VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Journeys of integration in Canada's pluralistic society: Italian Canadian youth and the symbolic investments in French as official language

This sociolinguistic and interdisciplinary work critically looks at the social construction of multilingualism, ethnicity, and citizenship, specifically through the voices of nine self-identified multi-generational Italian Canadian youth participating in French language learning and teacher education programs in the Greater Toronto Area. While considering present-day discourses on pluralism and trans-nationalism, I explore how the youth socially construe their identities and invest in ideologies and representations of language learning in an urban globalized world. In doing so, I highlight the different conceptions of what being Italian Canadian, multilingual and multicultural means to these youth and the ways in which they position themselves vis-à-vis the acquisition of French as an official language. One significant contribution of this work is its call for a more multi-dimensional and symbolic conceptualization of the notion of investment than that purported by Norton Pierce (1993, 2000). Drawing upon an ethnographic approach, reflexivity, and discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) of both audio and video/film recorded interviews, observations, and focus groups (collected within multiple discursive sites), I demonstrate how some of the participants' lived social and linguistic practices problematize social categories, illustrating the multiple voices, exercises of agency, and shifting, complex positions of the youth as they manage, negotiate, and challenge discourses of language, power, and representation. While my findings underscore different language learning experiences as well as the different dimensions of constraints, opportunities, conditions, and outcomes in the attainment, continued investment, and maintenance of symbolic and material resources, they also shed light on the processes of inclusion and exclusion by looking at who gets to define what is the 'right' kind of multilingualism, in which discursive spaces, and who can claim the 'right' forms of cultural and linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1982; Byrd Clark, 2007; Heller & Labrie, 2003) to be considered a multilingual and multicultural Canadian in the new globalized economy. Lastly, this work creates social spaces for overlapping identities, which could possibly challenge the status quo, crossing social borders in Canada and beyond. This doctoral dissertation has implications for all those involved in multilingual and multicultural education, language planning and policy and immigration studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Violence as civility: race, mining and Canadian neocolonizers in African states

Occupying a dominant position in the global mining industry is one of Canada's key strategies for establishing itself as a successful nation in the twenty-first century global order. This has entailed a rapid expansion of Canadian mining industry presence in African states, such that Canada is now the leading non-African country investing in African mineral exploration. Positing such presence as neocolonialist in nature, this thesis asks how it is in cultural terms that Canada, a country usually portrayed as a model of national and international civility, is able to engage in inherently violent neocolonialist practices in African countries in the twenty-first century. Data is generated primarily from interviews with Canadian mining industry professionals, and supplemented with examination of various Canadian federal government texts, multilateral agency documents and mining industry documents. The data is read in relation to the fact of African resistance to foreign domination of mining. Drawing on anti-colonial, postcolonial, post-structural and critical race theories of white masculinity, nation formation and racial discourse, my analysis of the data shows the making of a particular kind of Canadian national cultural imaginary, 'muscular white civility'---and a particular type of white male capitalist subject---required to normalize contemporary processes of North-South resource appropriation. By authorizing the appropriation of African mineral wealth in the name of Canadians' 'muscular white civility' (we have capital, technology, organization and humane values), Canadians' privileged access and property rights are maintained and normalized in contemporary African mining. A key finding of this research is the inherently white supremacist nature of the Canadian twenty-first century internationalist imaginary and the consequent reproduction of North-South economic disparities structured along racial lines.
Compensating for low working memory capacity with mature ideas about knowledge: an on-line investigation of the effects of text factors and reader characteristics on comprehension

The purpose of this study was to replicate and extend upon an investigation by Kaakinen, Hyona, Keenan (2003) which examined how characteristics of the text and the reader, as well as the goals of a reading task, combine to influence reading comprehension. The present study corroborated the importance of reading perspective and text familiarity on recall, and was reflected in readers' on-line eye fixation measures. However, contrary to Kaakinen, et al., the reading perspective taken by the reader was equally strong across all texts and all readers. In addition, results indicate that a reader's awareness of the complex structure of knowledge is able to compensate for low working memory capacity. Results indicate that the improved recall of low span readers with mature epistemic beliefs relative to their low span counterparts with naive epistemic beliefs is a result of the increased time spent rereading both task-relevant and unfamiliar information.
Corticotropin-releasing factor mediates the suppressing but not the facilitating effects of footshock on progressive-ratio cocaine self-administration

Stress contributes to drug addiction, and footshock has been used to study effects of stress on aspects of cocaine-motivated behaviour. However, the effects of acute footshock on the efficacy of cocaine reinforcement have not previously been studied. Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) is a neuropeptide known to mediate stress responses. CRF is also important for the effects of stress on aspects of cocaine-motivated behaviour, and for some of the effects of cocaine itself. These findings suggest that CRF could mediate alterations to the efficacy of cocaine reinforcement caused by footshock. Progressive-ratio cocaine self-administration was employed to examine the acute motivational consequences of footshock, and to test the hypothesis that brain CRF mediates these effects. Initial experiments examined behavioural changes produced by intermittent, non-contingent footshock applied to rats during self-administration sessions. Results showed that footshock altered break points for iv cocaine in a manner that depended on footshock intensity (0--2 mA) and duration (0--4.5 s): increases in intensity produced asymptotic increases in break point; increases in duration produced biphasic, inverted-U shaped effects on break point. Footshock also increased inactive lever responding and reinforcement rate. In contrast with the effects on cocaine reinforcement, footshock did not alter break points for sucrose. Together, these findings indicate that intermittent, non-contingent footshock can both facilitate and suppress ongoing cocaine-motivated behaviour, depending on the duration of footshock stimuli applied. CRF was implicated in the suppressing but not the facilitating effects of footshock on progressive-ratio cocaine self-administration. The role of CRF was tested using in vivo microdialysis to measure changes in nucleus accumbens neurochemistry following intracerebroventricular CRF infusions. Results indicated that CRF dose-dependently enhanced dopamine metabolites. In separate experiments the motivational consequences of CRF were tested directly, using either cocaine or sucrose reinforcement. The self-administration results showed that CRF (10 mug) attenuated break points for iv cocaine, but did not alter break points for sucrose. A final experiment tested the effects of intracerebroventricular infusions of alpha-helical CRF9--41 a non-selective CRF antagonist, on footshock-induced changes to progressive-ratio cocaine self-administration. The antagonist selectively reversed the descending portion of the inverted-U shaped effects of footshock on break points for cocaine.
XToPSS-efficient XML filtering against large numbers of XPath expressions

This thesis proposes a new algorithm---XT6PSS---or filtering XML documents against large numbers of XPath expressions. This algorithm leverages existing publish/subscribe algorithms by casting the XML filtering problem into a content-based publish/subscribe matching problem. Thus, XML documents are translated into sets of attribute-value pairs that are evaluated over conjunctions of Boolean predicates, representing XPath expressions. The strength of this approach is that the predicates resulting from overlapping XPath expressions are stored and processed only once. The thesis experimentally evaluates the performance of the new algorithm and proves its scalability to millions of XPath expressions. The experiments demonstrate trade-offs between XToPSS and alternative XML filtering algorithms from the literature.
StyleCam: interactive, stylized 3D experiences using integrated spatial and temporal controls

This thesis describes StyleCam, an approach for authoring 3D viewing experiences that incorporate stylistic elements which are not available in typical 3D viewers. StyleCam allows the author to tailor what the user sees and when they see it. The resulting viewing experience can approach the visual richness and pacing of highly authored visual content such as television commercials or feature films. StyleCam allows for a satisfying level of interactivity while avoiding the problems inherent in using unconstrained camera models. StyleCam's main components are camera surfaces which spatially constrain the viewing camera; animation clips that allow for appealing transitions between camera surfaces; and a simple, unified, interaction technique that permits the user to seamlessly and continuously move between spatial-control of the camera and temporal-control of the animated transitions. In addition to describing the conceptual model of StyleCam and its current implementation, we present the results of an evaluation involving real users.
The role of Rac1 GTPase in beta-catenin/TCF-dependent transcription

Beta-catenin is a key mediator of the canonical Wnt pathway as it associates with TCF/LEF transcription factors at Wnt-responsive promoters to drive the transcription of target genes. Recently, we showed that Rac1 GTPase synergizes with beta-catenin to increase the activity of a TCF-responsive reporter in a manner that is dependent on the nuclear presence of Rac1. Here we demonstrate that this synergy follows from the association of Rac1 with the beta-catenin/TCF complex at Wnt-responsive promoters. This association serves to facilitate transcription, as overexpression of Rac1 augmented Wnt target gene activation, whereas depletion of endogenous Rac1 abrogated this effect. Moreover, the Rac1-specific activator Tiam1 potentiated Rac1-mediated activation of the Wnt pathway. Intriguingly, Tiam1 was tethered to Wnt-responsive promoters upon Wnt3a stimulation, whereas Rac1 was recruited in a Wnt-independent manner. Our results suggest that Rac1 and Tiam1 play a direct role in regulating beta-catenin/TCF-dependent transcription by modulating the beta-catenin/TCF transcription factor complex.
Unconditioned bone marrow transplant models for the investigation of hematopoiesis

Modulation of hematopoiesis can be achieved directly or indirectly by the transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) or marrow stromal cells, respectively. Most transplantation studies have used cytotoxic preconditioning of hosts, yet it is clinically advantageous to minimise damage to the marrow hematopoietic microenvironment. The aim of the studies described here was to enhance our understanding of transplantation of HSCs and marrow stromal cells in unconditioned hosts. Marrow engraftment of clinically relevant cell doses was studied and their impact on hematopoiesis was resolved using a variety of murine transplantation models. HSCs were found to engraft efficiently in unconditioned hosts, with most donor cells homing to the marrow within 24 hours. The grafts were long-lived and the donor stem cells were capable of long-term reconstitution of irradiated secondary hosts. Application of the hematopoietic stimuli (sublethal irradiation or the cytokine stem cell factor) after transplantation failed to alter donor chimerism. This result argues against the presence of a quiescent pool of donor stem cells, as previously hypothesized. It was found that the donor marker system used could affect the success of marrow transplantation in immunocompetent hosts, indicating that engineering cells to express novel proteins may affect transplantation success in this setting. Engraftment of ex vivo expanded marrow stromal cells was also demonstrated in unconditioned mice. Although the overall level of marrow chimerism was low it did approach the level of endogenous stroma and was thus significant. SlSld mice were used as a model for stromal cell therapy since they suffer from macrocytic anemia due to defective host stromal cells. Following stromal cell infusion, marrow erythroid progenitor levels were found to increase over controls, but no change in the anemia was demonstrated. It is possible that abnormal splenic erythropoiesis obscured the hematopoietic modulation demonstrated in the marrow since donor stromal cells were not detected in the spleen. The studies described in this thesis show that HSCs and stromal cells could engraft in unconditioned hosts and influence hematopoiesis. To improve therapeutic benefit, higher levels of engraftment may be needed and in the case of stromal cells, improved localization may also be required.
A knowledge-enabled approach to promoting sustainability through Environmental Assessment in Ontario

Environmental Assessment (EA) in Ontario is inherently a logical starting point for promoting sustainability and, recently, the process, as defined by the rational approach to decision-making, appears to be impeding progress in this regard. The issue is whether the potential exists to reform the process to a state where it promotes sustainability and whether there is the potential to combine a technical dimension (using knowledge not information) and a business dimension (reengineering the functions and role of EA to be more proactive and effective). The argument is that this evolution can occur through a reengineering that is based on knowledge. Thus, a new knowledge-enabled approach to promoting sustainability through EA, including the relevant Knowledge Management System, is developed using Value Engineering methodology with the intention of advocating a prospect for a sustainability review premised on an intense use of knowledge.
Resisting biological reductionism in addiction neuroimaging---Towards an integrative biopsychosocial-systems model: Implications for clinical social work

Emerging neuroimaging technologies are affecting the ways substance use problems are understood and addressed, leading to a strongly biological approach to these issues. This risks reducing addiction to the level of neuronal activity in the brain. This limitation, to the degree that it pervades dominant perspectives of addictive behaviour, has immense implications, both clinically and socially, with micro and macro systemic dimensions. While social workers and other health care providers should not ignore the value of biology-based analysis, addiction needs to be understood as a more complex set of processes. Therefore, a framework which does not default to but includes the biological dimension, and incorporates micro and macro social systems, can more effectively address the complex nature of addiction. The proposed framework constructs a biopsychosocial-systems model. The ethical and practical implications of reductionist and integrative approaches are explored, with an emphasis on the role of clinical social work practice in addiction.
Describing the nature and extent of musculoskeletal complaints 15 or more years post-injury in a TBI survivor populations

As the life expectancy following traumatic brain injury (TBI) increases, there is a growing need to address the secondary and tertiary complications that may arise numerous years after the initial injury. This study examined the nature and extent of musculoskeletal complaints in a TBI survivor population 15 or more years post-injury. Injury information from the initial TBI and follow-up was obtained for 34 individuals through medical record review and a telephone interview. Descriptive frequencies of the study population were generated and scores from the SF-36 were analyzed in relation to injury variables. There was a high incidence (79%) of reported musculoskeletal complaints after TBI, more than half the reported incidence of the general population in Ontario (Badley et al, 1995). Additionally, several interesting patterns of pain became evident within the study population including widespread, widespread sporadic, hemiplegic, isolated regional and upper body with hip pain distributions. Further, results from this study suggest that the impact of musculoskeletal complaints amongst TBI survivors is manifested in additional impairment as measured by the domains of the SF-36.
The Burgess Shale: A Cambrian mirror for modern evolutionary biology

The Burgess Shale, discovered in 1909, contains the fossilized remains of unusual marine animals from shortly after the Cambrian explosion. This thesis delineates three distinct phases in Burgess Shale research. It examines why the Burgess Shale has inspired such dissimilar interpretations and asks what the consequences of these different views are for our understanding of the tempo and mode of evolution and the place of systematics in evolutionary biology.
Learning and Meno's paradox in Aristotle's "Posterior Analytics."

Meno's paradox, from Plato's Meno, is one of the most famous puzzles in the history of philosophy. Learning or inquiry is impossible, so the argument goes, for either you already know what you are inquiring into, in which case there is no need for you to inquire, or you do not already know, in which case there is no way for you to inquire. I argue that Aristotle's Posterior Analytics---often regarded as a poorly organized, even incoherent text---is best understood as a unified work structured around responses to different versions of Meno's paradox, each threatening the possibility of a different type of learning. In Metaphysics I.9 Aristotle distinguishes between three types of learning: (1) learning by demonstration, (2) learning by definition, and (3) learning by induction. I argue that the Posterior Analytics divides neatly along these lines: book A explains the nature of learning by demonstration; much of book B explains learning by definition; and the work's final section (B 19) explains learning by induction. There is, moreover, a clear logic to Aristotle's order of presentation: learning by demonstration presupposes knowledge of definitions; learning by definition presupposes knowledge of (i) the terms used to construct definitions and (ii) preliminary accounts of the terms to be defined; and finally learning by induction is the means by which one acquires knowledge of these terms and preliminary accounts. The upshot is that the Posterior Analytics is a clearly organized work that delves deeper and deeper, as it unfolds, into the epistemological foundations of scientific knowledge. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, I present both the relevant version of Meno's paradox and Aristotle's solution to it. Each version presupposes an 'all or nothing' conception of knowledge: either you know x completely or you do not know x at all. Each solution involves showing that this assumption is false: there are certain intermediate epistemic states that fall between knowing x completely and not at all. These states form the basis on which the relevant sort of learning takes place.
Constructing pseudorandom function generators

Pseudorandom number generators are often composed to yield pseudorandom function generators. We will introduce a model in which it should be possible to demonstrate a lower bound on the number of times a pseudorandom function generator must query an oracle for a pseudorandom number generator. Weakly pseudorandom function generators are often composed in rounds to produce adaptively pseudorandom function generators. Non-adaptively pseudorandom function generators were introduced to model the weakly secure function generators. In [18], using an assumption related to the non-uniform DDH assumption, it is shown that the composition of non-adaptively pseudorandom function generators is not adaptively pseudorandom in general. We will show that the assumption given in [18] can be weakened to the more standard non-uniform DDH assumption, yielding a stronger result.
Tree wars: a study of natural governance in Israel

My thesis is about the governance of trees through what seem to be natural configurations of order, and about how this form of tree governance is utilized to legitimize the governance of certain humans. By interpreting a series of in-depth interviews and participatory observations (n=84), and through analyzing government documents, laws, and regulations, my thesis makes visible how technologies of power operate through practices of landscaping and, in particular, how they manifest through utilizing ecological narratives that revolve around the tree. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part (chapters 1 to 3) pursues an exploration of tree ideologies in Israel/Palestine, and is mostly structured around the binary juxtaposition of landscapes of pine against olive. The second part (chapters 4 and 5) examines the governance of trees in four North American cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Boston, and Brookline. In particular, chapter 1 focuses on the ideological construction of the pine as the Jewish tree. This massive enterprise ensures not only a lush, environmentally-sound, and Eurocentric landscape, but also a means for physically occupying land without directly using humans. Chapter 2 of the dissertation focuses on the configuration of the olive tree as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and resistance, and the counter-attempts to interrupt this configuration. Chapter 3 examines the nexus of law, nature, and technology in the construction of the West Bank landscape. The urban part of the thesis revolves around the war between Nature and the City, between humans and nonhumans, and between pipes and roots. Specifically, chapter 4 illustrates that practices of city treescaping serve city officials to funnel human traffic, promote community health, and police crime. Finally, chapter 5 explores the liminal spaces that thrive in the cracks of "tree culture," exposing the hybrids and networks of everyday street life such as grids, grates, and the Dig-Safe procedure. This exploration goes to suggest that, in certain respects, it is not only humans that govern trees but also trees that govern humans.

Keywords: Ecology, Israel
Ecology, Palestine
Natural landscaping, Israel
Natural landscaping, Palestine
Conservation of natural resources, Law and legislation
Conservation of natural resources, Israel
Conservation of natural resources, Law and legislation
Conservation of natural resources, Palestine