VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Future of Medical Futility in Ontario

Medical futility is a topic plagued by controversy. The medico-legal community has long debated the definition of medical futility and whether the concept, however defined, can be used by physicians to justify withholding or withdrawing treatment. In Ontario, the present dominance of patient autonomy in healthcare ethics suggests medical futility has no place in treatment decision-making. In Cuthbertson v Rasouli, the Supreme Court was tasked with deciding whether physicians have unilateral authority to withhold or withdraw futile treatment from an incapacitated person. The Court concluded that consent must be obtained to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from Mr Rasouli, but in other situations physicians may have unilateral authority to withhold or withdraw treatment. The Supreme Court's confused and convoluted findings suggest that reform of Ontario's Health Care Consent Act is necessary to recognize medical futilty in a manner that is clear, meaningful and considerate of the views of both patients and physicians.

Keywords: Ethics
Health Care Consent Act
Incapacitated patients
Medical futility
Personal autonomy
Rasouli
Advisor: Flood, Colleen M
Intellectual Property, Traditional Knowledge, and Bioprospecting: Searching for Efficient Balance of Rights

The dissertation comprises five chapters examining interrelated legal and economic aspects of the protection of Traditional Knowledge (TK). Chapter One describes the value that Traditional Medicinal Knowledge (TMK) has and the alarming rate of loss it faces. The chapter outlines the various issues of contention from defining ‘traditional knowledge,’ to the argument surrounding if and how TK should be protected. Chapter Two examines economic rationales for the need to protect TK through the lens of the public goods literature. It outlines the three key causes of TK loss and alternative methods of producing TK. Building on such discussion, Chapter Three develops the ‘incentive to codify’ argument which forms a core part of the thesis, as distinguished from the currently dominant ‘incentive to conserve’ rationale. The chapter discusses existing piecemeal attempts to codify TK and posits that a proactive use of such database will enable these initiatives to realize their real potential. Chapter four outlines the legal framework which may be justified given the public goods nature of TMK and the need to codify and disclose it to users. It advocates for the establishment of a bioprospecting right which can reflect the interest of TK holders and users. It also outlines what form TK codification should take. Lastly, Chapter Five examines whether an international TK protection mechanism is necessary. It outlines existing international deliberations on TK protection including the Draft Articles of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (WIPO IGC). The chapter concludes with analysis of the key features that an international forum should consider to provide baseline protection.

Keywords: Bioprospecting
Intellectual Property Law
International Intellectual Property Law
Law and Economics
Medicinal Knowledge
Traditional Knowledge
Advisor: Katz, Ariel
The Reverent City: Plato's "Laws" and the Politics of Ethical Authority

As a virtue, reverence seems to have disappeared. People who speak highly of it are suspected of an obtuse fanaticism or of adherence to some eccentric New Age cult. If reverence lives on in mainstream culture, it does so either as a term of abuse or—more typically—through its antonym, whose merits are loudly broadcast. But what if reverence is a quality without which civilized life becomes impossible? Do societies like ours neglect reverence at their peril? Plato, at any rate, suggests they do. This study elucidates Plato’s reasons for thinking so. These appear in the seldom studied Laws, the most important treatment of reverence in the tradition of Western political philosophy. Building on exciting developments in classical studies and political theory, The Reverent City sheds new light on this long-neglected dialogue, and on its significance for our irreverent times. On my interpretation, Plato looks to reverence as the root of ethical learning in all-too-human citizens. Political life depends on such learning, but the Laws shows how powerful currents in human nature incline most of us away from it. To acquire and practice the virtues that are its fruit thus demands refusing the inclinations that are its bane, and it is reverence—the capacity to show due respect for what exceeds and circumscribes the human—that supplies the needed impetus on Plato’s account. I bring out the enduring relevance of this argument by highlighting the prescience of its warnings. He shows how the Laws anticipates with remarkable foresight the cynicism, apathy, and nativism to which democratic publics are increasingly prone in modern societies. By recovering a novel diagnosis for these trends in the neglect of a forgotten virtue, The Reverent City affords a richer understanding of our worrying politics, and blazes a promising path for future research.

Keywords: Authority
Law
Plato
Religion
Reverence
Virtue
Advisor: Balot, Ryan K
The Names of Minimalism: Authorship and the Historiography of Dispute in New York Minimalism, 1960–1982

Several of the composers we most frequently label “minimalists” have been engaged in disputes about musical authorship with fellow composers and former colleagues. This dissertation uses those disputes as starting points towards understanding minimalism as a practice of authorial critique. Drawing on the philosopher Jacques Rancière, I also examine the historiographical practices that have frequently denied that critique any efficacy. In the introduction I outline Rancière’s method of dispute, and how histories of minimalism have used composers’ later renunciations to deny the minimalist critique of authorship any efficacy. To exemplify this method, I consider the “confiscations” in effect when musicologists read Reich’s “Music as a Gradual Process” and Pendulum Music. Chapter 1 introduces Rancièrian concepts of importance throughout my study—politics and police, the pedagogic relation, noise and “low music”—through considering Rancière’s disputes with his professor Louis Althusser, his classmate Jacques-Alain Miller, and his “friend-enemy” Alain Badiou. Chapter 2 examines the conflict between La Monte Young and Tony Conrad over the authorial propriety of the music they created together in the Theatre of Eternal Music. I draw on primary documents to argue that the ensemble functioned as the first appearance of compositional collectivism in western art music. Chapter 3 considers a pair of disputes: between Terry Riley and Steve Reich, and, between Reich and Philip Glass. Through a close reading of interviews from the late 1980s and early 1990s, I show how these composers retroactively articulated a singular minimalism by effacing collaboration in favour of pedagogic transmission. Chapter 4 leaps ahead into the era of the “death of minimalism” to consider the relationship between Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. I focus in particular on the diverse applications of the terms “minimal” in in late 1970s downtown New York to show the many “indistinct minimalisms” (including punk and no wave) ongoing at the time. In the conclusion, I articulate a Rancièrian theory of names and naming to tie together several themes from the different case studies. My concern is to ask how the authorial name—whether proper, collective, or improper—attached to a piece of music impacts our historiographical treatment.

Keywords: Aesthetics
Authorship
Dispute
Historiography
Jacques RanciĂ¨re
Minimalism
Advisor: Lee, Sherry D
A Prospective Analysis of the Influence of the Macrosystem, Biological, Psychological, Relational and Behavioral Factors on the Experience of Embodiment, Body Esteem, and Disordered Eating of Mothers during their Transition from Pregnancy to Postpartum

This investigation involved a prospective study of women’s experiences with their bodies during advanced pregnancy and at 3 and 6 months postpartum. The predictors included measures related to the macrosystem (Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, and Pressures for Thinness), and biological (Weight Difference from Prepregnancy, Fatigue, and Labour and Delivery Control), psychological (Depression, Anxiety, Internalization of the Thin Ideal, Maternal Beliefs about Competence, and Comfort with Breastfeeding), relational (Social Support and Relationship with Partner), and behavioral factors (Physical Activity, Breastfeeding Practice, and Sexual Relationships). In order to enhance the understanding of shifts in body experiences from pregnancy to postpartum, three different measures of women’s experiences with their bodies were used: Experience of Embodiment, Body Esteem, and Disordered Eating. A sample of 208 women completed these measures online, ages 19-46. Women were found to have more negative embodied experiences, lower body image and a higher rate of disordered eating patterns at postpartum compared with the pregnancy phase. Regression analyses were conducted to predict postpartum adjustment, highlighting the predictive power of pressures for thinness, the internalization of the thin ideal and pregnancy related weight change on women’s embodiment, body image and eating patterns at postpartum. In addition to these three factors, psychological factors, specifically anxiety and depression, appeared to play a stronger role than biological, relational, or behavioral factors or variables related to the macrosystem. Taken together, the results of this investigation highlighted the adverse impact of weight related pressures on women’s experiences with their bodies and the need to address psychological experiences.

Keywords: Body Esteem
Depression
Disordered Eating
Experience of Embodiment
Postpartum
Pregnancy
Advisor: Piran, Niva
Improving the Retrievals of Greenhouse Gases from Ground-Based Solar Absorption Spectra

A quadratic speed-dependent Voigt (qSDV) line shape with line mixing (LM) has been implemented into the forward model of the spectral fitting software GFIT to improve the retrievals of total columns of CO2, CH4, and O2 from high-resolution ground-based solar absorption spectra. Absorption coefficients were calculated using the qSDV+LM spectral line shape with spectroscopic parameters for the strong 20013←00001 CO2 band centered at 4850 cm-1, the weak 30013←00001 and 30012←00001 CO2 bands centered at 6220 cm-1 and 6340 cm-1 respectively, as well as the 2ν3 band of CH4. Absorption coefficient calculations were validated using laboratory spectra of CO2 and CH4. Laboratory spectra were modeled better with the qSDV+LM when compared to using the Voigt spectral line shape. The qSDV was used to fit air-broadened, room-temperature, cavity ring-down spectra of the a^1 ∆_g←X^3 Σ_g^- O2 band. It was shown that the Voigt line shape is inadequate to model the spectral lines of this O2 band and that speed-dependent effects need to be taken into account. Spectroscopic parameters of the discrete spectral lines of the O2 a^1 ∆_g←X^3 Σ_g^- band were retrieved and implemented in GFIT. A year of ground-based solar absorption spectra acquired at Eureka (Nunavut, Canada), Park Falls (Wisconsin, USA), Lamont (Oklahoma, USA), and Darwin (Northern Territory, Australia) were processed using GFIT. Total columns of CO2, CH4, and O2 were retrieved using absorption coefficients calculated assuming a Voigt spectral line shape and the qSDV+LM (with LM used when applicable). With the qSDV+LM, spectral fits of CO2 and CH4 improved as a function of solar zenith angle. The airmass dependence of the retrieved columns of CO2, CH4, and O2, as well as the column-averaged dry-air mole-fraction of CO2 (XCO2) decreased while the accuracy of XCO2 improved.

Keywords: Fourier Transform Spectrometers
Greenhouse Gases
Radiative Transfer
Remote sensing
Spectral line shape
Spectroscopy
Advisor: Strong, Kimberly
PET Analysis of the Effect of Season, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Light Therapy on Serotonin Transporter Binding

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is characterized by recurrent major depressive episodes during fall-winter with remission in spring-summer. SAD has an annual prevalence of 1-6% with higher rates at more extreme latitudes. However, there is limited understanding of its neuropathophysiology as no brain biomarkers have been identified that are associated with SAD. Interestingly, serotonin transporter binding (5-HTT BP

Keywords: light therapy
positron emission tomography
seasonal affective disorder
serotonin transporter
Advisor: Meyer, Jeffrey H.
Nobrega, Jose N.
Regulation of Seed Germination at High Temperature in Arabidopsis thaliana

Correct timing of the transition from embryonic to post-embryonic development, which in plants coincides with the break of seed dormancy and the onset of germination, is critical for plant survival. Endogenous signals and environmental cues dictate the dormancy state of the seed and the timing of germination. Two hormones play a pivotal role in regulating this phase transition; the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) promotes dormancy and inhibits germination, while gibberellins (GA) stimulate germination. Previously, it was shown that unfavorable environmental conditions, such as supraoptimal temperature, stimulate ABA metabolism to induce secondary dormancy and inhibit germination. In this study, we characterized the mechanisms that regulate seed responses to high temperature. Microarray analysis revealed that the seed transcriptome is highly altered during prolonged heat stress. Genes involved in hormone metabolism and signaling, stress tolerance and seed maturation were enriched, a subset of which are targets of B3 domain transcription factors such as FUSCA3 (FUS3). We showed that FUS3, a master regulator of seed maturation and dormancy, is degraded during germination at optimal temperature. However, FUS3 degradation is inhibited in seeds imbibed at high temperature due to the high ABA/GA ratio. Overexpression of FUS3 increases seed sensitivity to high temperature by inducing de novo ABA synthesis, and confers greater seedling survival upon exit from heat stress. During supraoptimal temperature imbibition, the activity of the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) is suppressed in an ABA-dependent manner; both protein ubiquitination, and proteasome activity are strongly decreased. Similarly, UPS function is inhibited in seeds exposed to ABA at optimal temperature, but only within 2 days post-germination, a developmental window that governs seed sensitivity to ABA. Inhibition of proteasome activity arrested germination of excised, matured embryos, suggesting that protein degradation is required for germination. Supraoptimal temperature or ABA treatment do not alter transcription of most UPS genes, instead the ratio of various proteasomal complexes changes under these conditions, suggesting that ABA and high temperature affect proteasome activity posttranslationally. This study shows that supraoptimal temperature reshapes the transcriptome of imbibed seeds to induced stress tolerance, seed maturation, and hormone metabolism genes. A high ABA level inhibits UPS activity, leading to the accumulation of dormancy and stress regulators, ultimately inducing thermoinhibition. These findings provide a novel perspective on how hormones integrate environmental cues to regulate germination through modulation of UPS function.

Keywords: ABA
Arabidopsis
dormancy
germination
proteasome
thermoinhibition
Advisor: Gazzarrini, Sonia
Assessing Intercultural Competence: A Comparative Study of Japanese Students in Study Abroad Programs

This study explores the elements of study abroad programs that contribute to cultivating intercultural competence in Japanese students. Through an empirically based quantitative and qualitative examination of 344 Japanese students on short and medium-term study abroad programs in Canada and the United States, the research attempts to gain an understanding of the factors that enhance the development of intercultural competence. The primary findings show that the impact of study abroad programs can be heightened by arranging pre-departure orientations for all students according to specific student and program factors. Sending students abroad without carefully designed institutional arrangements to facilitate the development of intercultural competence is shown to be ineffective. This study looks at three student factors - gender, prior international experience and prior foreign language proficiency and five program factors - program duration, program type, stay type, destination and pre-departure orientation. The findings clearly demonstrate the importance of providing students with pre-departure orientations and both foreign language training and intercultural education. Furthermore, understanding studentsâ intercultural competence in the pre-study abroad period is essential to determine program duration. This study indicates that both short and medium-term study abroad programs are effective for students whose intercultural competence is at the lower level prior to departure, while medium-term programs are more effective for students whose intercultural competence is at a higher level. At the national level, the Japanese Ministry of Education is advised to encourage universities to develop guidelines to increase the effectiveness of study abroad programs and a policy on developing appropriate personnel for cultivating studentsâ intercultural competence. The study has not only identified concrete empirical factors in study abroad programs that impact changes in studentsâ intercultural competence, but also elaborated policy implications at the institutional and national levels that would enhance the development of intercultural competence for Japanese students in study abroad programs.

Keywords: International Education
Japan
Study abroad programs
Advisor: Hayhoe, Ruth
Knight, Jane
Thermodynamic Investigation of the Interaction between Polymer and Gases

This thesis investigates the interaction between blowing agents and polymer matrix. Existing theoretical model was further developed to accommodate the polymer and blowing agent under study. The obtained results are not only useful for the optimization of the plastic foam fabrication process but also provides a different approach to usage of blowing agents. A magnetic suspension balance and an in-house visualizing dilatometer were used to obtain the sorption of blowing agents in polymer melts under elevated temperature and pressure. The proposed theoretical approach based on the thermodynamic model of SS-EOS is applied to understand the interaction of blowing agents with the polymer melt and one another (in the case of blend blowing agent). An in-depth study of the interaction of a blend of CO2 and DME with PS was conducted. Experimental volume swelling of the blend/PS mixture was measured and compared to the theoretical volume swelling obtained via ternary based SS-EOS, insuring the models validity. The effect of plasticization due to dissolution of DME on the solubility of CO2 in PS was then investigated by utilizing the aforementioned model. It was noted that the dissolution of DME increased the concentration of CO2 in PS and lowering the saturation pressure needed to dissolved a certain amount of CO2 in PS melt. The phenomenon of retrograde vitrification in PMMA induced due dissolution of CO2 was investigated in light of the thermodynamic properties resulting from the interaction of polymer and blowing agent. Solubility and volume swelling were measured in the pressure and temperature ranges promoting vitrification phenomenon, with relation being established between the thermodynamic properties and the vitrification process. Foaming of PMMA was conducted at various temperature values to investigate the application of this phenomenon.

Keywords: Blend Gases
Equation of State
Foaming
Interfacial tension
Solubility
Thermodynamics
Advisor: Park, Chul B
Cell Polarity Protein SCRIBBLE Regulates Pregnancy-induced Alveologenesis In the Mammary Gland

SCRIBBLE (SCRIB) was identified as a regulator of epithelial cell polarity and morphogenesis in Drosophila. Subsequent studies in mammalian cells demonstrated that SCRIB regulates epithelial cell polarization, cell migration, and tumourigenesis. SCRIB also plays important roles during mammalian development where loss of SCRIB resulted in embryonic lethality and tissue- specific knockout studies identified SCRIB as a tumor suppressor in the prostate, lung, and mammary gland. However, the role SCRIB plays in adult epithelial tissues during physiological remodeling remains unknown. To address this question, we generated an inducible RNAi mouse model whereby SCRIB expression can be controlled in vivo. Since the mouse mammary gland undergoes morphological changes during pregnancy, we investigated the effects of inactivating SCRIB in adult mammary epithelial cells. Downregulation of SCRIB in adult mammary glands resulted in a significant decrease in development of alveolar buds and reduced epithelial content, in conjunction with a decrease in cell proliferation during pregnancy. Surprisingly, loss of SCRIB did not affect the differentiation or polarization of alveolar structures. Mechanistically, SCRIB knockdown attenuated prolactin- induced activation of the JAK2/STAT5 signaling pathway, a critical mediator of pregnancy- induced cell proliferation. Thus, in contrast to the previously reported role for SCRIB in the virgin gland as a negative regulator of proliferation, these studies identify SCRIB as a positive regulator of pregnancy-induced alveologenesis in the adult mammary gland. The attenuation of prolactin responsiveness in SCRIB knockdown cells was attributable to decreased cell surface accumulation of the prolactin receptor (PRLR). In SCRIB knockdown cells, PRLR partially co-localized with the Golgi apparatus and recycling endosome. Using an unbiased mass spectrometry approach, we found that SCRIB controlled levels of multiple cell surface proteins. Collectively, the studies in this dissertation identify SCRIB as a positive regulator of prolactin-initiated proliferation of mammary epithelial cells during pregnancy and steady state cell surface levels of PRLR.

Keywords: Mammary Gland
Polarity
Prolactin
Receptor trafficking
Scribble
Advisor: Muthuswamy, Senthil K