VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Syrian Orthodox Christians in the Late Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Periods: Crisis and Revival

Despite the protection afforded to the smaller minorities of the Ottoman Empire through the millet system (Chapter One), Syrian Orthodoxy witnessed weakness and depletion throughout the nineteenth century, caused by significant conversion to Western Christianity, particularly in Syria and in Iraq. In the meantime a separate Western Christian intrusion was unfolding among the Syrian Orthodox communities in India. The resulting problems prompted a first journey by a Syrian Orthodox patriarch to that part of the world. Patriarch Peter’s journey in 1874-1877 was a landmark event that first entailed a journey to England and audience with Queen Victoria. The hitherto little known involvement of the Anglican Church in this intrusion is uncovered in Chapter Three. The events following the 1895 violence in southeastern Anatolia became precursors to the genocidal Safyo of 1915, which resulted in the annihilation of nearly half the Syrian Orthodox in Anatolia and brought Syrian Orthodoxy to the verge of extinction (Chapter Four). The apathy of the victors of World War I towards the beleaguered survivors at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 contrasted with the accommodation the exiled survivors found in the Arab lands to the south, where historical affinity was rekindled (Chapter Five). From the safety of this new environment, Syrian Orthodoxy, aided by the critical core of enlightened individuals, rose again drawing on venerable Syriac cultural tradition and an associated patriarchal standing that was characteristically free from social elitism and tribal sectarianism. Utilizing the quest for learning that was the mantra in the new nation states, the new leadership, despite meager resources, launched Syrian Orthodoxy on a course of revival and renaissance not witnessed since the days of Bar Hebraeus in the late thirteenth century (Chapter Six). In addition to conventional primary and secondary sources, this thesis relies substantially on hitherto untapped Syrian Orthodox archival material, which has shed new light on many important events. In particular, the analysis of nearly 5700 letters from ordinary people to the patriarch of the day (Chapter Two) has provided a subaltern view of society, as opposed to the elitist view which conventional history often offers.

Keywords: Crisis
Late Ottoman
Post Ottoman
Revival
Syrian Orthodox;
Advisor: Harrak, Amir
The Role of Enamel Matrix Protein Amelotin on Biomineralization

Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases of people worldwide. Despite recent advances in oral health care and restorative dentistry, the problem of dental caries and erosion remains unresolved due to the lack of knowledge of the natural biomineralization process of tooth tissues. Dental enamel plays a crucial role in preventing the tooth from destruction. However, if damaged or lost, it cannot be regenerated. Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind formation of enamel would not only make restoration of the tissue possible, but would also provide new insights for optimum design of calcium phosphate based biomaterials for dental and orthopedic applications. Amelotin (AMTN) is a recently discovered protein that is primarily expressed during the maturation stage of enamel formation and is localized at the cell-mineral interface on the surface enamel layer. In vivo studies using transgenic mice suggest a direct regulatory function for AMTN in enamel biomineralization. The aim of this PhD project was to test this hypothesis using different in vitro model systems of mineralization. I first showed that recombinant human (rh) AMTN accelerates hydroxyapatite mineralization in a dose-dependent manner when dissolved in the mineralization SBF buffer. Inactivation of a conserved SSEEL motif resulted in significant reduction in the mineralizing ability of the full-length molecule. I also evaluated the importance of phosphorylation in mineralization by testing a synthetic peptide containing a short sequence of AMTN including phosphorylated SSEEL in the crystallization assay and showed that it promoted mineralization albeit to a lesser degree than rh-AMTN. Detailed characterization of secretory enamel matrix in overexpressor mice showed rapid and uncontrolled mineralization. I also tested the mineralizing ability of AMTN in an established osteoblast cell line and demonstrated that AMTN transfected or introduced in the culture media in the recombinant form both accelerate the formation of mineralized nodules. AMTN molecules embedded in collagen gel matrix were also able to mineralize the collagen material in the SBF buffer within a few hours. The findings of this PhD project provide solid evidence that AMTN is a promoter of hydroxyapatite mineralization and likely a key player in the establishment of surface enamel layer.

Keywords: Amelotin
Biomineralization
Dental caries
Enamel
Matrix proteins
Advisor: Ganss, Bernhard
Expression of Parkinson's disease and associated neurophenotypes in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome

The etiology of Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains largely unknown with the exception of a few genetic mutations that affect a small proportion of patients. Case reports suggest that individuals with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS), a multisystem genomic disorder associated with hemizygous 22q11.2 deletions, may be at increased risk of early-onset PD. The aim of this thesis was to investigate 22q11.2 deletions as a risk factor for early-onset PD. The prevalence of PD was assessed in a well-characterized cohort of adults with 22q11.2DS. Neuropathological studies were performed in cases with available post-mortem tissue. Whole-genome sequencing was used to investigate the possible contribution of genome-wide rare coding mutations to disease penetrance in neuropathologically confirmed PD cases. Assessment of putative pre-diagnostic clinical and neuroimaging markers of PD in a subset of the older adults (30 to 54 years) provided evidence of an elevated prevalence of pre-morbid motor and olfactory deficits, and of nigrostriatal dopaminergic dysfunction assessed using 11C-dihydrotetrabenazine and positron emission tomography. The clinical context of early-onset PD in this adult cohort of individuals with 22q11.2DS was also investigated. Treatment response was excellent to the atypical antipsychotic, clozapine, a candidate for use in psychotic patients at risk of, or with, PD. Cognitive level and severe psychiatric disorders were mediators of baseline functional capacity in 22q11.2DS adults. Practical guidelines were developed from a review of the 22q11.2DS literature to help inform the management of 22q11.2DS-associated conditions, including PD. The results of these studies provided evidence that early-onset PD is associated with the 22q11.2 deletion with important implications for PD pathogenesis and for the clinical management of 22q11.2DS.

Keywords: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome
Movement disorders
Parkinson's disease
Pharmacogenetics
Positron emission tomography
Schizophrenia
Advisor: Bassett, Anne S
Politicizing Waste Collection and Discipling Waste Collectors: A critical Analysis of Waste Management Practice in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2003 - 2012)

This dissertation investigates the unique approach the Addis Ababa city government (AACG) put in place to address the city’s waste collection problem. To solve the garbage problem AACG introduced major waste management reforms in 2003 and 2009. The two waste management reforms basically strived (1) to create employment opportunities for unemployed urban residents through mobilizing them to form government-initiated micro-enterprises (CMEs) and engage in door-to-door waste collection, and (2) to discipline waste in order to create a clean and livable city through increasing waste collection efficiency. The main focus of this dissertation is unpacking how the different techniques and rationalities waste governing institutions employed to discipline waste as a material politicized waste collection, define power relation between the city government and waste collectors, and disciplined waste collectors. I explore these issues through examining the specific spaces of engagement between waste collectors (formal and informal) and city government’s representatives by paying close attention to the everyday practices of waste collection between 2003 and 2012. Primary data collected included a questionnaire survey (n=423) and key informants’ interviews (n=28). Secondary data were also consulted. I use the concept of governance, everyday state, and the notion of governmentality as analytical frameworks. Empirical findings reveal that the city government’s objective of creating clean city between 2003 and 2009 was marred by the city government’s effort to tackle unemployment by securing waste collection activities for government-initiated CMEs. It is also shown that the different governing technologies the city government employed to discipline waste as a material were in fact aimed at disciplining waste collectors through reconfiguring the power relationship between waste governing institutions and waste collectors. The research also highlights the way the city government forms partnership with CMEs in the 2009 waste management reform. The research suggests that the city’s government favour of a specific arrangement of partnership that sits in the middle of the public-private spectrum where it is neither the full-scale privatization of services nor the kind of public service delivery that was prevalent before 2009. Moreover, the research raises important questions about the involvement of cooperative micro-enterprises in waste management.

Keywords: cooperative micro-enterprises
Discipling waste collectors
politics of waste collection
public-private partnership
waste goverance
Waste management reform
Advisor: Maclaren, Virginia
Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice

My dissertation, “Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice,” investigates the modernist production of living space by focusing on housing reform in Weimar Germany’s Berlin and Frankfurt am Main as well as on the subsequent projects of German modernist architects working in the USSR in the early 1930s. Broadly, my work addresses questions of urban politics (primarily in Germany and Soviet Union), ownership, modernist urban visions, and everyday living practices. I take as a starting point the claim that home was central to the production of modern subjectivity, and, more specifically, that suburban public housing was instrumental in the production of Weimar modernity. By surveying a range of constitutive material and discursive elements for these new forms of settlement (including new technologies and construction methods, state and civic managerial bureaucracies, struggles over finance policies, discursive, aesthetic, and propagandistic legitimizing strategies, etc.), I look at how suburban, large scale, and publicly funded housing estates (Großsiedlung) were organized, constructed, and inhabited. Informed by a conceptual model of “coproduction,” I aim to articulate how domesticity and public housing figured in the production of modern subjects and sensibilities and to re-connect discussions of policies to understandings of the sphere of the home as a site of everyday life, paying close attention to spaces that shape and produce—and are produced by—complex networks of social practices in the modern city. I investigate the ways in which different actors (Social Democratic government, city planners, municipal authorities, housewife associations, residents) involved themselves in the construction, legitimation and provision of emerging modern organizations of space. My case studies target specific and resonant sites of coproduction of the modern home: Martin Wagner’s and Bruno Taut’s housing estate Hufeisensiedlung in Berlin; the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in Frankfurt, which introduced the notion of “minimal dwelling”; such minimalist innovations as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt kitchen; and the new industrial cities of the USSR, where German architects worked to adapt concepts of “minimal living” into a different cultural context.

Keywords: housing
"minimal living"
modernist architecture
Soviet Union
Weimar Germany
Advisor: Ruddick, Susan
eLearning in Ontario: Responding to the Winds of Change

This thesis examines elearning strategy and policy development in the Ontario university sector during a four-year period of heightened activity and public discourse. In particular the articulation of the goals and purposes of elearning across the upper levels of the administrative hierarchy are analysed, with attention to tensions between groups of policy actors and stakeholders active in this domain. The research was guided by the overarching question: How have symbolic models for strategic success in the shifting elearning policyscape been conceptualized and integrated across the Ontario university sector? First, historical background on the emergence of elearning in the federal and provincial context is presented, followed by analysis of the various discipline-based approaches to understanding changes to system level and institutional practice. The conceptual framework for the study is informed by this range of epistemological lenses already evident in the scholarly discourse exploring both the potential and the challenges related to elearning initiatives. In this doctoral thesis, ideal-types are used as a heuristic technique, in combination with the concept of the policyscape as a model for understanding the significance of global influencers. A vertical case-study methodology involving document analysis and interview components compares paradigmatic perspectives and sheds light on the policy negotiations among key stakeholders within the province. The findings suggest there have been significant tensions between participants in the policy development process, with the most important points of tension arising as a result of government promotion of new models aimed at economic and productivity gains borrowed from the broader policyscape. Institutions have resisted such models as they respond to their internal stakeholder concerns and navigate contextual constraints. The findings suggest that further investigation of three aspects of the policy process would be beneficial: the role of community feedback, the potential for alternative incentive structures, and further consideration of the significance of path dependencies.

Keywords: elearning
Ontario
policy
strategy
university
Advisor: Jones, Glen A
Legal Adaptation to the Internet: The Emergence of Digital Rights and Internet Personhood

Understanding how the law has adapted to technological change in the past is critical to determining how it can best respond in the future. In attempting to do so, scholars have largely examined legal adaptation to technological change only with respect to discrete doctrinal categories. While useful, these analyses may fail to grasp the underlying human interests affected by a technology in their focus on specific areas of law. This thesis demonstrates that a holistic examination of past legal adaptations to a technology across multiple doctrinal categories helps to elucidate the underlying interests affected by a technology, and better assists in addressing challenges created by similar technologies in the future. This thesis develops a substantive theory of legal adaptation to the Internet, finding that much of the lawâ s response to the Internet recognizes the personhood-expanding nature of Internet use, specifically with respect to privacy, anonymity, and freedom of expression.

Keywords: Anonymity
Freedom of expression
Internet
Legal adaptation
Personhood
Privacy
Advisor: Katz, Ariel
Effecting a Culture Shift: An Empirical Review of Ontario's Summary Judgment Reforms

This paper presents an empirical analysis of all reported summary judgment decisions in Ontario between 2004 and 2015, in order to explore whether amendments to the court rules actually achieved their intended effects of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of dispute resolution and making the civil justice system more accessible and affordable. By reviewing trends in the number and outcomes of summary judgment motions throughout the study period, we can conclude that the amendments to Ontario’s summary judgment rules have made strides towards their intended goal. We observe an increase in the number of summary judgment motions determined, an increase in the number of summary judgment motions granted, and, broadly, an increase in the proportion of successful summary judgment motions since the reforms. The data analyzed in this study demonstrate that the “culture shift” promoted by the Supreme Court of Canada following the implementation of the new rule is underway.

Advisor: Yoon, Albert
Integrative Modelling of Clinical, Genomic, and Microenvironmental Factors for Improved Prediction of Patient Outcome in Localized Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer represents a major global challenge, with 1.1 million new cases in 2012. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, by 2028 prostate cancer will be the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the country. The vast majority of men will be diagnosed with localized disease and further stratified into low, intermediate and high risk groups based on clinical and pathological features. Despite patient management schemes tailored to these risk groups, significant rates of over- and under-treatment remain. To improve clinical stratification, molecular features derived from tumour and circulating DNA, RNA and proteins are being evaluated. In prostate cancer, four molecular prognostic signatures (MPS) based on information from derived from RNA and proteins are commercially-available. I hypothesized that molecular features derived from tumour DNA can also be used to develop prognostic MPS. To test this hypothesis, I investigated the ability of copy number alterations (CNAs) to inform patient management in localized prostate cancer. First, I evaluated genes involved in DNA damage sensing as markers of patient response to localized treatment. I found that copy number gains in NBN are predictive for poor outcome in patients treated with radiotherapy but not radical prostatectomy. Next, I evaluated whether combining multiple genes into MPS can improve patient risk stratification. Using an unsupervised approach, I found four molecular subtypes of localized prostate cancer with different patient prognosis. I also identified a synergistic relationship between genomic instability and tumour hypoxia in predicting patient prognosis. Finally, I developed a 100-locus MPS which can identify patients at risk of rapid failure. To ease clinical translation of this MPS, I refined the signature to 31 loci with concordant DNA-RNA changes, and developed a NanoString panel to enable consistent measurement of the MPS in future studies. These findings demonstrate that CNA-based features are informative of patient outcome and can be additive and even synergistic with micro-environmental and clinico-pathological variables. In the future, incorporating other molecular, micro-environmental, and imaging features can drive further improvements to decrease the burden of over-treatment while minimizing treatment failure rates.

Keywords: Biomarker
Gene signature
Genomic instability
Precision medicine
Prognosis
Prostate cancer
Advisor: Boutros, Paul C
Bristow, Rob G
Adaptive Brain-computer Interfacing through Error-related Potential Detection

This thesis investigates possible improved brain-computer interface (BCI) performance by using the error-related potential (ErrP) to guide adaptation in two forms: first by gradually adapting the algorithms that differentiate brain activity, and second by automatically correcting mistakes when observed. Five studies were conducted, each investigating a unique aspect of incorporating ErrPs into BCIs. In study one, gradual adaptation of linear classifiers differentiating left- and right-hand motor imagery was explored in computer simulation when labels were derived from a realistic, imperfect ErrP detector. Learning from all trials was compared to reactively learning from errors, and the former more consistently improved accuracies across a wider range of learning rates. In study two, a realistic error detector was biased to several false positive rates and the risk associated with ErrP-based adaptation of several motor imagery BCIs was evaluated in light of those biases. Reweighting of a classifier ensemble had lower risk than incremental adaptation of the ensemble's base classifiers, and a unique risk profile across error detector false positive rates for each adaptation method was discovered. In study three, automatic correction of a visual P300 speller was employed using an error detector that combined the ErrP and spelling confidence. Errors were detected with an average sensitivity of 86.67% and specificity of 96.59% (n=11), and automatic correction increased selection accuracy by 13.67 percentage points. In study four, ErrP-based error detection was used for gradual adaptation of visual P300 classifiers both when the stimulus timing pattern remained constant, and when stimulation speed doubled. By retraining when stimulation speed doubled using ErrP-based labels subject to a confidence score, online spelling efficiency increased from 1.77 to 2.63 symbols per minute (n=11). No significant improvement was found for this partially supervised adaptation when stimulation speed remained constant. In study five, ErrP detection was investigated in an auditory P300 BCI. ErrPs were detected with an area under the curve of 0.946 and simulated auto-correction improved ITR by 2.3 bits/min (n=9). These studies demonstrate promise for incorporating ErrPs into BCIs, particularly auditory P300 BCIs, provided false positives are minimized and BCI confidence is considered.

Advisor: Chau, Tom
Keightley, Michelle