VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
"Red 'Teaspoons of Charity': Zhenotdel, Russian Women, and the Communist Party, 1919-1930."

After the Bolshevik assumption of power in 1917, the arguably much more difficult task of creating a revolutionary society began. In 1919, to ensure Russian women supported the Communist party, the Zhenotdel, or women’s department, was established. Its aim was propagating the Communist party’s message through local branches attached to party committees at every level of the hierarchy. This dissertation is an analysis of the Communist party’s Zhenotdel in Petrograd/ Leningrad during the 1920s. Most Western Zhenotdel histories were written in the pre-archival era, and this is the first study to extensively utilize material in the former Leningrad party archive, TsGAIPD SPb. Both the quality and quantity of Zhenotdel fonds is superior at St.Peterburg’s TsGAIPD SPb than Moscow’s RGASPI. While most scholars have used Moscow-centric journals like "Kommunistka", "Krest’ianka" and "Rabotnitsa", this study has thoroughly utilized the Leningrad Zhenotdel journal "Rabotnitsa i krest’ianka" and a rich and extensive collection of Zhenotdel questionnaires. Women’s speeches from Zhenotdel conferences, as well as factory and field reports, have also been folded into the dissertation’s five chapters on: organizational issues, the unemployed, housewives and prostitutes, peasants, and workers. Fundamentally, this dissertation argues that how Zhenotdel functioned at the local level revealed that the organization as a whole was riven with multiple and conflicting tensions. Zhenotdel was unworkable. Zhenotdel’s broad goals were impeded because activists lacked financial and jurisdictional autonomy, faced party ambivalence and hostility, and operated largely with volunteers. Paradoxically, these volunteer delegates were “interns,” yet they were expected to model exemplary behaviour. With limited resources, delegates were also expected to fulfil an ever-expanding list of tasks. In addition, Zhenotdel’s extensive use of unpaid housewife delegates in the 1920s anticipated the wife-activist movement of voluntary social service work in the middle to late 1930s. There were competing visions for NEP society, and Zhenotdel officials were largely unable to negotiate the importance of their organization to other party and state organizations. Overall, this suggests that although the political revolution was successful in the 1920s, there were profound limits to the social and cultural revolution in this era.

Keywords: Women and Communism - Soviet Union - History
Women in politics - Soviet Union - History
Soviet Union- Social Groups and Policy- 1920s
Zhenotdel
Advisor: Viola, Lynne
Men of Strong Opinions: Identity, Self-Representation, and the Performance of Neurosurgery, 1919-1950

This thesis explores the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the period between 1919 and 1950. This dissertation is an exploration of the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the formative period of the specialty’s history. Part I argues that an ethos of elitism and exclusionism structured the cultural landscape of the specialty and was reflected in the membership policy of the Society of Neurological Surgeons and the Harvey Cushing Society, which screened for certain moral and professional values. The meetings of the societies opened with surgical performances designed to encourage particular technical practices, to negotiate and standardize procedures, and to demonstrate the prowess of the neurosurgeon. In theatrical performances at these meetings the neurosurgeons also created a distinctive type of masculinity, which was inflected with a feminine resonance. Part II outlines the extraordinary professional success of the neurosurgeons in the 1930s and 1940s when they assumed leadership of neurological institutes. Wilder Penfield’s effort to build such an institute in Montreal led him to challenge the authority of clinical neurologists by claiming therapeutic superiority and by engineering a public debate about the future of these related specialties. Jurisdictional disputes between neurosurgeons and neurologists played out in animated rhetorical performances at the meetings of professional societies and illustrate the divergent ways in which these specialists envisioned medical specialization. Neurosurgeons cleaved neurology along therapeutic lines, while neurologists, attempting to regain conditions lost to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists, sought authority over all organic and functional disorders. Part III charts the neurosurgeons’ growing authority in popular culture. Although popular representations testify to an increasing glamorization of brain surgeons over the first half of the twentieth century, these narratives reveal culturally contingent tensions. The ideal cure for brain tumors was portrayed as medical, not surgical, while the public expressed an ambivalent reaction to the violence to both body and mind that brain surgery appeared to threaten.

Keywords: history of medicine
professional identity
Advisor: Dacome, Lucia
Mazumdar, Pauline M. H.
Examining Parental Socioeconomic Status and Neighbourhood Quality As Contextual Correlates Of Differential Parenting Within Families

Although several studies have demonstrated that differential parenting has a negative impact on the children exposed to it, only a small number of studies have attempted to understand why differential parenting occurs within families. The goal of the present study was to examine the contextual correlates of differential parenting. Specifically, the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and differential parenting and the association between objective and subjective indices of neighbourhood quality and differential parenting were investigated. Data were collected as part of the Kids, Families, and Places (KFP) study and analyzed using multilevel modeling. Six hundred and fifty families provided data on 881 children. Five hundred and ninety nine families included a father in the home. Close to seventy five percent of children included in the sample were less than six years of age. Differential parenting was assessed separately for mothers and fathers and across positive and negative parenting outcomes. The findings revealed that parental SES was significantly associated with differential parenting for three of four parenting outcomes. For mothers, SES was negatively associated with differential positivity and negativity. For fathers, SES was negatively associated with differential positivity but not negativity. The objective quality of neighbourhoods in which families resided (i.e., measured as a composite score that combined census tract data on neighbourhood disadvantage and interviewer observations of neighbourhood physical and social disorder) was positively associated with maternal differential negativity; however, this association was also moderated by mothers’ subjective perceptions of their neighbourhoods (i.e., measured using maternal reports of neighbourhood collective efficacy). In other words, when mothers perceived their neighbourhoods to be highly cohesive and supportive, exposure to objectively unfavourable neighbourhood conditions was less strongly associated with differential negativity. Objective neighbourhood quality was not associated with the other three differential parenting outcomes of interest. These findings highlight the important relationship that exists between contextual influences both within and outside of the immediate family and differential parenting. Moreover, they speak to the importance of including both mothers and fathers in studies of differential parenting. The merits of using multilevel modelling to investigate differential parenting and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: Differential Parenting
Neighbourhood Quality
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
Multilevel Modelling
Advisor: Jenkins, Jennifer M.
Ideologically Informed: A Policy Archaeology of Special Education in Ontario, 1965-1980

Waves of education reform in Ontario since the 1960s have resulted in widespread changes to curriculum, governance, and policy directives. Despite these continual reforms the structures and the practices of special education have changed very little since the early twentieth century. This dissertation looks at special education policy historically (1965-1980) in Ontario and offers an explanation for this resistance to change. Policy archaeology is developed in this study to map policy texts backwards through time and to interpret the meaning of policy discourses in these texts. The discourses produced by various policy actors are interpreted within the historical context to illuminate the ideologically informed beliefs of society about children with disabilities and their education. The ideologies of conservatism, liberalism, and scientific rationalism continue to construct the identities of children with disabilities as deviant from “normal” children. These differences are scientifically measured and quantified by medical and psychological professionals. The hierarchical organization of schooling sorts students into homogeneous groups according to ability. The constructed identities and segregated placements marginalize children with disabilities from the opportunities available to children in the regular classroom. Ideologies are stable and enduring and contribute to the stability of beliefs about special education in spite of extensive and continuous reforms in other areas of education. This dissertation builds on the earlier theories of the policy web (Joshee & Johnson, 2005). The large policy web of special education is composed of individual webs of meaning that represent the condensation symbols of disability, education, professionalism, management, and equality in particular ways that support the marginalization of children with disabilities. These webs are internally cohesive and related to each other by shared discourses. These interconnections give the web an intricate, irregular design but also give the web strength. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital, the members of the Ontario Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, and its members as individuals, held high forms of capital that were used as power. This association shaped policy discourses in particular ways that influenced beliefs about learning disabilities, acquired resources for children with learning disabilities, and reproduced privilege for the association.

Keywords: special education
policy
policy archaeology
Advisor: Joshee, Reva
MEMS and Robotics-based Manipulation and Characterization of Micro and Nanomaterials

Advances in the synthesis of micrometer and nanometer-sized materials have resulted in a range of novel materials having unique properties. Characterizing those materials is important for understanding their properties and exploring their applications. Physically manipulating those materials is important for constructing devices. This thesis develops tools and techniques for the manipulation and characterization of micro and nanomaterials. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microgripper is developed to pick and place micro-objects, achieving high repeatability, accuracy, and speed. The adhesion forces at the microscale are overcome by actively releasing the adhered micro-object from the microgripper. A microrobotic system is built based on this microgripper and realizes automated pick-and-place of microspheres to form patterns. To characterize the electrical properties of one-dimensional nanomaterials, a nanorobotic system is developed to control four nanomanipulators for automated four-point probe measurement of individual nanowires inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). SEM is used as a vision sensor to realize visual servo control and contact detection. To characterize the electromechanical properties of individual nanowires, a MEMS device is designed and fabricated that is capable of simultaneous tensile testing and current-voltage measurement of a nanowire specimen. A nanomanipulation procedure is developed to transfer a single nanowire from its growth substrate to the MEMS device in SEM. The piezoresistive properties of silicon nanowires are characterized. A nanomanipulation system is developed that is capable of being mounted onto and demounted from the SEM specimen stage without opening the high-vacuum chamber. The system architecture allows the nanomanipulators to be transferred through the SEM load-lock. This advance facilitates the replacement of end-effectors and circumvents chamber contamination due to venting.

Keywords: MEMS
Nanomanipulation
Advisor: Sun, Yu
Le discours proverbial chez Ahmadou Kourouma

Ce travail examine le discours proverbial dans les romans d’Ahmadou Kourouma. Il fait valoir que le discours proverbial de Kourouma traduit la vision cosmologique des personnages romanesques dans cinq domaines, à savoir la religion, la culture matérielle, les animaux, le temps et la femme. Contrairement aux études publiées au cours des quarante dernières années qui traitent de certains de ces domaines sans véritablement privilégier le proverbe comme objet d’analyse, ou qui l’analysent trop rapidement chez Kourouma en utilisant de très minces corpus ou une approche peu efficace et non contextuelle, ce travail, lui, déconstruit le proverbe et fait ressortir ses dimensions esthétiques, discursives et idéologiques les plus variées et les plus significatives. La thèse se sert des approches syncrétique, fonctionnelle et intertextuelle pour examiner les proverbes comme discours religieux. Dans le but d’explorer les proverbes portant sur la culture matérielle, l’étude adopte les concepts du symbolisme, de filiation, de territorialité ainsi que les notions de la hiérarchie des métaux et d’extra-textualité. Le travail aborde les proverbes animaliers en ayant recours aux concepts de métaphore, du symbolisme et du contractualisme. Quant à l’expression temporelle des proverbes, elle est approchée dans une perspective culturelle et spatio-temporelle alors que le rapport du proverbe au genre féminin est déterminé à partir d’une analyse culturelle et sociale de son statut. Cette approche d’une étude multidimensionnelle du proverbe permet ici de déterminer le caractère biculturel, bispirituel, pragmatique, opportuniste et utilitariste de la foi religieuse des personnages kouroumiens. Elle montre en outre que les objets de la culture matérielle sont porteurs de significations sociales, culturelles, littéraires et environnementales. Grâce à son cadre conceptuel élargi et diversifié, ce travail permet également de constater que les animaux possèdent des identités distinctives et remplissent des fonctions romanesque, spirituelle, sanitaire et alimentaire. La thèse met enfin en évidence le caractère pluraliste du temps existentiel, et établit que la condition de la femme est fortement influencée par des facteurs naturels et socioculturels. De ses résultats, l’étude tire la conclusion que le proverbe permet à Kourouma de proposer sa lecture du monde et sa théorie de l’écriture romanesque.

Keywords: Kourouma
Proverbes
Advisor: Tcheuyap, Alexie
Exploring Quinoline and Pyridine Functionalized Binucleating Ligands: Syntheses, Complexation and Reactivity

The objective of this thesis is to explore quinoline and pyridine functionalized multidentate ligand systems that are capable of accommodating two metal species and to study the reactivity of the resulting bimetallic complexes, in the aim of investigating potential synergistic effects between the metal centres. A series of functionalized 1,2,4,5-tetrakis(quinolin-8-yl)benzene ligands were synthesized. The dinuclear platinum complexes of these ligands could activate C-Cl bonds of chlorinated solvents and dearomatize the central benzene ring of the ligand concurrently. A series of extended ligands where the central benzene ring was replaced by trans-stilbene, diphenylacetylene and pyrene groups were synthesized in order to explore more ligand-based reactivity. Two dinuclear diphenylplatinum complexes were synthesized. A series of mono- and bis-quinolinyl functionalized thiophene ligands have also been synthesized. Dinuclear platinum complexes of the bisquinolinyl thiophenes were isolated, which represented the first group 10 metal complexes of η2-thiophene, a long sought-after intermediate relevant to the hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. Oxidation of these diplatinum complexes by MeOTf led to the isolation of mononuclear chiral five-coordinate platinum(IV) complexes, and a ligand twisting mechanism of these complexes was proposed on the basis of dynamic NMR studies and DFT calculations to elucidate the interconversion of two enantiomers. The reactions of monoquinolinyl functionalized thiophenes and [Pt(CH3)2(SMe2)]2/[PtH(dippe)]2 led to selective C-H/C-S bonds activation of the thiophene moieties respectively. A luminescent U-shaped bis-dipyridylamine functionalized anthracene ligand was designed and synthesized. This compound was fabricated into OLED devices and shown to be a promising emissive material. As a ligand, it adopted different coordination modes, acting as either binucleating double bidentate ligand, or mononucleating tetradentate ligand. Three dirhodium, dizinc and monozinc complexes were synthesized. Pyridine and phosphine functionalized 4,5-diazafluorene ligands were synthesized and the former ligand served as a mononucleating ligand via the two nitrogen donor atoms of the diazafluorenyl moiety while the latter ligand could act as a binucleating ligand via the phosphorus donor atom, two nitrogen donor atoms and the carbon donor atom. Several Ru, Rh, Pt, Cu and Au complexes were synthesized, and two Pt-Pt, Pt-Cu bimetallic complexes were isolated and characterized based on the phosphine functionalized ligand.

Keywords: inorganic chemistry
organometallic chemistry
Advisor: Song, Datong
Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

This thesis investigates different aspects of spectrum sensing in cognitive radio (CR) technology. First a probabilistic inference approach is presented which models the decision fusion in cooperative sensing as a probabilistic inference problem on a factor graph. This approach allows for modeling and accommodating the uncertainties and correlations in the cooperative sensing system. A constraint in the cognitive radios is the lack of knowledge about the primary signal and channel gain statistics at the secondary users. Therefore, a practical composite hypothesis approach is proposed which does not require any prior knowledge or estimates of these unknown parameters. Detection delay is an important performance measure in spectrum sensing. Quickest detection aiming to minimize detection delay has been studied in other contexts, and we apply it here to spectrum sensing. To combat the destructive channel conditions such as fading, various cooperative schemes based on the cumulative sum (CUSUM) algorithm are considered in this thesis. Furthermore, cooperative quickest sensing with imperfectly known parameters is investigated and a new solution is derived, which does not require any parameter estimation or iterative algorithm. In cognitive radios, there is a fundamental trade-off between the achievable throughput by the CRs and the level of protection for the primary user. In this thesis, this trade-off is formulated for the quickest sensing-based CRs. By throughput analysis, it is shown that for the same protection level to the primary user, the quickest sensing approach results in significantly higher average throughput compared to that of the conventional block sensing approach.

Keywords: Cognitive Radio
Spectrum Sensing
Advisor: Lim, Teng Joon
The Impact of Folic Acid Fortification on the Folate Intake of Canadians, Factors Associated with Sub-optimal Blood Folate Status among Women, and the Effect of Vitamin/Mineral Supplemental Use

Food fortification and nutrient supplementation are important strategies to address micronutrient deficiencies. Mandatory folic acid fortification was implemented in Canada and the U.S. in 1998 to reduce the incidence of neural tube defects (NTD). However, the actual amount of folic acid added to foods has not been reported in Canada. We analyzed 95 fortified foods and found that there is 50% more folate in foods than that reported in food composition tables, which are primarily based on minimum mandated fortification levels. We then determined if these observed folate overages impacted the prevalence of dietary folate inadequacy or intakes above the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL). Using data from the 2004 nationally-representative Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2.2 (n = 35,107), adjusted for folate overages, we found a low prevalence of folate inadequacy in Canada post-fortification. However, few women 14-50y consumed 400µg/d of synthetic folic acid, an amount associated with maximal protection against an NTD. Conversely, we also showed that use of folic acid-containing supplements led to intakes >UL in the general population. To develop a tool that would help clinicians identify women with red blood cell (RBC) folate concentrations that were not maximally protective against an NTD (<906nmol/L), we used data from the nationally-representative U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006 to define risk factors of RBC folate <906nmol/L. We found that 35% of American women 19-45y had RBC folate <906nmol/L. Younger age, low dietary folate intake, not consuming supplemental folic acid, smoking, and being African-American were associated with increased risk of RBC folate <906nmol/L. Given our observations of a low prevalence of folate inadequacy and folic acid supplement use leading to intakes >UL, we used CCHS 2.2 data to compare the diets of supplement users and non-users in terms of inadequacy and intakes >UL for other nutrients. We showed that the prevalence of inadequacy was low for most nutrients, and from diet alone, supplement users were not at increased risk of inadequacy compared to non-users. Furthermore, inclusion of supplements led to intakes >UL above 10% for vitamins A, C, niacin, folic acid, and iron, zinc and magnesium.

Keywords: food fortification
folic acid
folate
nutrient supplementation
dietary assessment
Advisor: O'Connor, Deborah Louise
SPARC is Required for Larval Development and Regulation of Fat Body Dynamics in Drosophila melanogaster

SPARC is a highly conserved trimodular Ca2+- and Collagen-binding matricellular protein with diverse functions during development, wound healing and cancer metastasis. Our lab previously generated an embryonic lethal Drosophila SPARC null mutant, Df(3R)nm136, analysis of which revealed that SPARC was required for the deposition of Collagen IV into basal laminae and normal nervous system development during embryogenesis. In contrast to these previous studies, my data revealed that SPARC is not required for the deposition of Collagen IV into embryonic basal laminae or embryonic nervous system development. Further analysis showed that the Df(3R)nm136 chromosome carried a second-site mutation in the Neuralized locus which caused the nervous system defects and embryonic lethality previously associated with a loss of SPARC. Removal of this second site mutation and reanalysis of the SPARC mutant phenotype revealed that SPARC is required for larval development where it appears to play a role in the regulation fat body remodelling. SPARC mutant fat bodies showed changes in cell shape and basal lamina remodelling which resemble the fat body remodelling process that normally occurs during pre-pupal stages via up-regulation of MMP2 in response to the steroid hormone ecdysone. The effects of loss of SPARC on fat body cells were shown to be cell autonomous. Structure-function analysis of SPARC showed that secretion of SPARC is required for its function, whereas Domain1 is dispensable. Together, my studies indicate that SPARC has essential intra and extracellular roles during Drosophila larval fat body development.

Keywords: SPARC
Drosophila
Fat body
MMP
Advisor: Ringuette, Maurice