VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Mechanisms of locomotor recovery after spinal cord repair with peripheral nerves, fibroblast growth factor 1, and fibrin glue after complete spinal cord transection in the adult mammal

A simultaneous, bi-directional axonal tracing technique was developed using anterograde DiI and retrograde Fluoro-Gold that was compatible with immunohistochemistry. With the use of this technique, it was determined that functional recovery after CSCT and repair correlated with regeneration of corticospinal tract axons into the grey matter of the lumbar spinal cord. Intentional circumvention of white matter inhibition was not found to be necessary for functional recovery. In conclusion, recovery of function with peripheral nerves, FGF1, and fibrin glue resulted in recovery of function which was associated with regeneration of corticospinal tract axons into the grey matter of the lumbar spinal cord. The success of the functional recovery after repair was not dependent on deliberate circumvention of white matter inhibition. Further study is required to determine other factors that may improve or abolish functional recovery after repair. Although repair after spinal cord transection in the adult mammal had been believed unattainable, in the last decade several reports have documented regeneration of axons and recovery of function after complete spinal cord transection (CSCT) and repair. While both axonal regeneration and functional recovery have been shown after repair, it is unclear whether recovery is due to the axonal regeneration and, if so, which axons are involved. The purpose of this study was to determine which axonal tracts were involved in recovery of function after repair with peripheral nerve grafts, fibroblast growth factor 1 (FGF1), and fibrin glue, and to determine the effect of white matter inhibition on functional recovery. All experiments were performed on adult rats in accordance with policies established by the Canadian Council of Animal Care. The first series of experiments developed the optimal methods for axonal tracing and immunohistochemistry to study axonal regeneration in the spinal cord after CSCT and repair. The second series of experiments determined which axons were correlated with function after CSCT and repair, and whether intentional circumvention of white matter inhibition was necessary for functional recovery.
Structural and semantic query optimization in XQuery

There is a large amount of data on the web organized in databases; thus when queries are posed against these databases, it is important to answer them as efficiently as possible. The most used approach to accomplish this goal is based on rules that do not consider the semantic information, i.e., the integrity constraints. On the other hand, semantic query optimization take advantage of this information, accomplishing the initial goal. XQuery is a query language designed to be applicable across all types of XML data sources, including both databases and documents. In this thesis we present a study of the problems of structural and semantic query optimization for XML, using XQuery, and we propose solutions to these problems.
Altering retinoid sensitivity in acute myeloblastic leukemia cells by treatment with the histone deacetylase inhibitor, valproic acid, and the inhibitor of DNA methyltransferase activity, 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine

Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a subtype of acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) that is sensitive to retinoids; these agents are powerful regulators of cellular growth and differentiation. In APL, the addition of the retinoid, all trans retinoic acid (ATRA), to standard chemotherapy dramatically increases cure rates. This combination does not improve survival over chemotherapy alone in other AML subtypes (now referred to as AML). Abnormal transcription factors arising from chromosomal translocations and DNA methylation likely silence retinoid response genes in AML by recruiting histone deacetylase complexes (HDAC) to gene promoter regions. I used an Affymetrix GeneChip experiment to demonstrate that ATRA treatment modulated limited numbers of genes in the AML cell line, OCI/AML-2, whereas many retinoid response genes were induced by treating these cells with the HDAC inhibitor, valproic acid (VPA). p21, a regulator of cell cycle, was confirmed to be a retinoid response gene induced by VPA treatment in OCI/AML-2, cells and the majority of AML patient samples tested. Induction of p21 was associated with cell cycle arrest and apoptosis and the addition of ATRA to VPA accentuated these responses in the AML samples. The Affymetrix GeneChip experiment also showed treating OCI/AML-2, cells with the inhibitor of DNA methylation, 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza-2-CDR), induced the expression of many genes regulated by ATRA in the APL cell line, NB-4. This included genes regulating differentiation, cell cycle, apoptosis, and interferon responses. The most significant modulation occurred in OCI/AML-2, cells treated with ATRA + VPA + 5-aza-2-CDR; this treatment also produced the greatest inhibition of cellular growth and reduction in cell viability. Retinoic acid receptor beta-2 (RARbeta2) is a tumor suppressor gene that was found to have inducible expression in ATRA treated NB-4 cells, whereas its expression remained attenuated in OCI/AML-2, cells. DNA methylation and HDAC activity in the RARbeta2 promoter were responsible for attenuated expression of RARbeta2 in OCI/AML-2, cells. Treatment of OCI/AML-2 cells with VPA and 5-aza-2-CDR restored ATRA mediated RARbeta2 expression with the greatest induction observed in cells treated with ATRA + VPA + 5-aza-2-CDR. These experiments support further studies evaluating inhibitors of HDAC activity and DNA methylation in AML treatment.
Impact of pre-treatment perfectionism on therapeutic alliance and outcome in the short-term treatment of depression

The present study examined the impact of pre-treatment perfectionism on therapeutic alliance and outcome in the short-term treatment of depression. The data for this study was drawn from a short-term clinical trial that treated 66 depressed clients with process-experiential or cognitive-behavioral therapy (Watson et al. 2003). The study attempted to replicate research findings by Blatt et al. (1995); (1996) on the TDCRP data set from the NIMH. Results of this study demonstrated that pre-treatment perfectionism significantly predicted poorer outcome in male clients. Early working alliance significantly predicted positive outcome in both male and female clients, with pre-treatment perfectionism significantly predicting outcome over and above the WAI in the male sample. Although not shown to be significant, a mediating role of WAI in the relationship of pre-treatment prefectionism and outcome is suggested. Findings are restricted by small sample size.
Federalism, foreign policy and the internationalization of higher education: a case study of the International Academic Relations Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada

This thesis provides a historical case study of the International Academic Relations Division within the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and fills a gap in the existing literature on the internationalization of Canadian higher education. The research questions focused on understanding the mandate and role of the Division since its inception in 1967 to 1995, the changes in its policy and program approaches over time, the strategies or mechanisms developed for national policy coordination, and more broadly how the Department's foreign policy framework influenced the Division. A comparative analysis of the Canadian case with the departments of foreign affairs in Australia and Germany assisted in highlighting the uniqueness of the Canadian approach. Literature on federalism and internationalization and globalization provided a theoretical framework for the study. The three country comparison highlighted the importance of the overall framework of a country's foreign policy, the presence or absence of ICR, and a country's unique historical and cultural context, in directly impacting its approach to international education. In addition, it suggested that higher educational policy is a result of a nation's federal structure and the presence or absence of federal-state level coordination mechanisms. The International Academic Relations Division has engaged in the internationalization of higher education in one form or another, albeit its specific role and mandate and its program and policy approaches have changed over time. These changes were highlighted through three historical time periods. Several of the initiatives and policy approaches discussed in this thesis, in particular the successes of the Canadian Studies Program Abroad, have not been addressed in the literature on the internationalization of Canadian higher education. The thesis concluded that the internationalization of higher education policy agenda although influenced by ICR in a country's foreign policy is much more directly linked to a country's higher educational policy structure and mechanisms, and challenged the accepted view that DFAIT should provide leadership in developing a national strategy for internationalization. It proposed a range of policy, program and research recommendations, the most important being the need to further understand internationalization as a broader Canadian higher education policy issue.

Keywords: International education, Canada
Education, Higher, Canada
Higher education and state, Canada
Federal aid to higher education, Canada
Social comparisons of body weight and attractiveness with fashion models and peers: To whom do young women compare?

A great deal of research has sought to demonstrate a relation between exposure to thin-ideal media images and body-image disturbance among women. Many of these studies have found that exposure to thin-ideal images has either an adverse main effect on self perceptions or an interactive effect with pre-existing body-image disturbance, such that individuals with pre-existing body image disturbance experience adverse effects of these images. However, women are also frequently exposed to thin others through their interactions with peers, but relatively little research has examined the effects of exposure to thin peers on body dissatisfaction. Furthermore, closer examination of the literature reveals inconsistent effects of exposure to thin-ideal fashion models both across and within studies. The purpose of this series of studies was to demonstrate that young women who are concerned about their weight will use information about a peer's weight to evaluate themselves and that, in general, social comparisons of body weight with thin peers have a more negative impact than comparisons with fashion models because peers are more similar and therefore more relevant for self-evaluation. Studies 1 and 2 aimed to demonstrate that information about a peer's weight is used to determine self-evaluation among young women who are concerned about their body weight. Studies 3 and 4 directly compared the effects of exposure to thin and attractive fashion models and peers with the aim of demonstrating that young women are more adversely affected by thin and attractive peers than fashion models. The results of study 1 showed negative effects of exposure to a peer's weight on body dissatisfaction and appearance state self-esteem among restrained eaters. The subsequent two studies failed to detect a negative impact of exposure to information about a peer's weight. However, study 4 found that for participants with low trait appearance self-esteem only, exposure to a thin and attractive peer resulted in lower global state self-esteem. Exposure to thin peers does not appear to have consistent negative effects on young women. The effects of exposure to thin peers appear to be similar to the effects of exposure to thin fashion models---in that the effects are inconsistent.
Conserving genetic diversity in fringe-toed lizards: a phylogenetic approach

A phylogeny of the genus Uma was reconstructed from a maximum parsimony analysis of DNA sequence data from two mitochondrial genes. All species of fringe-toed lizards were included. Comprehensive geographic sampling was undertaken to determine genetic variation among geographically isolated populations. In total, 1630 combined base pairs were sequenced for 175 individuals from 56 populations. The fringe-toed lizards grouped into seven primary clades, or phylogenetically diagnosable and exclusive species. Five clades were already recognized as species, one clade was a subspecies, and the seventh was unknown and represented cryptic biodiversity. Both newly designated species occurred within the U. notata group. Fringe-toed lizards are philopatric and populations are naturally fragmented on sand dunes and ramps. In the southwestern deserts, direct and indirect impacts of anthropogenic activities threaten the survival of fringe-toed lizards. Major threats include agriculture, development, habitat destruction, off-road vehicle use, and the introduction of windbreaks that reduce or eliminate natural sand corridors. Because of this intrinsic vulnerability, populations within nominal species were evaluated phylogenetically and prioritized for conservation management. All species are designated at various levels of being at risk of extinction by federal or regional governments. The Coahuila fringe-toed lizard, Uma exsul, is currently listed as rare in Mexico but should be considered endangered. Present efforts involve the creation of the first wildlife sanctuary at Bilbao Dune to protect this flagship species. In California, two genetically distinctive clades occur within the Mojave fringe-toed lizard, Uma scoparia. One clade includes populations in and adjacent to Death Valley National Park, with a secondary clade from nearby Red Pass Dunes. These lizards should be protected due to ongoing habitat degradation. This area has high endemicity and is a potential biodiversity hotspot. Further research into the conservation and management of the fringe-toed lizards is essential due to ongoing threats to survival and slow recovery times of desert habitats.
Solution-focused parent groups: a new approach to the treatment of youth disruptive behavioural difficulties

Collective research suggests that treatment efforts aimed at parents of youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties need to be collaborative and encourage parents to take the lead in formulating their own solutions in improving familial interactions and the management of their adolescent's behaviour. Foster parents of foster youth exhibiting a variety of disruptive behavioural difficulties and challenges were assigned to an experimental ( n = 9) or no-treatment comparison (n = 7) group. The respective foster youth of the foster parents in each group were also assigned to a treatment (n = 18) and no-treatment ( n = 12) conditions. A pre-and post-test design using the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders (DSMD), Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), Family Adaptability And Cohesion Scales II (FACES II), Parent Adolescent Communication Scales (PAC), Clinical Rating Scales (CRS) and measures of Total Problem Behaviours and Psychotropic Drug Use were used to assess change. Only the foster parents in the experimental group received a six-session Solution-Focused Parenting Group (SFPG) intervention. Pre-and post-training semi-structured interviews were conducted in order to assess the SFPG training program's effect on the participants' perceptions and experiences of their foster-parenting challenges, their own personal factors, their relationships with their foster youth, and the functioning of their foster familial system. Statistical results indicate that SFPG foster parent participants demonstrated adherence to the training program, showed minimal resistance, and actively participated. Foster parent participation in a SFPG did not result in any indirect effect on the foster youth's emotional, behavioural, and social skills difficulties. Foster youth's display of problem behaviours and use of psychotropic medication also remained unchanged. The foster parents made qualitative gains in their ability to manage their foster youth's problem behaviours, resolve dysfunctional foster parent-foster youth interactions, and maintain effective parental roles. These gains appear to have reduced the foster parents' experience of stress-related factors in parenting foster youth with disruptive behavioural difficulties, increased their sense of parental competence, and also enabled them to maintain moderate levels of familial functioning in terms of cohesion, adaptability, and effective communication.

Keywords: Behavior disorders in children
Behavior disorders in adolescence
Parent and child
Adolescent psychopathology, Treatment
Problem children, Counseling of
Emotional problems of children, Prevention
Children with social disabilities
Developmental psychology
Empedocles: an interpretation

Since the 19th century, the great majority of scholars have divided the fragments of Empedocles between two works, a scientific poem On Nature, and a religious one, The Purifications. Now, however, the Strasbourg papyrus (1999) has proven the unity of Empedocles' thought. Elaborating upon the work of Osborne (1987) and Inwood (1992), I argue that the new evidence greatly reinforces the hypothesis of a single Empedoclean work, and make it the starting-point of my interpretation. Section I is a reconstruction of the work's opening. Based on new evidence showing that fragment 17, the work's central doctrinal passage, ran from lines 233 to 300 of the work's opening, I reconstruct a long proem, in two parts. Beginning with a public oration by Empedocles, in which he claimed to be a god and condemned ritual sacrifice, in the second part Empedocles addressed a sole disciple, who was thereafter the work's exclusive addressee. Section II interprets that reconstruction. In section II, after comparing Empedocles' proem to those of Parmenides and Lucretius, I argue for a characterization of their shared features under a recognized type, the ‘indirect opening’, a rhetorical device to draw readers to unfamiliar content. Within that type, I further characterize Empedocles' proem as a proleptic composition, in which the proem foreshadows the doctrine, but in such a manner that becomes apparent only by hindsight, through the doctrine. In section II 2, I explore the motivations for such an opening, and find in Plato's fuller philosophical scheme much to illuminate Empedocles' presuppositions. In section II 3, I interpret DK 17, Empedocles' central doctrinal statement, within the context of his two principal influences, Orphic and/or Pythagorean lore, and the poem of Parmenides. Section III considers the contribution the papyrus to the clarification of Empedocles' doctrine of the cosmic cycle. I find that it confirms the traditional, symmetrical interpretation of the cycle, against various challenges, but that the editors' work in one section is flawed, and does not support the doctrinal implications they impute to it, namely the identification of the transmigrating daimon with the first-principle Love.
A comparison of gene expression pattern in OSCC between young and older individuals, with emphasis on GSTP1 and the Fanconi anemia genes

Distinct genetic mechanisms may be involved in the development of OSCC in young versus older patients. We used microarray analysis to identify genes differentially expressed in the two patient groups. We performed QRT-PCR to assess the expression of GSTP1, FANCA, FANCC, FANCD2 and FANCG in OSCCs and adjacent mucosa from both groups. GSTP1 was under-expressed in tumors of young patients compared to adjacent mucosa (p=0.007). Both GSTP1 and FANCA had lower expression in tumors of young compared to older patients (p=0.020, p=0.005). By immunohistochemistry, GSTP1 expression was low in 40.5% of young compared to 5% of older patient tumors (p=0.002). FANCG expression was low in 81% of young compared to 37.5% of older patient tumors (p<0.001). GSTP1 plays a key rote in detoxification mechanisms and FANCA in DNA repair. Under-expression of these genes may contribute to carcinogenesis in tumors of young patients, in contrast to OSCC from older patients.
Brain reward system dysfunction in major depressive disorder: differential behavioural response to d-amphetamine and corresponding neuroanatomical substrates

Background. Brain reward system (BRS) involvement in the pathophysiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) was assessed with d-amphetamine (d-amph) in two consecutive studies, the first focusing on the behavioural response, the second on the neuroanatomical correlates of this response. D-amph induces dopamine release within the mesocorticolimbic system, a major component of the BRS, and produces measurable rewarding effects (e.g. euphoria). We hypothesized that depressed subjects would exhibit an altered response to d-amph reward with distinct neural correlates due to an underlying BRS dysfunction, reflected by the loss of pleasure/interest (anhedonia), a key symptom of MDD. Methods. In Study 1, a double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled study, the behavioural and physiological effects of a single oral dose of 30 mg d-amph were measured. Twenty-two subjects with a diagnosis of DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder not taking antidepressant medication (n = 11 d-amph, 11 placebo) were compared to 20 healthy controls (n = 10 d-amph, 10 placebo) using validated self-report drug effect tools (e.g. A.R.C.I), heart rate and blood pressure. In Study 2, functional magnetic resonance imaging (F-MRI) was used to determine the neural correlates of the response to 30 mg p.o. d-amph in 12 MDD and 12 controls (single-blind). F-MRI data were acquired at baseline and peak d-amph effect while all subjects attended to a battery of tasks. Results. Study 1: Severity of depression correlated strongly with d-amph-induced rewarding effects within the depressed group (R2 = .77, p = .033). A subsequent ANCOVA categorizing depressed subjects into severe (Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-21 item score ≥24) and moderate groups, revealed that subjects with severe symptoms reported rewarding effects 3.3 fold greater than controls (p = .045). Study 2: Subjects with severe MDD again showed an enhanced response to d-amph, with corresponding differences in brain activity within prefrontal regions (Brodmann's Area 10, 11), caudate/putamen, Brodmann's Area 25, temporal gyrus, Brodmann's Area 6, and left posterior cingulate (F1,44 = 7.21, p = .01), areas implicated in reward and emotion. Conclusion. The presence of a hypersensitive response within the BRS of MDD subjects supports the hypothesis. Neuroimaging findings point to possible substrates of anhedonia, a key symptom in MDD.
FMRI retrospective coregistration using external monitoring

Head motion during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) invalidates the key assumption that the image intensity variation within voxels is only due to neuronal activation. For this reason, coregistration is a necessary fMRI post-processing step, commonly achieved using image-based algorithms realigning images through optimization of a similarity measure based on pixels' intensities. However, coregistration can also be accomplished based on external monitoring, whereby head position and orientation are measured directly with an external tracking device. This thesis describes initial development and testing of a coregistration technique that uses an infrared tracking device for head motion monitoring during fMRI. FMRI time-series were coregistered using this external monitoring technique as well as using a common image-based algorithm for comparison. Preliminary results show similar coregistration performance for the two techniques. Importantly, this new external monitoring technique has potential for 3D prospective coregistration, as well as for retrospective and prospective coregistration of individual slices.