VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Emphasizing the Vectors in Vector-borne Disease Transmission and Evolution

Disease transmission is a product of mechanisms and interactions at multiple levels of biological organization, and a comprehensive understanding of these processes is essential to disease control. Malaria parasites, for example, can infect dozens of vector species and undergo complex, density-dependent developmental transitions within those vectors, but the consequences of vector diversity on disease transmission, or vector-parasite interactions on parasite trait evolution, have rarely been explored. My research fills these gaps by investigating the myriad and nuanced roles that vectors play in disease ecology and evolution beyond simply carrying parasites. First, I examine the impact of vector diversity on malaria transmission. I curated a unique, multi-scale dataset of global mosquito distribution and malaria burden, and synthesized disparate theory for vector community ecology, linking principles of community assembly to disease risk. Using structural equation models, I provide the first empirical evidence that mosquito diversity amplifies malaria prevalence at both global and local scales, and demonstrate that this relationship is sensitive to a multitude of abiotic factors. Second, I investigate the evolutionary consequences of vector-parasite interactions. For malaria parasites, relative investment in transmission versus proliferative (i.e., host cell-infecting) stages is a key trait determining infectiousness, infection severity, and ultimately parasite fitness. To study how developmental processes and trade-offs that occur in the vector interact with the host half of the parasite life cycle to influence investment strategies in the host, I developed a mechanistic, mathematical model that links parasite development dynamics within-hosts and within-vectors. This model generates predictions for optimal transmission investment under a variety of scenarios, and provides refined proxies of parasite fitness by including transmission potential after passage through the vector, a major advancement over classic models of parasite evolution. Together, my research elevates vectors to their rightful place as crucial drivers of disease ecology and evolution.

Keywords: disease ecology
life-history evolution
malaria
mosquitoes
parasite
vector ecology
Advisor: Mideo, Nicole
Help-seeking Behaviours, Access to Care and Suicide among Rural and Urban Populations in Ontario, Canada

Suicide is a significant cause of premature death. Rural populations may be particularly vulnerable for multiple reasons including healthcare access, stigma, and isolation. First, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to examine the association between rurality and suicide and suicide attempts among English-speaking high-income countries. Findings indicated that rural males were more likely to die from suicide than their urban counterparts (RR=1.41, 95%CI=1.21-1.64, I2=96%). Second, in a population-based case-control study of adults living in Ontario, rurality was associated with increased risk of suicide among rural males (AOR=1.70, 95%CI=1.49-1.95). Rurality was also found to be associated with suicide attempts among both males and females (males: AOR=1.37, 95% CI=1.24-1.50; females: AOR=1.26, 95% CI=1.14-1.39). Findings indicated a pattern of increasing risk of suicide and suicide attempts with increasing rurality. The third manuscript examined the association between rurality and help-seeking behaviours. We found that among those who attempted suicide, those living in rural areas were significantly less likely to have visited a psychiatrist prior to attempt compared to those living in urban areas (rural males: AOR=0.49, 95%CI=0.43-0.56; rural females: AOR=0.51, 95%CI=0.46-0.57). We found the same association among those who died by suicide (rural males: AOR=0.42, 95%CI=0.31-0.57; rural females: AOR=0.46, 95%CI=0.29-0.97). Rural males who attempted or died by suicide, and rural females who attempted suicide were less likely to seek help from a general practitioner for mental health purposes. The final manuscript examined the association between travel time to health care and suicide outcomes. Findings suggested that males who must travel longer to hospitals are at a greater risk of suicide compared to those who travel shorter lengths of time (AOR=2.08, 95% CI=1.61-2.69). Longer travel times to psychiatric hospitals also increased risk of suicide among males (AOR=1.03, 95%CI=1.02-1.05). Furthermore, travel time to care was a mediator of the association between rurality and suicide. Together these findings suggest that those who live in rural areas are at increased risk of suicide attempts, and rural males are at increased risk of death by suicide. This dissertation provides insights into how travel time to care and help-seeking may impact risk of suicide in the context of rurality.

Keywords: rurality
suicide
Advisor: Kurdyak, Paul
Nature, Freedom, and Toleration ad saeculum: Étienne de la Boétie and Jean Bodin in Dialogue

This dissertation places the works of Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) in dialogue with those of Jean Bodin (1530-1601) in order to better understand how competing notions of human nature, freedom, and conceptual (not to mention, literal) boundaries of civic belonging and political community were formed amidst the backdrop of the French Wars of Religion. This artificial dialogue is constructed by proverbially asking what each thinker has to say about two exigent and related questions of their day: human nature and its relationship to freedom and the question of toleration. La Boétie is most well-known for his short Discourse on Voluntary Servitude that went on to be appropriated by rebellious Reform factions in the decades immediately following his death, but would then find many afterlives as an inspirational text for republicans during the French Revolution, for revolutionary socialists of the Paris commune, and for various anarchist and libertarian thinkers in the past century. Jean Bodin, on the other hand, is most associated with political theology and a theory of absolutist sovereignty that would go on to form the basis of the modern sovereign state system and is identified by both its critics and its proponents as the political foundation of modern authoritarianism and worse. Nevertheless, Jean Bodin was a life-long defender of toleration while La Boétie penned a short, yet characteristically impassioned, condemnation of toleration shortly before his death. Both thinkers centre freedom as a constitutive aspect of human nature, yet where free-will and the human ability to choose between good and evil forms the basis of all justice for Bodin, La Boétie pairs our innate freedom-from-subjection with an equally innate sociability that can all too easily enable customary servitude and tyranny to take hold. Both thinkers seek to understand and theorize how peace and freedom can be forged and lost in human politics ad saeculum. Boétian freedom and amitié would prove the fertile ground in which later republican notions of freedom-from-domination and fraternity would grow, along with attendant concerns over factionalism and the civil religion necessary to cohere a free demos. Bodinian freedom and pluralistic understanding of the republic as secular analogue of the divine cosmos provided the structural and conceptual scaffolding for modern, liberal pluralism, even as the shift to popular sovereignty deeply distinguishes Bodinian toleration from later iterations.

Keywords: Étienne de la Boétie
Freedom
Jean Bodin
Political theology
Secularism
Toleration
Advisor: Kingston, Rebecca
The Politics of Identity and Space: Muslim Female Students' Discourses on their Experiences in Secular High Schools

There is a wealth of existing literature on the importance of student organizations both at the secondary and post-secondary level; however, very little is known about Muslim female youth and their experiences in Muslim student groups in secondary schools. This study focuses on the discourses of adolescent Muslim females and their participation in Muslim student organizations in public high schools in Ontario. The educational experiences of Muslim female students are shaped by a variety of discourses, including Orientalism, secularism, Islamic religious discourses, and discourses on gender and sexuality. Through in-depth interviews with Muslim female high school students and Muslim high school teachers who supervise Muslim student organizations within one of the largest and most culturally and racially diverse school boards in Ontario, I explored the internal dynamics of Muslim student groups and their connection to identity and space. I also examined equity and inclusive education policy documents and religious accommodation policy guidelines in several public school boards in Ontario, in order to better understand the official discourses on religious accommodation. My analysis of participant discourses used the theoretical concepts of Orientalism, outlined by Edward Said, and Third Space by Homi Bhabha and Henri Lefebvre, as well as the notion of hybridity also conceptualized by Homi Bhabha. Student discourses revealed that participation in Muslim student groups provided them with avenues to socially integrate into the larger school community, as well as to develop tools to advocate for religious accommodations. In addition, participants highlighted that Muslim student groups often function as a Third Space within secular schools and have the capacity for transformative change with female leaders at the helm. Finally, teachers who were interviewed pointed out the importance of religious accommodations in the lives of Muslim students as well as the need to develop uniform policies in schools targeting the implementation and monitoring of religious accommodation policies. The lack of understanding of those policies at the school level often translates into a lack of professional development on religious accommodations and an uneven implementation of policies across schools and teachers.

Keywords: Hybridity
Muslim Student Association
Orientalism
Religious Accommodation
Religious Identity
Third Space
Advisor: Gerin-Lajoie, Diane
Metabolic and Regenerative Role of NLRP3 in Response to Thermal Injury

Severe burns are accompanied by hyperinflammation and hypermetabolism, which increase risk of immune compromise, physiologic exhaustion and ultimately, death. However, these post- trauma phenomena are not wholly detrimental and may confer a survival advantage during the acute phase, while chronic alterations contribute to poor outcomes. In particular, chronically enhanced inflammation may interfere with wound healing, increasing risk of infection, fluid loss, impairing thermoregulation and sustaining metabolic dysregulation. Thus, we investigated the beneficial versus injurious role of inflammation after burn focusing on the master regulator of post-trauma inflammation – NLRP3 inflammasome. Although its inflammatory role is established, recent evidence suggests that NLRP3-mediated inflammation has a pivotal effect on metabolism as well. In this study, we investigated NLRP3-mediated inflammation in burn skin and white adipose tissue (WAT). We aimed to determine if 1) local inflammation is beneficial in wound healing, 2) WAT inflammation regulates lipid metabolism (i.e., lipolysis and browning), and whether 3) WAT metabolic alterations in turn impact healing of adjacent skin. In our initial studies, we investigated whether and how NLRP3-mediated inflammation effects post-burn healing. We demonstrated that lack of acute inflammation impairs normal healing, while prolonged inflammation contributes to scarring. Subsequently, we investigated the role of NLRP3-mediated inflammation in WAT metabolism, which can indirectly affect wound healing and substantially impacts post-burn outcomes. Here, we showed that lack of NLRP3-mediated inflammation and altered inflammatory responses enhance lipid turnover acutely and contribute to persistent, augmented browning. Thus, NLRP3 activation has a key upstream role in quelling WAT dysfunction. Finally, we demonstrated that WAT dysfunction and ensuing increases in lipolytic byproducts in turn enhance lipid uptake to injured skin, interfering with normal healing. Taken together, these studies indicated that post-burn inflammation is initially an adaptive response. Acute activation of inflammatory pathways after trauma is not only beneficial in terms of direct inflammatory and immune effects (e.g., cytokine production, macrophage chemotaxis) but also due to regulation of tissue metabolism (e.g., glycolysis, lipolysis, browning). A key mediator of this cross talk between inflammation and metabolism is NLRP3 inflammasome, a critical acute phase mediator that has a more significant role in post-trauma recovery than previously known.

Keywords: Adipose
Burn
Inflammation
Macrophages
NLRP3
Wound Healing
Advisor: Jeschke, Marc G
Creative Visual Expression in Immersive 3D Environments

Recent developments in immersive technologies of virtual and augmented realities (VR/AR) have opened up the immersive space for 3D creation. By removing the crutch of two-dimensional proxies for input and output, the immersive medium presents a significant advance in the design of intuitive interfaces for 3D creative expression. However, immersion also presents its own unique challenges in precision, control, ergonomics, and perception. This thesis advocates for a human-centred approach to the design of creative tools for immersive environments. Conducting interviews, observational studies, and formal quantitative experiments reveals insights into the needs and aspirations of future users of immersive tools. These user studies build fundamental knowledge about the limitations of human perception and our musculoskeletal system. These insights are then utilized to build concrete design guidelines for immersive creation tools. We present four immersive tools, targeted at sketching, modelling, and animation tasks in VR/AR. These tools harness 3D mid-air interactions to improve the user experience for existing design tasks, and to enable novel design aesthetics.

Keywords: 3D creation
animation
augmented reality
sketching
virtual reality
Advisor: Singh, Karan
Essays on Banking Regulations and Financial Risk Modelling

This dissertation presents three studies of financial risk modelling, with a particular focus on the banking and credit system. The first chapter presents a structural model of a syndicated lending market and examines the response of banks and non-bank financial institutions to different capital ratio regulatory requirements. I show that regulatory requirements may have opposite effects on banks than on non-banks. While capital ratios are effective for banks to reduce their risk exposure, they may lead non-banks to take on more risk and result in increasing the level of risk borne by the system. The second chapter posits that the substitutability between safe and liquid assets that are often used as collateral in credit markets is inherently dynamic. By using Kalman and particle filtering, I estimate a time-varying model of the elasticity of substitution and show that it reflects well the credit boom and bust cycles of the 1990s and 2000s. The third chapter develops an estimation methodology suitable for complex financial models that exhibit dynamic dependence patterns featuring non-elliptic distribution, focusing on the Copula multivariate GARCH (CMGARCH) model. Using Constrained Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methodology as a Bayesian analysis of the CMGARCH, I show increased efficiency in the inference of the coefficients of tail dependence. Cette thèse présente trois études sur la modélisation des risques financiers, avec un accent particulier sur le système bancaire et de crédit. Le premier chapitre présente un modèle structurel d'un marché des prêts syndiqués et examine la réponse des banques et des institutions financières non-bancaires aux différentes exigences réglementaires en matière de ratio de fonds propres. Je montre que les exigences réglementaires peuvent avoir des effets opposés sur les banques et sur les non-banques. Si les ratios de fonds propres permettent aux banques de réduire leur exposition au risque, ils peuvent conduire les non-banques à prendre plus de risques et entraîner une augmentation du niveau de risque supporté par le système. Le deuxième chapitre postule que la substituabilité entre les actifs sûrs et liquides qui sont souvent utilisés comme garantie sur les marchés du crédit est intrinsèquement dynamique. En utilisant un filtre de Kalman et un filtre à particules, j'évalue un modèle de l'élasticité de substitution variable dans le temps et montre qu'il reflète bien les cycles d'expansion et de récession du crédit des années 1990 et 2000. Le troisième chapitre développe une méthodologie d'estimation adaptée aux modèles financiers complexes qui présentent des modèles de dépendance dynamique comportant une distribution non-elliptique, en se concentrant sur le modèle de Copula multivarié GARCH (CMGARCH). En utilisant la méthodologie de Monte Carlo hamiltonienne contrainte dans une analyse Bayésienne du CMGARCH, je montre une efficacité accrue dans l'inférence des coefficients de dépendance de queue.

Keywords: Banking
Credit
Econometrics
Financial Regulations
Risk Management
Advisor: Burda, Martin
Seeing from Da Yaad: Black Women and the Politics of Respect

Why would law-abiding citizens protest the arrest of a don (i.e., a leader of a criminal organization) and confront the Jamaican constabulary police force, especially when such actions carry personal risk to the protestors’ safety? Why would the majority of protestors be women? These were the two questions that became the core puzzle for my dissertation, following the protests in Kingston, Jamaica that erupted in response to the state’s attempt to arrest and detain a don in May 2010. Current political science approaches might view the protests as irrational behaviour considering that such actions carry great personal risk and little potential benefit for the protestors. My study reveals that residents who engage in high-risk collective action in support of a don often do so because they see the don as a legitimate political authority. An important reason why they hold this view is because the dons treat them with respect. The experience of respect is an important, albeit understudied, mechanism that plays a central role in the political behaviour and strategies of actors beyond conventional cost-benefit calculations. Respect is communicated to residents and made visible in key interactions with the don, via a mechanism that I call displays of respect. Displays of respect are exhibited through governance practices that the don establishes in the community, governance practices that are highly gendered and, in certain cases and in certain ways, designed to protect women. Respect is one sort of political subjectivity, an internalised perception of and relation to authority, but the meaning of respect depends on context. To understand any political subjectivities, we have to understand how those subjectivities are embodied, i.e., how socio-political and personal histories, experiences of racialization, gendering, and personal experiences become internalised, how they affect perceptions and emotions, and how they shape the ways in which people relate to various sorts of authorities. This framework allows us to consider the political subjectivities of Black women in Jamaican garrison communities and how the feeling of being respected as a political subject informs their political motivations, perceptions, strategies, decisions, and ways of being in the present.

Keywords: Black women
Displays of respect
Garrison
Jamaica
Political subjectivity
Respect
Advisor: Carens, Joseph
Fujii, Lee Ann
Women Disputing Inheritances: Status, Material Culture, Law, and Agency in Sixteenth-century Friuli

This dissertation highlights the experiences of three Friulian women alive in the first half of the sixteenth-century who negotiated complex issues around property, rights, and law generated out of conflicts in or around their marriages. In examining moments of transition and conflict in their lives through the lens of material culture we learn a great deal about the ways early modern women could assert agency in a time and place undergoing significant social change. Through a comparison of three microhistorical case-studies, similar motives, strategies and aspirations emerge. Giulia de Urbanis, Mora Quagliana, and Agata di Varmo all engaged in inheritance disputes in order to ensure their economic well-being. In their attempts to right perceived injustices in their lives, Giulia, Mora, and Agata all exercised agency within a legal system not known for being particularly receptive to challenges to patriarchal norms. These women are each representative of different social and marital statuses, and therefore the impact of the elements of class and the intersection of legal systems on agency is explored. Additionally, the material objects at the heart of these lawsuits, which these women went to great lengths to secure, help paint a picture of their domestic worlds and establish the vital importance of dotal goods to women’s survival. By focusing this examination in Friuli, a territory at the intersection of the era’s key social, political and legal movements, we gain a more nuanced impression of the Italian peninsula in the sixteenth-century and expand our understanding of how these intersections shaped women’s experience. This study argues that, when taken together, the experiences of Giulia, Mora, and Agata demonstrate that agentic capacity was shaped by class and status. Specifically, women could exploit traditional gender roles, concepts of honour, and a range of social networks in order to manipulate legal ambiguities to their advantage during times of social upheaval.

Advisor: Bartlett, Kenneth
An Intersectional and Ecological Approach to Undestanding Cyber-sexual Violence Vulnerability: Connecting Individual, Environmental, and Sociocultural Factors

Cyber-sexual violence is an emerging social and public health concern, yet our knowledge and understanding of this issue is limited. In light of this, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the factors that create a vulnerability for cyber-sexual violence at each level of social ecology, using an ecological and intersectional framework as a guide. In order to fulfill the above research objective, a cross-sectional research design was employed in which a sample of Canadian adults completed an online self-guided survey. The results of this study indicate that cyber-sexual violence vulnerability can be conceptualized as emerging from an interplay among the individual level variables of age and gender identity; the microsystem level variables of time spent online, time spent using online dating sites, and engagement in sexting; as well as the chronosystem variable of sexual violence victimization history. Moreover, when considered independently, engagement in sexting and sexual violence victimization history were the sole variables that significantly predicted cyber-sexual violence vulnerability. The results of this study indicate that in order to establish effective cyber-sexual violence prevention and intervention, we must take into account the various aspects of an individual’s identity, environment, and experiences as well as the sociocultural context in which they exist.

Keywords: Cyber-sexual violence
Sexual violence
Victimization
Advisor: Stermac, Lana