VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Memory Representation in the Medial Prefrontal Cortex: Cortcial Communication, and the Development of a Prefrontal Ensemble Code for Associative Memory

Despite knowledge of the critical importance of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in both the consolidation and long-term retrieval of event memory in the brain, it is unclear which aspects of a memory are represented within this region and how they change with learning and memory consolidation. Likewise, how the mPFC interacts with other facets of the memory network to shape these representations is also uncertain. In this thesis I employed electrophysiological techniques to examine individual prelimbic mPFC (PrL) neurons selectivity for various task features in an associative memory paradigm in rats across learning, consolidation and over-training. Further, I recorded oscillatory activity from the rhinal cortices and ventral hippocampus to examine how these regions may modulate mPFC memory representations across time. I reveal similar proportions at all time-points of both neurons highly selective for specific task features, and neurons exhibiting more generalized activity. Looking at population level activity across time however revealed a shift from more discrete encoding during learning to more generalized encoding post-consolidation. Further, PrL neurons whose firing patterns were modulated by rhinal and ventral hippocampal theta oscillations uncover a potential source of this change in encoding across time. Specifically, I show that discrete populations of PrL neurons display phase-locked spiking to theta oscillations in the lateral entorhinal cortex, the perirhinal cortex, and ventral hippocampus. Whereas the proportions of these different populations were not observed to change across time, the information contained within their activity did. PrL neurons phase-locked to rhinal theta oscillations were highly selective to task features early on in the acquisition of the memory and became more generalized with learning and consolidation. Neurons phase-locked to ventral hippocampal theta on the other hand became more selective for the meaning of the stimulus post-consolidation. I discuss how these findings fit with existing theories of the role of the mPFC in long-term memory including schema development and indexing of cortical memory activity. Taken together, these results demonstrate memory encoding patterns within the prelimbic mPFC and highlight, through communication with several important nodes of the memory network, potential mechanisms through which the encoding of different memory features evolve across learning.

Keywords: Electrophysiology
Eyeblink Conditioning
Memory Consolidation
Prefrontal Cortex
Advisor: Takehara-Nishiuchi, Kaori
Insights into Nurses’ Work: Exploring Relationships among Work Attitudes Work-related Behaviours

Work motivation has been associated with work productivity. In health care, low motivation levels are associated with low productivity and linked to poor performance, decreased patient safety, and overall poor quality care. Hence the importance, ascribed in the literature, to clearly identifying the relationships between and among factors associated with work motivation, including work attitudes, and behaviours linked to work performance such as extra-role behaviours. Despite their importance to performance in health care, these relationships are understudied and poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to better understand work attitudes and their relationships to one another and to extra-role behaviours amongst nurses working in hospitals, the community, and long-term care settings in Ontario. This study comprises two stages: first, a scoping review focused on identifying individual-, unit-level, and organization-level characteristics that influence work motivation in health service organizations. The findings from the scoping review, augmented by a more in-depth review of the literature, aided in the development of a conceptual framework that guided the second stage of the study, to examine relationships amongst a specific set of nurses’ work attitudes - including perceptions of organizational justice, perceived organizational support, and affective commitment - and extra-role behaviours – specifically, organizational citizenship behaviours - in Ontario health care settings. In the second stage of the study, a survey was developed and administered to frontline nurses actively working in hospitals, the community, and long-term care settings in Ontario. Relationships amongst the constructs of interest were examined using structural equation modeling and path analysis. Examining the relationships of these concepts in a single model is novel, and offers insights regarding their complexity. The analyses further suggest that prior studies may be under-nuanced, and approaches to conceptualizing the concepts of perceived organizational justice and affective commitment in particular may have led to erroneous conclusions regarding their associations with perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviours. This study further addresses four significant gaps previously identified in the work motivation and work behaviour literature: (1) how affective commitment relates to behavioural efforts, specifically organizational citizenship behaviours; (2) utilization of reliable and validated instruments to study work motivation; (3) use of a sufficiently large sample to have empirical support for generalizability; and (4) examination of these phenomena, among nurses, across diverse health care settings.

Keywords: affective commitment
organizational citizenship behaviours
organizational justice
perceived organizational support
structural equation modeling
work attitudes
Advisor: Berta, Whitney
Kant's Hypothetical Imperative

Kant famously distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives and the conditional and unconditional necessitation they express. Hypothetical imperatives command conditionally, and they govern our instrumental and prudential reasoning. Categorical imperatives command unconditionally, and they govern our moral reasoning. There is significant disagreement in the literature about how to construe the nature and normativity of Kant’s hypothetical imperatives. In the first part of the dissertation, I consider three, seemingly divergent, contemporary interpretations. I argue, that all three of these views collapse the crucial distinction between conditional and unconditional necessity that was supposed to distinguish between the imperatives. Moreover, on the standard interpretation of the hypothetical imperative’s command, an interpretation that each of these views share, the “material interpretation,” is the logical consequence. The material interpretation understands hypothetical imperatives as deriving from reason’s endorsement of our ends, and thus ends that are set by the categorical imperative. Accordingly, all practical rational failing is a form of moral failing, and so, on Kant’s view, we collapse the practical distinction between stupidity and evil. In the second part of the dissertation, I explain how the standard interpretation of hypothetical imperatives as anti-akratic rational principles that command agents to will the means to their ends, even in the face of any temptation not to, inevitably leads to the material interpretation. I offer an alternative understanding of hypothetical imperatives, and correlatively of Kant’s conception of willing an end, that avoids this view, and which preserves the distinction between the conditional and unconditional necessitation that Kant thought the two imperatives express, and so also the crucial practical distinction between stupidity and evil.

Keywords: hypothetical imperative
instrumental reason
Kant
normativity
practical reason
Advisor: Tenenbaum, Sergio
Management of Electrical Grids with Storage and Flexible Loads under High Penetration Renewables

With growing concerns about environment and energy independence issues, more and more renewable energy resources such as wind and solar are expected to be integrated into the future power grid. Due to the intermittence and limited dispatch-ability of renewable generation, its large-scale integration could upset the balance between supply and demand, and affect grid reliability. To maintain grid reliability, traditional approaches include adding more operating reserves such as fast-responsive generators, which in turn incurs an increased cost and meanwhile discounts the environmental benefits of renewable generation. To combat the intermittence of renewable generation, in this thesis, an alternative solution is considered, which leverages the flexibility of energy storage and loads in grid-wide services. With the assistance of advanced ``smart grid'' technologies (e.g., information technology, control, and economics), the general objective of this thesis is to facilitate the large-scale renewable integration so as to improve the long-term performance of power grids (e.g., reliability, social welfare, or cost effectiveness). In achieving this goal, several challenges are encountered, such as system uncertainty, coupling of system operational constraints, and large scale of power grids. Compared with previous works, this work builds on more complete system models that can accommodate a wide spectrum of vital characteristics of a power system. We explicitly incorporate system uncertainty (e.g., uncertainty of renewable generation, electricity price, and loads) into the problem formulation. For the control of energy storage and loads, we provide centralized algorithms that are easy to implement in reality, and at the same time ensure strong analytical performance. Furthermore, we propose distributed implementation of the centralized algorithms, which converges fast and only requires limited information exchange.

Advisor: Liang, Ben
Dong, Min
The Evolutionary Genetics of Gene Expression in Capsella grandiflora

Understanding the evolutionary forces that maintain variation at the sequence and phenotypic level is crucial for developing a full understanding of how evolution works in nature. In my thesis, I investigate the evolutionary forces that maintain genetic variation at the sequence level and at the phenotype level using genomic and transcriptomic data from the plant Capsella grandiflora. In Chapter 2, I show that negative selection and positive selection shape sequence variation in coding and conserved noncoding sequence and that a gene's expression level influences the strength of negative selection. In Chapter 3, I map the loci that affect expression level genome-wide and show that negative selection is the dominant force acting on these loci, consistent with the hypothesis of mutation-selection balance. In Chapter 4, I show that genes with higher coexpression network connectivity experience stronger positive and negative selection, suggesting that pleiotropy, as measured by network connectivity, increases constraint but does not limit adaptation. Overall, my results suggest that mutation-selection balance explains much of the genetic variation observed within populations at both the sequence and phenotypic level.

Advisor: Stinchcombe, John R
Wright, Stephen I
High Gradient Labelling-free Isolation of Cardiomyocytes from Heterogeneous Populations

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world and is likely to remain so in the foreseeable future. There is a great deal of optimism about cardiac regenerative therapies because recent advances in stem cell technology have made it possible to derive millions of cardiomyocytes, i.e., functional heart muscle cells, from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. These stem cell-derived cardiac cells also have enormous potential in drug discovery, toxicology studies and fundamental cardiac physiology. Cardiomyocytes (CMs) do not have well-established, specific surface markers, which could enable their separation from heterogeneous differentiation cultures using transient antibody labelling and traditional methods such as fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS) or magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS). The next major challenge in realizing their potential is the development of separation methods that are compatible with clinical applications and can isolate cardiomyocytes and specific cardiac cell subpopulations in sufficient numbers, purity and quality after in vitro culture. This thesis presents a review of currently available cardiomyocyte separation strategies; develops a mathematical model to describe the novel labeling-free application of high gradient magnetic sorting for cardiomyocytes; reports the CM separation conducted; and finally avalidates a CM prosurvival preconditioning strategy to protect against an in vitro simulated ischemic/reperfusion injury such as one that occurs after cells are implantation in vivo. Neonatal rat and hESC-derived cardiomyocytes were collected at 94.8±3.3% and 93.6±2.8% (Day 20-25) purity from the separation respectively. Sodium nitrite/hypoxic preconditioned cells’ viability increased 20% post hypoxic/reoxygenation injury compared to cells without preconditioning treatment.

Keywords: Cardiomyocyte
Cell Separation
High Gradient Magnetic Separation
Myoglobin
Advisor: Radisic, Milica
Measurement of Wisdom among Mainland Chinese

Modern psychologists generally regard wisdom as mature understanding and conduct of life; however, most wisdom studies have been conducted in Western culture. Little is known about wisdom in other cultures, even though cultures may significantly shape the structure of wisdom; for example, Chinese culture emphasizes connections in society, nature, and universe more than Western culture does, thus the structure of wisdom among Mainland Chinese may differ from that of Westerners. We conducted three studies to find a proper measure/representation for wisdom among Mainland Chinese. In study 1, wisdom was measured by Ardelt’s self-report wisdom scale, but the three-dimensional wisdom structure was not found. In study 2, we identified five wisdom components from the implicit theory of wisdom among 100 Mainland Chinese. Most of these components corresponded to those identified in the implicit theory of wisdom among westerners; yet some of them were uniquely Chinese. The Mainland Chinese Wisdom Model was developed based on these five conceptual components. In study 3, a Mainland Chinese Wisdom Paradigm was developed based on the Mainland Chinese Wisdom Model and the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm (general and personal). The participants’ wisdom performance was videotaped and then rated on the Mainland Chinese and Berlin Wisdom criteria. Their videotaped facial expression was analyzed by software. The results revealed that our Chinese wisdom measurement is reliable and valid; the Berlin Wisdom rating and the Mainland Chinese Wisdom rating were highly consistent with each other; finally, the feeling of surprise may contribute to wisdom performance.

Keywords: Chinese culture
Mainland Chinese
measurement
wisdom
Advisor: Hu, Chao S.
The Hidden Schools: Mapping Greek Heritage Language Education in Canada

Since the languages of immigrant communities in Canada are categorized as “non-official”, our government is under no obligation to contribute to the perpetuation of these languages. Furthermore, education, in general, is a provincial responsibility. Thus, no formal reporting and documentation of Heritage/International Language Programs takes place at the national level. Given this situation, the various ethnic community groups are left alone with the task of protecting their valuable linguistic and cultural heritages. Inevitably, without national information sharing or support from the Canadian government, HL policy and programming are in a precarious state. My study involves my participation in a community-based research project that aims to locate, map, assess and develop the Greek HLE resources in Canada. Theoretically based on the concepts of Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Language Maintenance, my investigation (a) addresses the question of access to Greek language and culture education by exploring the programs and resources currently available to HL learners; (b) formulates an asset-based model to analyze the capacity of the Greek community's HLE system and proposes changes for its upgrade; and (c) develops a database to allow community members, HLE stakeholders and researchers to search for information about Greek language schools, community organizations and cultural events across Canada. Overall, this investigation addresses the retention and development of Canada’s cultural and linguistic resources through HLE. My findings demonstrate that for Heritage Languages to be maintained in Canada beyond the third generation, communities need to assume responsibility and foster three necessary conditions for educational success in the 21st century: access, innovation and motivation. As a starting point, I suggest locating, sharing and developing HLE assets through collaborations with stakeholders, including universities, governments, interested professionals and funding agencies. This study not only brings into prominence Greek HLE in Canada, but also underscores the passion and determination of immigrant communities to fully participate in mainstream society without diminishing their cultural and linguistic capital.

Keywords: community-based research
Greek language and culture
Hellenic diaspora
heritage/minority/international language education
language maintenance
multiculturalism in Canada
Advisor: Trifonas, Peter Pericles
Supporting English Language Learners with an Adaptive Mobile Application

English language learners (ELL) have dedicated considerable time and effort to the development of their language proficiency. This has included the use of a variety of mobile assisted language learning (MALL) tools that are either unproven or that have undergone limited evaluations of their effectiveness. The majority of these evaluations have been performed with beginner foreign-language learners at the post-secondary level. Moreover, dedicated MALL tools rarely support the learner’s ability to communicate in English. I propose and demonstrate the feasibility of an adaptive MALL approach that aims to scaffold ELL vocabulary and communication needs. This scaffolding recommends learning materials to ELLs by employing the ecological approach to dynamically reason over logs of learner interactions with a MALL tool. The highly personalized approach to supporting learners that is operationalized through this tool was developed following user-centered design principles. The development of the learning content generation and recommendation mechanisms that are included as part of this approach to supporting English language learners was validated through two studies. An additional exploratory evaluation of this adaptive approach to supporting ELL communication and learning activities was performed before evaluating its influence on ELL vocabulary knowledge, communication, and affect through two studies. These studies considered the effectiveness of the proposed MALL approach from multiple perspectives. The first took place in a Japanese high school and focused on the relationship between student vocabulary knowledge and system usage. The second involved advanced English language learners and took place in the greater Toronto area. This study aimed to determine the relationships among system usage, user communicative success, and user affect. The work presented in this thesis shows that the use of the proposed approach can support ELL communication, vocabulary development, and affect. The evaluation of this approach allowed the creation of models that predict learning outcomes based on learners’ MALL usage and knowledge. Combining the results of these studies with those of the formative evaluations, indicates that a mobile tool that employs the ecological approach to learner modeling can support the learning activities, vocabulary learning outcomes, affect, and communication of English language learners.

Keywords: affect
communication
ecological approach
mobile assisted language learning
vocabulary learning
Advisor: Baecker, Ronald M.
Anything can Happen: Everyday Morality and Social Theory in Russia

The language and the sensibilities of social theory are used differently, and to different purposes, by experts and “laymen.” But they are increasingly shared, challenging the “meta” status of social theory vis-à-vis analytics employed by the subjects of anthropological analysis. This dissertation draws on ten months of ethnographic study in Russia, a country that offers a unique perspective on the issue of epistemology and native social theory. Focusing on those born in the 1970s, it illuminates the life-worlds of people who have lived through profound social and historical transformation. This postsocialist space has been shaped by decades of mass indoctrination with a sociocentric, socialist, and modernist social philosophy, producing a kind of “vernacular Marxism” among its population. This dissertation examines vernacular Marxism in popular discourse, especially in talk about morality, the constitution of subjectivity, and techniques of the self. It shows how something often deemed to be an ideological or performative aspect of the “has-been” Soviet project continues to shape everyday morality and practical ethics. Vernacular Marxism considers not only the tension between the individual and society, but also between two forms of communal life, characterised here as the Collective and Communitas. Subjectivity is commonly perceived through a material-metaphysical lens as a resource and an exchange of “energy.” Consumption and the relationship to material objects are complicated by anti-fetishist imperatives. Everyday reasoning is influenced by dialectics, modernisation, and historical materialism. Asserting that vernacular Marxism is more than a “local ideology,” this work discusses the epistemological and ethical questions that arise when some routine “meta” analytics are applied to social reality that is already structured by social reflexivity. Rather than evaluating the fit between these analytics and social reality, this dissertation argues that scholars must be attuned to the mutual dislocation of their own knowledge and that of their “informants,” all within a flat epistemological and ethical hierarchy.

Keywords: epistemology
ethics
ethnography
generation
postsocialism
Advisor: Lambek, Michael
Kalmar, Ivan