VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Subtle Bias in Legal Decision Making: How Attitudes and Social Norms Affect Primary and Peripheral Targets

Before the 1990s controlled research using mock jurors consistently found black defendants guilty more often than white. However, more recently, research has generally failed to find this effect. One explanation is that prejudice has been reduced so much that there is no longer an effect. While there does seem to have been a reduction in overt prejudice, it is unlikely that it has decreased to the point that it does not affect verdicts. A more likely explanation is that strong social norms exist concerning prejudice which result in efforts to avoid being (or appearing) biased. Thus, when motivation to reduce prejudice is salient, mock jurors and perhaps real jurors will display little or no prejudice; but when motivation to reduce prejudice is not salient, decision-making becomes spontaneous and whatever prejudice does exist will affect decisions. In a series of 6 studies, race of defendant, race of witness, and the salience of the importance of being unbiased were varied. Results revealed a complex situation with many factors playing a part. Race of key alibi witness played a key role, with the white witness favoured, and the black witness mistrusted. Outcomes may be partially predicted based on Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Those high in SDO treat incongruent defendant/witness race pairs more harshly than congruent race pairs. Modern apparently egalitarian outcomes are perhaps due to low prejudice participants’ bias in favour of black defendants while high prejudice participants were biased against black defendants – effectively cancelling out each others’ verdicts. Those low in SDO treat incongruent defendant/witness race pair too leniently as compared to congruent race pairs. When race is made salient, bias is reduced, and though the average results are still essentially egalitarian, these verdicts are more truly egalitarian – much fairer and less biased when considered at an individual level. These results also reinforce theories of dual process models of attitudes. Individuals may have common stereotype knowledge, but separate activation based on prejudice levels. Both high and low prejudiced individuals can control bias with the proper motivation.

Keywords: juror bias
stereotypes
prejudice
discrimination
Advisor: Freedman, Jonathan L.
Perceived Job Insecurity and Health Across the Life Course

Job loss and unemployment have been consistently shown to have deleterious consequences for health. However, less is known about how insecure employment experiences and the threat of job loss influence well-being. Given the high levels of uncertainty associated with threatened and insecure employment, perceptions of job insecurity are thought to constitute a potent form of work stress because the ambiguity over a future undesirable event—job loss—undermines coping strategies and attempts at stress reduction. It has been suggested, then, that health penalties should be greatest with prolonged exposure to this threat. Further, since the meaning of job loss likely varies across working life, individual reactions may be contingent on life course position. Drawing from the Stress Process Model and the life course perspective, this dissertation explores whether the two factors of timing and duration influence the health penalties associated with perceived job insecurity, along with its impact on personality traits that are fundamental to well-being. iii Findings reveal the detrimental social-psychological and health implications of perceived job insecurity based on a national panel study of American workers surveyed in 2005 and 2007. Health penalties associated with perceived job insecurity are greatest for middle age workers reporting prolonged exposure to the threat of job loss. In addition, a personality trait—a high sense of personal control over one’s life—is demonstrated to alleviate the stress of perceived job insecurity; but this trait is itself prone to erosion with prolonged exposure to insecure employment. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to knowledge about the social-psychological processes through which insecure employment impacts individual well-being, and how these processes are shaped by age as a key social status and life course marker.

Keywords: Job Insecurity
Health
life course
Advisor: Schieman,
Walter Benjamin's Monadology

Walter Benjamin persistently refers to Leibniz’s monad, from his doctoral dissertation (1919), to his last written work, the theses ‘On the Concept of History’ (1940). This dissertation argues that the systematic intent of Benjamin’s early work (1916–1928) can be brought out most clearly by examining Benjamin’s appropriation of Leibnizian metaphysics. The task of this dissertation is to interpret Benjamin’s Leibniz, and to follow the gestures of his text. Benjamin was not interested in presenting a scholarly interpretation of Leibniz’s philosophy. Leibniz’s monad had a unique significance for Benjamin’s own philosophical project. In his early work, this project was to determine a method for the philosophical interpretation of art. The core of my dissertation distills what could be called Benjamin’s ‘aesthetic theory.’ According to Benjamin, works of art do not express their truth-content discursively; rather, they express an idea in a configuration of material detail. I argue that Benjamin draws on a Leibnizian concept of expression. One thing expresses another if it preserves the same logical relationships as that which it represents. According to Benjamin, an idea is the most adequate expression of a work: it preserves the configuration of a work’s material content, and represents this configuration (or “constellation” in Benjamin’s terms) in the nexus of predicates in a ‘complete individual concept,’ or idea. The second aspect of this argument is more applied in its focus: Benjamin’s Habilitation thesis describes an elective affinity between Leibniz’s monadic metaphysics and the Baroque Trauerspiel. Benjamin’s analysis of the Baroque dramas and his interpretation of Leibniz are mutually illuminating. The point that legitimates this comparison is not only historical, as both are products of the seventeenth century, but can also be presented as an idea. Both Leibniz’s metaphysics and the Baroque Trauerspiel are engaged in the secularization of history. My argument proceeds in five chapters. In Chapter One, I trace the historical sources of Benjamin’s interpretation of Leibniz. In Chapters Two, Three, and Four, I discuss Benjamin’s monadic theory of ideas. Finally, in Chapter Five, I address Benjamin’s response to Schmitt’s Political Theology. The Epilogue to this dissertation is a reading of Hamlet, which was, in Benjamin’s view, the Baroque Trauerspiel, par excellence. Hamlet’s world is a self-enclosed totality, or monad.

Keywords: Walter Benjamin
G.W. Leibniz
Monadology
Advisor: Comay, Rebecca
Gibbs, Robert
Temporal Variations in the Compliance of Gas Hydrate Formations

Seafloor compliance is a non-intrusive geophysical method sensitive to the shear modulus of the sediments below the seafloor. A compliance analysis requires the computation of the frequency dependent transfer function between the vertical stress, produced at the seafloor by the ultra low frequency passive source-infra-gravity waves, and the resulting displacement, related to velocity through the frequency. The displacement of the ocean floor is dependent on the elastic structure of the sediments and the compliance function is tuned to different depths, i.e., a change in the elastic parameters at a given depth is sensed by the compliance function at a particular frequency. In a gas hydrate system, the magnitude of the stiffness is a measure of the quantity of gas hydrates present. Gas hydrates contain immense stores of greenhouse gases making them relevant to climate change science, and represent an important potential alternative source of energy. Bullseye Vent is a gas hydrate system located in an area that has been intensively studied for over 2 decades and research results suggest that this system is evolving over time. A partnership with NEPTUNE Canada allowed for the investigation of this possible evolution. This thesis describes a compliance experiment configured for NEPTUNE Canada’s seafloor observatory and its failure. It also describes the use of 203 days of simultaneously logged pressure and velocity time-series data, measured by a Scripps differential pressure gauge, and a Güralp CMG-1T broadband seismometer on NEPTUNE Canada’s seismic station, respectively, to evaluate variations in sediment stiffness near Bullseye. The evaluation resulted in a (- 4.49 x10-3± 3.52 x 10-3) % change of the transfer function of 3rd October, 2010 and represents a 2.88% decrease in the stiffness of the sediments over the period. This thesis also outlines a new algorithm for calculating the static compliance of isotropic layered sediments.

Keywords: SEAFLOOR COMPLIANCE
GAS HYDRATES
BULLSEYE VENT
TREND ANALYSIS
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
EIGENPARAMETER ANALYSIS
HYDRATE MASS VARIATION
LONG TERM TRENDS IN HYDRATE MASS
MODIFIED YORK METHOD
MARINE GEOPHYISCS
MARINE SEDIMENT
NEPTUNE CANADA
SHEAR MODULUS
GAS HYDRATE CONCENTRATIONS
CASCADIA MARGIN
MARINE GAS HYDRATES
INFRA-GRAVITY WAVES
SEISMOMETERS
SCRIPPS DIFFERENTIAL PRESSURE GAUGE
SCRIPPS DPG
ODP SITE 889
BROADBAND SEISMOMETER
gPhone
DGP calibration
Bottom Pressure Recorder
Guralp CGM-1T
Coherence
transfer function bounds
f-test
bootstrapping
wave propagation matrix
static solution
ocean bottom seismometer
tsunami
earthquakes
Modified York least squares
temporal variations
linear trend in gas hydrates
Power spectral densities
1D compliance solution
1D compliance algorithm
seafloor compliance instrumentation
seafloor compliance instrument deployment
Micro-g gravitimeter
triple phase boundary equation
ultra-low frequency seismics
seafloor pressure spectrum
seafloor gravity spectrum
pacific ocean
off-shore British Columbia
seafloor observatory
static compliance of layered structures
geophysics
gas hydrate characterization
Advisor: Edwards, R. Nigel
A Study on the Periodic Precipitation Phenomena and Their Application to Drug Delivery Systems

The main objective of this research was to better understand, predict and control of the periodic precipitation process and to apply such programmed periodic precipitation to the design of a pulsatile delivery system. In the first part of this study, a generalized model taking into account both nucleation, particle growth, and ripening process was refined and solved under various new concentration boundary conditions not previously investigated. The results clearly delineate the key differences between boundary conditions of infinite versus finite supply of inner electrolyte. When the inner electrolyte boundary concentration was allowed to increase exponentially with time, equidistant periodic precipitation was predicted and subsequently confirmed experimentally. In addition, the effects of product solubility and reaction rate constant were also shown to be important in determining the band number and band spacing. In the second part of this study, the effects of gel crosslinking and gel charge density on the periodic precipitation were investigated. The results indicate that by increasing either the gel crosslinking or decreasing the gel charge density will reduce the diffusion rate of the reactants resulting in closely spaced bands. In addition, a new and improved rotating disk method for characterizing polyelectrolyte gels with ion-penetrable soft surfaces has been established by taking into account the effect of surface conductivity which is usually ignored for ion-impenetrable hard surfaces. In the third part of this work, periodic precipitation formed in multi-component systems has been shown to be governed by a heterogeneous nucleation mechanism. Using this approach, periodic precipitation of an insulin mimetic compound VO2+ in gelatin gel, which cannot form alone in a single reaction system, was induced by the periodic precipitation of Mg(OH)2 in a multi-component system. Pulsatile release of VO2+ from the resulting multi-layered structure of VO(OH)2 via a surface erosion mechanism was subsequently demonstrated.

Keywords: Periodic Precipitation
Pulsatile drug delivery
Advisor: Lee, Ping I.
Techno-economic and Environmental Assessments of Replacing Conventional Fossil Fuels: Oil Sands Industry Case Studies

Conventional fossil fuels are widely used, however there are growing concerns about the security of their supply, volatility in their prices and the environmental impacts of their extraction and use. The objective of this research is to investigate the potential for replacing conventional fuels in various applications, focusing on the Alberta oil sands industry. Such investigations require systems-level approaches able to handle multiple criteria, uncertainty, and the views of multiple stakeholders. To address this need, the following are developed: life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing models of polygeneration systems; a life cycle-based framework for multi-sectoral resource use decisions; and a method combining LCA and real options analyses to yield environmental and financial insights into projects. These tools are applied to options for utilizing oil sands outputs, both the petroleum resource (bitumen) and by-products of its processing (e.g., asphaltenes, coke), within the oil sands industry and across other sectors. For oil sands on-site use, multiple fuels are assessed for the polygeneration of electricity, steam and hydrogen, in terms of life cycle environmental and financial impacts; asphaltenes gasification with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the most promising option, able to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 25% of those of current natural gas-based systems. Coke management options are assessed with the life cycle-based framework; the most promising options are identified as: Electricity generation in China through integrated gasification combined cycle; and, hydrogen production in Alberta, either for sale or use by the oil sands industry. Without CCS, these options have amortized project values ranging from $21 to $160/t coke. The application of the combined LCA and real options analyses method finds that uncertainty in natural gas and potential carbon prices over time significantly impacts decisions on coke management; the formulated decision tree identifies increases of 29% and 11% in the financial and GHG emissions performance, respectively, of the overall coke management project compared to pursuing the decision identified by the life cycle-based framework. While promising options for replacing conventional fossil fuels are identified through systems-level analyses, there are trade-offs to be made among the financial, risk and environmental criteria.

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment
Life Cycle Costing
Real Options
Oil Sands
Energy Systems
Greenhouse Gases
Advisor: MacLean, Heather L.
Synthesis, Characterization, and Application of Metal-chelating Polymers for Mass Cytometric Bioassays

This thesis describes the synthesis, characterization, and application of metal-chelating polymers for mass-cytometric bioassays. Mass cytometry is a cell characterization technique in which cells are injected individually into an ICP-MS detector. Signal is provided by staining cell-surface or intracellular antigens with metal-labeled antibodies (Abs). These Abs are labeled through the covalent attachment of metal-chelating polymers which carry multiple copies of a lanthanide isotope. In this work, my first goal was to develop a facile, straightforward synthesis of a new generation of metal-chelating polymers. The synthesis began with reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer polymerization, and was followed by numerous post-polymerization pendant group transformations to introduce DTPA lanthanide chelators to every repeat unit, and a maleimide at the end of the chain. The second goal was to apply these metal-chelating polymers in bioassay experiments. The DTPA groups were loaded with lanthanide ions, and the maleimide group was used to covalently attach the polymer to an Ab. This goat anti-mouse conjugate was found to carry an average of 2.4 ± 0.3 polymer chains. Then, primary Ab conjugates were prepared and used in an 11-plex mass cytometry assay in the characterization of umbilical cord blood cells. The third goal was to expand the multiplexity of the assay. In current technology, the number of Abs that can be monitored simultaneously is limited to the 31 commercially available, stable lanthanide isotopes. Thus, I had an interest in preparing metal-chelating polymers that could carry other metals in the 100-220 amu range. I synthesized polymers with four different polyaminocarboxylate ligands, and investigated the loading of palladium and platinum ions into these polymers. Polymer-Ab conjugates prepared with palladium- and platinum-loaded polymers gave curious results, in that only dead cells were recognized. The fourth goal was to create dual-purpose Ab tags. My approach was to synthesize polymers similar to those described above, but which also carried two to six fluorescent dyes. Polymer-Ab conjugates prepared with four different dye-labeled polymers gave mixed results. Two of the four conjugates performed well in FACS and mass cytometric assays, but the other two did not. Further experiments are needed to overcome this problem.

Keywords: Metal-Chelating Polymers
Affinity Bioassays
Advisor: Winnik, Mitchell A
Serotonin- and Dopamine-mediated Neurotransmission in the Pathophysiology and Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease

Dopamine deficiency in the striatum is a central feature of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Symptomatic therapy with L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) aims at restoring physiological dopaminergic neurotransmission within the brain. Unfortunately, current treatment paradigms fail to achieve this goal, which leads to the emergence of motor complications, secondary to long term L-DOPA administration, including dyskinesia and wearing-OFF, and non-motor symptoms related to disease progression, including neuropsychiatric symptoms such as psychosis. However, degenerative changes in PD are not limited to the dopaminergic system, but also affect the serotonergic system. There is increasing evidence suggesting an involvement of the serotonergic system in the pathophysiology of both motor and non-motor complications of PD. The work presented in this Thesis has investigated the serotonergic and dopaminergic systems in PD, by performing post mortem studies in the brains of PD patients and of parkinsonian non-human primates (NHPs), and by performing behavioural studies in the parkinsonian rat and NHP models of PD. The main conclusions presented are that: 1) serotonergic type 1A (5-HT1A) and 2A (5-HT2A) levels are altered in the brains of dyskinetic parkinsonian NHPs, suggesting abnormal 5-HT1A- and 5-HT2A-mediated neurotransmission in dyskinesia; 2) 5-HT2A receptor levels are altered in the brains of PD patients with visual hallucinations (VH), suggesting abnormal 5-HT2A-mediated neurotransmission in VH; 3) some of the anti-dyskinetic actions attributed to stimulating 5-HT1A or antagonising 5-HT2A receptors might in fact be due to an antagonist action at D4 receptors, as antagonising D4 receptors significantly alleviates L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in rat and NHP models of PD; 4) concurrent inhibition of the serotonin and dopamine transporters (SERT and DAT, respectively) enhances duration of L-DOPA-induced ON-time in the parkinsonian NHP. However, the ratio of SERT/ DAT inhibition appears crucial in determining the quality of this extra ON-time; SERT > DAT inhibition exacerbates the severity of L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia, whereas SERT = DAT and DAT > SERT inhibition do not worsen the severity of L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia. Together these data extend our knowledge of the interaction between serotonin and dopamine, specifically as they relate to symptoms and side effects of dopamine replacement therapy in PD and highlight potential novel therapeutic approaches to PD.

Keywords: Parkinson's disease
MPTP-lesioned non-human primate
L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia
L-DOPA-induced non-motor complications
Advisor: Chen, Robert
The Impact of Degree-granting Requirements on Faculty Hiring Policies and Practices: A Case Study of Ontario's ITALs

The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the requirements of the Postsecondary Education Assessment Board (PEQAB) for graduate credentials for faculty teaching in college degree programs and the impact on hiring policies and practices at Ontario’s five Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALs) which are part of the 24 Ontario Colleges and Applied Arts and Technology (CAAT). The Innovative Hiring Practices model developed by Jones-Kavalier and Flannigan (2008) served as a framework for identifying relevant concepts, questions, and data collection strategies that were used in this study. This study used the exploratory descriptive case study method to analyze data collected from ITAL websites and from interviews with 16 key informants who are most directly involved in the recruitment and hiring process at the five ITALs. Interviews were conducted with five Human Resource Managers (one from each ITAL) and eleven Deans responsible for programming in business, media studies, applied technology and liberal arts across the five ITALs. The conclusions drawn from this study suggest that there a number of policies and practices that enhance or deter from hiring the most appropriate faculty across all credentials - degrees, diplomas, and certificates - at the participating ITALs. The review of the relevant documents posted on the ITAL websites revealed a lack of clarity for potential applicants around the definition of the institutions referred to variously as ITALs, polytechnics, or colleges. Job descriptions that describe faculty roles did not capture the full essence of the position, the importance of teaching or the role of research. Attracting sufficient numbers of appropriate candidates to meet the Postsecondary Quality Assessment Board (PEQAB) requirements was identified by study participants as a serious concern. The constraints of the Academic Employees Collective Agreement on faculty utilization was perceived by participants as a substantive challenge for recruiting faculty with the appropriate expectations and expertise to facilitate student learning in the unique context of Ontario colleges. The study findings may inform policy and practice that would enhance the quality of work-life for faculty teaching in the degree programs in the five ITALs, for the ultimate benefit of student learning.

Keywords: Ontario ITALs
faculty hiring
Advisor: Hildyard, Angela