is spent singing in these corresponding vocal tract configurations, I operationalized Musorgsky’s Sunless and Kabalevsky’s Op. 52 Ten Shakespeare Sonnets on Translations by Marshak using an enhanced version of Pacheco’s Graphic-Statistic Method (Pacheco 2013). The resulting data were overlaid with values reflective of resonances of the LMV vocal tract to show where acoustic ‘pitches of turning’ fall in this repertoire (D. Miller 2000; Godin and Howell 2015). I found that the fR1/fo interaction so important to treble voices singing in ‘whoop’ coupling is largely irrelevant to LMVs. Instead, it appears that LMV vocal acoustic concerns mostly involve developing an awareness of the fR1/2fo interaction an octave lower that marks the transition between singing in open and close timbre; this is the primary acoustic registration event of male voices (Bozeman 2013). From an acoustics perspective, being able to identify where a given voice should appropriately ‘turn over’ is an important pedagogic diagnostic ability that normalizes how an unforced, well-coordinated timbral transition sounds and feels. I created newly annotated vocal scores for these two song cycles to make it easy to identify open and close timbre and other acoustic turning events at a glance. Considering these cycles with the analytical methods offered here equips teachers with another way to inform appropriate LMV repertoire selection. Future scholars may use this approach to investigate other voice types and national repertoires.

Keywords: bass
bass-baritone
diction
Russian
singing
voice
Advisor: Philcox, Steven
"Sonus Lumine" for Twenty Instruments

Sonus Lumine conveys an opposition between dissonance and consonance. This thesis aims to convey the necessary presence of consonant chords stemming from a subjective exhaustion of dissonant possibilities inside the continuum of an original musical idea. Lumine represents the light that is hidden inside every chord, which is especially apparent in consonant chords (from a historically informed perspective), particularly when these chords appear in a dissonant context (e.g., bar 119). Such a historically informed consonantal perspective is based on the Pythagorean divisions of the intervals which became commonly accepted as consonances later in the 12th century. Dissonance is historically linked to encounters resulting in opposite linear motions inside a theoretical organum and is understood as such in this thesis. Therefore, a dissonant chord is considered to be a simultaneous conflation of intervals, not a global sonic unit. It is a pure question of aesthetic and subjective appreciation (e.g., why did Zarlino, looking to further divide the fifth, stop his divisions at the sixth ratio and consider everything beyond as dissonant?). Artistically, Sonus Lumine is a pilgrimage along a path of atonal shadow and dream, leading to consonance bursting with light, disarming in its simplicity, a tonal response to unanswered questions in a dissonant realm. The analysis of those dreams, based on André Breton’s text “Les vases communicants’’ (1932), reveals repressed thoughts or images — referring to different dissonant contexts throughout the piece — which find a disguised realization in other dreams, i.e., consonant chords. A cortège of agitati figures culminating in a heavily sostenuto aria, artistically embroidered by these same figures (e.g., bar 74), finds its source in the same idea, generating horizontal aspects of the dreams to mutually complement the vertical reality created by the chords (the amalgam of intervals). Formally, Sonus Lumine is a metapsychology of meaning, i.e., a projection of parts of the self used in other dreams, which — it is believed — holds the continuum together in a distinct intelligibility.

Keywords: avant-garde
chamber orchestra
consonance
dissonance
metapsychology
Advisor: Kulesha, Gary
Marcel Cadieux, the Department of External Affairs, and Canadian International Relations: 1941-1970

Between 1941 and 1970, Marcel Cadieux (1915-1981) was one of the most important diplomats to serve in the Canadian Department of External Affairs (DEA). A lawyer by trade and Montreal working class by background, Cadieux held most of the important jobs in the department, from personnel officer to legal adviser to under-secretary. Influential as Cadieux’s career was in these years, it has never received a comprehensive treatment, despite the fact that his two most important predecessors as under-secretary, O.D. Skelton and Norman Robertson, have both been the subject of full-length studies. This omission is all the more glaring since an appraisal of Cadieux’s career from 1941 to 1970 sheds new light on the Canadian diplomatic profession, on the DEA, and on some of the defining issues in post-war Canadian international relations, particularly the Canada-Quebec-France triangle of the 1960s. A staunch federalist, Cadieux believed that French Canadians could and should find a place in Ottawa and in the wider world beyond Quebec. This thesis examines Cadieux’s career and argues that it was defined by three key themes: his anti-communism, his French-Canadian nationalism, and his belief in his work as both a diplomat and a civil servant.

Keywords: Biography
Canada
Canadian diplomacy
Canadian international relations
Department of External Affairs
Marcel Cadieux
Advisor: Bothwell, Robert
Kinetics of Detwinning and Grain Boundary Structural Transformation in Chemical Vapor Deposited Nickel

Nickel carbonyl chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a high-efficiency process used to produce nickel shell molds, which integrates high yield strength, reasonable ductility, and strong corrosion resistance. These advantageous properties arise from its bimodal grain structure, which consists of a nanocrystalline matrix embedded with large columnar grains filled with nanotwins. However, most nanotwins and nano-grains are removed after annealing at 600 ℃; meanwhile, plentiful dislocations are generated. While the driving force for detwinning is well-understood, the mechanisms for detwinning and dislocations generation without any external load remain elusive. Based on computational simulation results, this thesis investigated the kinetics of detwinning in CVD nickel. First, the necessity of dislocations for detwinning is explained based on theoretical analysis: detwinning requires a long-range driving force for all the atoms in the twin lamella, a force that cannot be provided merely by coherent twin boundaries (CTBs). However, if there were plentiful dislocations inside a twin lamella, each atom would “sense” a driving force to eliminate these dislocations, making it easier to form a stable embryonic detwinning nucleus. Next, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted, and the results showed that the dislocations found inside CVD nickel after annealing are intrinsic grain boundary dislocations (IGBDs) on CTBs with misorientation angles deviated from the theoretically predicted value. The separation between the IGBDs and CTBs is driven by the internal stress intensified by grain growth in the nanocrystalline regime of CVD nickel. The stress intensification arising from grain growth is attributed to the grain boundary excess free volume (BFV). The extrapolation of the simulation results into the range of experimental strain rates suggests that the IGBDs can separate from CTBs due to creep at 800 oC. These dislocations then trigger the formation of incoherent twin boundaries (ITBs) from the intersection of CTBs and grain boundaries. The migration of the ITBs removes the nanotwins connecting to them. Overall, unlike grain growth, stress is necessary for detwinning. Our understanding of CSL boundaries, the temperature-dependent BFV, and the kinetic of detwinning is instrumental in controlling the microstructure of nanotwins and nanocrystals at elevated temperatures.

Keywords: detwinning
grain growth
intrinsic grain boundary dislocations
molecular dynamics simulations
nanotwins
Nickel carbonyl chemical vapor deposition
Advisor: Singh, Chandra Veer