VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Demonstrations of faith: Religious and political identity among feminist activists in North America

This dissertation investigates political and religious identity for social justice activists, centering on women who identify both as political activists and as feminist Neo-Pagans, Catholics or United Church Protestants. Methodologically, the research is based on ethnographic interview material from individuals who understand their activism as religiously motivated and participant-observation within these three religious communities. This project places such activists in historical context as religiously motivated advocates for social change and discusses what their actions reveal about the public significance of religion in the pluralistic context of North America. This work engages many scholarly conversations, including anthropology of religion, ritual studies, political science, gender and equity studies, ethics, North American religious history, and new religious movements.

Keywords: Religion
The effects of magnitude and spatial gradient in wall shear stress on cell shape and gene expression

We examined the effects of a spatial WSS gradient (laminar undisturbed flow) using an in vitro parallel plate flow chamber with a backward facing step. Experiments were run for 6 hours (with uniform WSS 10dynes/cm2, n = 4) and for 24 hours (with spatial WSS gradient, n = 6) using porcine aortic endothelial cells (PAEC). Coverslips were immunostained for β-Catenin, eNOS or p65 protein, and analyzed by Fluorescent Microscopy. A 2-dimensional Computation Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation of flow over a backward facing step was conducted so correlations could be made on the effects of the changing WSS and WSS gradient on cell shape and gene expression. One-way ANOVA and correlations were done with Prism 2.01. We conclude that the changing magnitude of WSS is related to the spatial variation of cell shape (R2 = 0.79, P < 0.001, n = 6), eNOS (R2 = 0.68, P < 0.001, n = 6) and p65 expression (P < 0.001, n = 3), whereas the effects of the WSS gradient were unrelated.
Effect of antibiotics on blood lipids

Introduction: We assessed the effects on serum lipids and colonic fermentation of two antibiotics, one against aerobes, ciprofloxacin and the other against anaerobes, metronidazole. Methods: In the first study 13 subjects took ciprofloxacin, and in second study 10 subjects received metronidazole for 10 days and 10 days control in random order separated by a 2-week washout period. Blood samples were taken at day 0 and 10 of each phase with 3-day fecal collections, microbiology samples and 12h breath gas collections at the end of each phase. Results: Metronidazole significantly reduced LDL cholesterol (14%) and the apolipoproteinB: A1 ratio (18%) while ciprofloxacin reduced the apolipoproteinB: A1 ratio (5%). Changes in blood lipids showed a negative relation with bifidobacteria and aerobe counts, but not with markers of colonic fermentation. Conclusion: Administration of both antibiotics improved the serum lipid profile in terms of CHD risk factors. These effects were more pronounced with metronidazole.

Advisor: Jenkins, David J.A.
An Embedded Fibre Optic Sensor for Impact Damage Detection in Composite Materials

A structurally embedded fibre optic damage detection sensor for composite materials is described. The system is designed specifically for the detection of barely visible damage resulting from low-velocity impacts in Kevlar-epoxy laminates. By monitoring the light transmission properties of optical fibre embedded in the composite, it has been shown that the integrity of the material can be accurately determined. The effect of several parameters on the sensitivity of the system has been investigated, including the effect of the optical fibre orientation and depth of embedding within the composite. A novel surface treatment has also been developed for the optical fibres to ensure they will fracture at the requisite damage level. The influence of the optical fibre sensors on the tensile and compressive material properties and on the impact resistance of the laminate has also been studied. Extensive experimental results from impact tests are reported and a numerical model of the impact event is presented which is able to predict and model the damage mechanism and sensor system. A new and powerful method of nondestructive evaluation for translucent composite materials based on image enhanced backlighting is also described.

Keywords: composite material
optical fibre
optical fiber
aircraft composite structure
damage detection
Kevlar/epoxy
low energy impact
impact analysis
optical fibre sensor
backlighting
image processing
image enhancement
non-destructive evaluation
NDE
Advisor: Measures, RM
"You're Your Own Boss": An Economic Anthropology of Small Boat Fishing in Port Lameron Harbour, Southwest Nova Scotia

This thesis describes and analyses social and economic dimensions of small boat fishing in a Nova Scotian harbour. Starting from the view that sma11 boat fishermen are now and always have been petty commodity producers within a developing capitalist-industrial s.ocial formation, this work sets out to reveal some of the conditions explaining the continuing economic strength of small-scale units of production in the contemporary Atlantic Canadian fishing industry. Initially the forces of production predominant in the fisheries are profiled. Focus here is on the presentation of detailed descriptions of the technologies employed, the division of labour characteristic of each fishery, and the seasonal/daily organisation of work processes. The second section of the thesis sets out the social relations of production, i.e. the property relations governing access to fishery resources, participation in work processes and the division of economic wealth. Here various social and economic factors are shown to underwrite - the organisational characteristics and performance record of the small boat fisheries. While the forces and social relations of production in small boat fishing are shown to be crucial to its prevalence, an analysis of fishing captains' incomes relative to their operating and capital costs reveals that none of the enterprises examined generated sufficient income for reproduction. This thesis shows that various levels of the state have assumed, through subsidies and low-interest loans, the costs of reproduction in the small boat fisheries. The relation between fishermen and fish buyers is revealed as elemental in this regard. Fish buyers worked to tie fishermen to them through ownership of boats, gear and relations to debt, obligation and dependence. As price and cost inflation rapidly expanded the dollar out-lays required for the purchase of fishing boats and equipment, the costs of reproducing the small boat unit of production was off loaded to the provincial and federal levels of government. As a result, fishermen and fishing communities have become increasingly dependent upon the state for their survival. Small boat units of production are sustained in this economic environment since the superior quality and market worth of their catches remain vital to the processing industry.

Advisor: Carstens, Peter
Distributed leadership in a comprehensive guidance and counselling program: Collaboration between education and health in the context of school reform

This is a study of distributed leadership in the context of schools' implementation of health promoting initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Guidance and Counselling Program (CGCP). The purpose of the study was to describe how leadership is distributed in the CGCP by asking the following research questions: What leadership functions are performed by school counsellors, and other members of the school community, as part of a CGCP? Are there different patters of leadership distribution evident among schools? What factors have an influence on the development of distributed leadership in a CGCP? Using a qualitative research approach, members of the CGCP Advisory Committee in four Canadian schools in Nova Scotia were interviewed. The analysis was based on a two-dimensional framework combining information from the literature on leadership functions and the CGCP. The results of the study revealed that many leadership functions performed in a CGCP are distributed. As coordinator of the Program, the school counsellor performed a key leadership role. Other members of the school community expanded their advisory and/or supportive roles to include leadership roles. Along with distributed leadership, vertical or hierarchical leadership was evident. Individual and shared, in addition to focused and distributed, forms of leadership co-existed, as well as a need for considerable coordination of the Program. Factors influencing the development of distributed leadership were: organizational structure and culture of the CGCP; opportunities for capacity building; school counsellor-administrator relations and changes in power structure; policies, guidelines, and procedures of the CGCP; active encouragement and support by administrators; willingness to share the workload; skills to offer (expertise); manageable workload and tasks; clear expectations of roles and tasks: and autonomy. The study is significant because it provides evidence of integrated and hybridized models of leadership. Also, the knowledge gained from the study was not limited to school personnel; rather, the study was extensive enough to include members of the school community. In addition to contributing to the body of knowledge on distributed leadership, the study adds to the literature on health promoting schools as a unique approach to the integration of, and collaboration between, education and health in schools.

Advisor: Leithwood, Kenneth
On the Lengths of Proofs In The Propositional Calculus

Just as P = NP if and only if some NP-complete set ; is a member of P, the class NP is closed under complementation if and only if the complement of some NP- complete set is a member of NP. This in turn leads to the fact that NP is closed under complementa~ion if and only if there exists a system for proving tautologies of the propositional calculus in which each tautology has a (polynomial-time verifiable) proof whose length is no greater than some fixed polynomial in ; the length of the tautology. Such a system is called a polynornial-bqunded verification system. Most of the important proof systems for the propositional calculus that have been proposed in the literature have been investigated, and two types of results are reported. The first are simulation results that show that if one system is polynomial-bounded, then the simulating system is also polynomial-bounded. Such simulations are shown for all Frege systems (called "Hilbert -type" systems by Kleene), natural deduction systems, and Gentzen systems with cut. Frege system with the substitution rule simulate all other systems studied. The second type of results are lower bounds, where certain systems are shown not to be polynomial-bounded. Lower bounds are reported for regular resolution, semantic trees, analytic tableaux, and other systems, and Tseitin's lower bound for regular resolution is improved and applied to certain systems of regular resolution with limited extension.

Keywords: Applied Sciences
Advisor: Cook, S. A.
The Process and Implications of Racialization: A Case Study

This social history of the process and implications of racialization explores some of the sociopolitical and economic factors that affected the ways in which members of an African Canadian/American family resisted and/or accommodated the process of racialization over the course of several generations. The impact of selected events in the social history of Canada and the US is illustrated through an interpretation of the experiences of three generations of the Abbott family as they employed various strategies in their quest for human rights and racial uplift. In addition to focusing on how these events impacted the Abbotts when they lived in Toronto and Chicago, the study follows the subsequent migration of family members as they moved and radiated across the continent, gradually developing separate lives and racial identities. During a period of racial segregation in the US many light-skinned African Canadians/ Americans avoided the repercussions of racial discrimination by passing as white. They tended to seek light-skinned or white spouses and essentially raised white families. For some families this remained a secret and their descendents were not aware of their black ancestry. Yet it cannot be denied that despite the legal and social advancement of many Blacks light-skinned individuals moved up the scale more readily than those of a darker hue. The study progresses to the present day descendents to explore the diverse ways in which they were implicated by their ancestor's practice of passing as white. Through a series of narratives, they share their reactions and explain how they have accommodated the forces of racialization in their own lives in order to maintain their location with respect to the colour line. The present study demonstrates how the influence of the social, political and economic forces shifted over time from one generation to the next in the process of developing racial designations for stratification purposes. This cross-cultural, crossborder (Canadian-American), cross-generational study offers rich insight to the process of racial assimilation and acculturation within a multicultural society, from both a historical and sociological perspective.

Advisor: Folson, Rose
Antibacterial effectiveness of a final rinse with MTAD and intracanal medication with 2% chlorhexidine gel in teeth with apical periodontitis

This randomized-controlled and double-blinded clinical study assessed the antibacterial efficacy of (1) final rinse with BioPure™MTAD™, and (2) intracanal-medication with 2% chlorhexidine gel (CHX) in teeth with apical periodontitis in consenting humans. Thirty teeth were chemomechanically prepared using NaOCl, then rinsed with MTAD, or coloured saline. Bacteriological samples were obtained from canals before preparation (IA), after preparation (1B), and after the final rinse (1C). After 7d medication with CHX canals were flushed, sampled (2A), further irrigated and re-sampled (2B). Bacteria were enumerated by colony-forming-unit (CFU) counts after 14d incubation and epifluorescence-microscopy. High counts in 1A samples were >99% lower in 1B samples. Lower counts in 1B, 1C, 2A and 2B samples were not significantly different from each other. Microscopic counts were higher than CFU counts. A final rinse with MTAD and intracanal-medication with CHX did not reduce bacterial counts in infected canals beyond levels achieved by chemomechanical preparation using NaOCl.

Keywords: dental care
Duality and the problem of moral self -awareness in Dostoevsky's “Dvoinik” (“The Double”)

This dissertation investigates the problem of duality as it relates to the moral situation of the protagonist of F. M. Dostoevsky's novella Dvoinik (The Double, 1846). Bearing the cultural and literary heritage as well as contemporary social realities of mid-nineteenth century Russia steadily in mind, I analyse the duality motif in Dvoinik in terms of the protagonist's self-consciousness [samosoznanie ] and moral perceptions. In particular, the moral ideas that underpin his self-definitions are products of what I refer to as moral self-awareness . In the course of my analysis, I interrogate the modulations of moral reasoning in the mind of the protagonist to show how his perceptions and discourse create moral categories, which in turn motivate his contradictory self-definitions and behaviours. In view of this conflict, I argue that the protagonist's will to succeed in the civil bureaucratic order of nineteenth-century Petersburg is incompatible with his implicit need to find moral rectitude. Ego-driven motivations provide contrapuntal tensions to exacerbate his experience of inner division. At the same time, his view of himself as a moral being is obscured by mystified understandings of 'honour' and 'chivalry,' which he has adapted from popular lore and mimicry of the discursive conventions of privileged society. Where social humanism and philosophical Idealism inform the moral issues under examination, their projections through the paired lenses of ego psychology and myth ultimately show dual consciousness to hinge on the problem of moral self-awareness. Finally, with reference to Dostoevsky's notebook drafts, personal correspondence and literary journalism, I examine the author's plans for revision of Dvoinik in the early 1860s. I view these developments as evidence of the crystallization of Dostoevsky's idea of the 'underground type,' a term he applied to the hero of Dvoinik as prototype after recasting the role in Zapiski iz podpol'ia (Notes from Underground , 1864). In my conclusion, the protagonist of the latter work exhibits greater conscious understanding of the tensions between ego motivations and innate strivings for moral truth; yet he fails, in the end, to overcome the dualistic divide between the rational mind and the transrational pursuit of higher spiritual meaning and purpose.

Keywords: Language
literature and linguistics
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Duality
Dvoinik
Moral self-awareness
Russia
An assessment of interproximal crestal bone topography and gingival papilla morphology adjacent to sintered porous-surfaced dental implants

Background. The relationships between crestal bone topography and implant positioning on interproximal soft tissue morphology adjacent to sintered porous-surfaced (SPS) dental implants were investigated. Methods. Assessment of implant position and osseous topography of 102 SPS implants was conducted using digitized standardized radiographs and interpreted with computer software. Gingival papilla morphology was assessed using the Jemt Papillary index from digital photos. Results. The mean bli (bone level-to-implant) was 1.00 mm. The retention of mid-proximal crestal bone height (pcl ) was optimal at a horizontal inter-implant distance (hiid ) of >4 mm or a horizontal implant-to-tooth distance (hitd ) of >1.5 mm. Neither contact point distance nor pcl effected gingival papillae form. Papilla morphology appeared to be influenced most by horizontal distance and the adjacent tooth bone height. Conclusion. Optimal gingival papilla form adjacent to SPS implants appears to rely mainly on: (1) the horizontal distance and (2) the osseous support of the adjacent tooth.

Keywords: Dental care
Time-Resolved Optical Kerr Effect Spectroscopy by Four-Wave Mixing

The time-resolved optical Kerr effect (TR-OKE) experiment is commonly used for spectroscopy of very fast molecular motions in fluids. The four-wave mixing formalism of nonlinear optics is used here to obtain complete, general expressions for TR-OKE signals in terms of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility. These expressions are obtained for both the usual and optically heterodyned detection schemes, and are independent of models of molecular motions. The susceptibility is then derived for a model of a fluid of librating molecules, and combined with the susceptibility for instantaneous (electronic) response. This allows prediction, in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, of the specific forms of the signals from experiments. Kerr experiments on carbon disulphide are performed and the results compared with the predictions. The analysis is found to predict all the features of the experiments, including effects of coherence and incompletely modelocked pulses. Precise comparison of experiment and theory is possible because heterodyne signals are linear in the third-order susceptibility. The in-phase detection experiment is shown to be an especially sensitive test for models of molecular motion because of the high amount of structure intrinsic in the signal. The analysis in terms of the nonlinear susceptibility also allows easy comparison with other nonlinear optics and light scattering experiments. Overall, this represents a significant increase in the understanding of the TR-OKE experiment, and promotes it to major importance amongst techniques for studying molecular motion in fluids.

Keywords: Physics
Advisor: Kenney-Wallace, G.
Fcγ receptor signaling in response to soluble versus immobilized IgG

Fcγ receptors present on monocytes and macrophages clear pathogens engaged by antibodies through the process of endocytosis. Upon being clustered by immune complexes, Fcγ receptors initiate signaling that lead to cellular activation and cytokine secretion, processes that are likely terminated upon receptor internalization and subsequent degradation. In many disease states, however, Fcγ receptors encounter their ligands in the tissue deposited form that cannot be readily internalized. In this project, we examined kinetics of Erk 1/2 phosphorylation and TNF-α secretion in enriched human primary monocytes in response to stimulation of Fcγ receptors by soluble heat aggregated IgG or plastic surface-bound IgG, to mimic immune complexes and tissue-deposited IgG, respectively. Soluble aggregated IgG induced transient and robust signaling, leading to peak levels of phospho-Erk 1/2 by 15 minutes and TNF-α secretion by 1 hour, in contrast to surface-bound IgG, which caused sustained signaling lasting for hours, supporting the hypothesis that signal termination is dependent upon receptor internalization.

Keywords: Health and environmental sciences
immunology
Advisor: Booth, James
A new method for measurement of carbon dioxide flux in the lungs during breathing

I have developed a method of measuring alveolar ventilation (V˙ A) for the purposes of calculating minute carbon dioxide production (V˙ CO2) in subjects breathing via a partial rebreathing circuit. I consider the patient and circuit as a single metabolic unit and make calculations based on mass balances around the circuit. V˙ A is determined by gradually reducing the flow of fresh gas (FGF) delivered to the partial rebreathing circuit until the end-tidal pressure of CO2 (PETCO2) begins to rise, indicating that previously exhaled gas is being rebreathed. The FGF delivered to the circuit at this point is equal to V˙ A. Fourteen subjects breathed via a partial rebreathing circuit at rest. The sequential delivery of fresh gas and rebreathed gas through the circuit allowed V˙ A to be identified when the flow was reduced to a point where P ETCO2 just began to rise. V˙ CO 2 was then calculated as (FGF x PETCO2)/(barometric pressure). V˙ CO2 was compared to that measured by a commercial metabolic cart (MC) and a standard bag collection. The difference (M +/− SD) between V˙ CO2 measured by the new method and the bag collection was 0.009 ± 0.037 L/min, and between the MC and the bag collection was 0.001 ± 0.052 L/min. The coefficients of variation for the circuit and MC on a test-retest basis were 2.8 and 11.4%, respectively, and the coefficients of variation for the circuit and the MC on a breath-by-breath basis were 3.3 and 34.0%, respectively. This study employs the first practical method for finding V˙ A for the purposes of calculating V˙ CO2 with a high accuracy and a greater precision than standard bag collections and commercial metabolic carts.

Advisor: Shoichet, Molly
Fisher, Joseph