VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Productivity of Mistrust: Negotiating Partnerships in Ghana’s Development Sector

Under the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), partnerships have become central to the work of national non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Partnerships are underpinned by moral justifications of building trust and combating mistrust. A better understanding of how partnership policies are implemented in the everyday work of NGOs is critical for understanding the effects of moral imperatives in development ideologies as well as the current position and contributions of NGOs in the implementation of the SDGs. This dissertation examines how national NGOs in Ghana navigate the growing expectation that they build trust and how they affirm, negotiate, and contest partnerships. This ethnographic research draws on data from fifteen months of participant observation and in-depth interviews with a prominent network of NGOs working on the SDGs as well as the network’s government, private sector, and donor partners. As Ghana is considered a “development darling,” it offers an exemplary context for analysing the uptake of current aid policies. While trusting partnerships are framed in development ideologies as morally good, these policies occlude the uneven structures in which partnerships take place. I demonstrate that NGO leaders use practices and sentiments akin to mistrust to navigate the politics and hierarchies of partnerships in a development sector in which they have little decision-making power and are financially dependent on foreign donors. These operations of the development sector are revealed by paying attention to everyday practices of mistrust and emotional registers in partnerships, through which NGO leaders affirm their authority and recognition, even if they are unable to change the sector’s hierarchies. The ethnographic chapters on NGO relationships with government and private companies show how practices of mistrust constitute a moral positioning of integrity for NGOs as independent and working towards a social good. The chapters exploring partnerships within NGO networks and with donors demonstrate how the circulation of affective registers of suspicion and frustration develop common narratives of how partnerships should work, particularly in the top-down development context. Thus, this dissertation opens up to theoretical and empirical consideration the productive potentiality of mistrust and the surprising ways that practices and affects of mistrust constitute and sustain partnerships.

Keywords: Development
Mistrust
Non-Governmental Organisations
Partnerships
Sustainable Development Goals
Trust
Advisor: Dahl, Bianca
Daswani, Girish
Investigation of the Biological Function of Plant Cyclic Nucleotide Gated Ion Channel 2 in Auxin Signaling

Calcium (Ca2+) is a ubiquitously important signaling molecule in eukaryotic cells. For plants, developmental cues, and signals from the environment lead to changes in cellular Ca2+ concentrations that are required to activate appropriate responses. CYCLIC NUCLEOTIDE GATED CHANNELS (CNGCs) are ion channels that are thought to conduct cations like Ca2+ in plant cells. Of the 20 members of the Arabidopsis CNGC family, the isomer CNGC2 is of special interest as the loss-of-function of CNGC2 leads to defects in multiple physiological processes. In this thesis, I investigated the biological function of CNGC2 and propose that CNGC2 is important in auxin homeostasis in addition to its prescribed role in immunity. The first suppressor of the autoimmune CNGC2 null mutant was found to carry a mutation in the auxin biosynthesis gene YUCCA6 (YUC6). An investigation into alterations in auxin signals revealed that the CNGC2 knockout mutant cngc2 exhibits abnormalities in auxin signaling and hyper-accumulates endogenous auxin, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). This is the first report of CNGC2 being potentially involved in auxin signals through auxin biosynthesis. I next showed that a loss-of-function of another IAA biosynthesis gene, TRYPTOPHAN AMINOTRANSFERASE OF ARABIDOPSIS 1 (TAA1) also suppresses phenotypes associated with cngc2. This indicated that hyper-accumulation of IAA is a source of cngc2 phenotypes. IAA-induced Ca2+ influx is impaired in cngc2, and this phenotype is alleviated in the absence of YUC6. This indicates that CNGC2 functions in auxin-induced Ca2+ signals that can influence auxin homeostasis. The hyper accumulation of auxin in cngc2 positions CNGC2 in a negative feedback loop of auxin biosynthesis. Since all 11 members of the YUC gene family are thought to be involved in auxin biosynthesis, we asked whether a loss-of-function in any YUC gene could suppress cngc2 phenotype. Of all the yuc mutants tested, only yuc6 could suppress cngc2 phenotypes. YUC6 and TAA1 have been shown to exhibit similar tissue-specific expression patterns at the vasculature, a pattern not observed with other YUCs. This indicates a specific role of YUC6 in the CNGC2-mediated auxin feedback loop, which may be governed by its unique expression pattern. Collectively, these findings cast a new light of CNGC2’s complex regulation by auxin signaling and immune responses.

Keywords: biology
genetics
plant
Advisor: Yoshioka, Keiko KY
Ni-catalyzed Amination of a-Aryl Methyl Ethers and Synthesis of Nitriles via Transnitrilation

This thesis describes new methods for amination of -aryl methyl ethers and synthesis of nitriles via transnitrilation. The strategies discussed represent novel approaches to synthesis of -aryl amines, aliphatic nitriles, benzonitriles and alkenyl nitriles. Along with these novel approaches, previously reported synthetic strategies and their advantages is discussed. Chapter I provides an overview of nickel catalysis and use of alcohol derivatives in Ni-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions. Chapter II describes strategies for synthesis of amines and new method for Ni-catalyzed amination of -aryl methyl ethers. Naphthalene and heterocycle derived -aryl methyl ethers can be used for Ni-catalyzed amination using aryl and aliphatic amines. Preliminary mechanistic investigation suggest oxidative addition is facilitated by anionic ligand and that reductive elimination is reversible. Chapter III describes strategies for synthesis of nitriles and new methods developed for synthesis of aliphatic nitriles and benzonitriles via transnitrilation. Aliphatic lithium reagents and broad range of electrophiles can be used for synthesis of aliphatic nitriles via transnitrilation and anion-relay. Aryl halides and pseudohalides can be used for synthesis of benzonitriles using Ni-catalyzed transnitrilation from C–bound electrophilic nitrile reagent under reductive conditions. Chapter IV describes strategies for synthesis of alkenyl nitriles and new method developed for synthesis of alkenyl nitriles via arylcyanation of alkynes. Alkenyl nitriles can be synthesized in moderate yields using aryl bromide, alkynes and C–bound electrophilic nitrile reagent. While exclusive cis-addition product was observed, optimization and preliminary mechanistic studies suggests isomerization of alkene likely occurs on catalytic cycle. Chapter V describes further extension to carbocyanation strategy leading to discovery of methods for synthesis of alkenyl nitriles via alkylcyanation and hydrocyanation of alkynes. Hydrocyanation and alkylcyanation of alkynes can be achieved using conditions similar to arylcyanation of alkynes. Preliminary investigations suggest alkyl pseudohalides can be used for alkylcyanation via in situ formation of alkyl halide. Preliminary investigations for hydrocyanation suggests that stereoselective transformation can be achieved with alterations in the ligand.

Keywords: Amines
Catalysis
Nickel
Nitriles
Synthesis
Advisor: Rousseaux, Sophie SR
Solar Methanol: From Process Engineering and Photoreactor Development to Materials Discovery and Photocatalysis

Renewable methanol (MeOH) is a vital feedstock for an environmentally sustainable society. The ability to transform renewable electricity into the chemical bonds of hydrogen and further with solar energy into MeOH is invaluable from a delocalized renewable-energy generation standpoint. It allows for ease of storage, transportation and use of clean hydrogen. In this work, Ch. 1 outlines the current context for research into solar heterogeneous catalysis, and lays the groundwork for answering the question of ‘why to pursue liquid fuels?’ as a future hydrogen carrier. Ch. 2 outlines the thermodynamics of MeOH synthesis and the kinetics and performance of the commercial copper-zinc oxide-alumina (CZA) MeOH catalyst. It also envisions and evaluates solar-assisted MeOH processes and compares them to each other and the commercial process in a technoeconomic analysis. Ch. 3 outlines a few optimizations to lower the minimum MeOH selling price (MSPMeOH) of the best strategy from Ch. 2, introduces photocatalysis, and highlights the current research on CZA-inspired photocatalysts. Finally, the scientific objectives and hypotheses of the experimental portion of this work are postulated. Ch. 4 outlines the development of a pressurized solar-CSTR reactor built for the purpose of assessing light enhanced catalysts with CZA-baselining data. Ch. 5 focuses on a nature- and CZA-inspired solar analogue catalyst that exhibits MeOH synthesis and reforming activity in thermal and thermal + light operating conditions, respectively. This material could be operated in a day- and night-cycle operation, and with further development could allow cyclic energy storage and distribution that would be advantageous to distributed energy-storage systems. Ch. 6 concludes with a summary of the completed objectives as outlined in Ch. 1 and the future direction.

Keywords: carbon dioxide utilization
photo reactor development
photocatalysis
process engineering
renewable energy
solar methanol
Advisor: Ozin, Geoffrey A
Sain, Mohini M
Profiles and Predictors of Reading Comprehension for English Language Learners: A Longitudinal Investigation of Language Comprehension Skills and the Lexical Quality Hypothesis

The overall goals of this two-study dissertation were to (1) examine longitudinally the contribution of different language skills to the reading comprehension (RC) of English Language learners (ELLs) and English-speaking monolingual students (EL1s) (Study 1), and (2) determine the reading and language profiles associated with ELLs and EL1s at different developmental timepoints (Study 2). 379 ELLs and 159 EL1s were tested annually for six years beginning in Grade 1. In Study 1, multi-level modelling was used to determine which language skills (i.e., vocabulary, syntactic awareness/knowledge, and listening comprehension) contribute to RC for ELLs and EL1s in Grades 1-3 and 4-6. In each analysis there was significant variability in initial (i.e., Grade 1 and Grade 4) RC scores, but not in rate of growth in RC. In Grade 1, various language skills contributed to RC for both ELLs and EL1s. By Grade 4, syntactic knowledge and listening comprehension were predictors of RC for ELLs, but only vocabulary was a predictor for EL1s. Overall, this study demonstrated that each language skill captures unique aspects of language that contribute to RC, and that from a developmental lens, the relative importance of specific language skills changes over time for both language groups. In Study 2, latent profile analysis was used to assess whether the lexical quality hypothesis(LQH) is supported at different developmental time points, along with additional components of language. For EL1s in Grades 1, 3, and 6, and for ELLs in Grade 1, analyses revealed a 2-subgroup solution consisting of a good readers group, who displayed strong RC and performance across both word-level and language skills, and a poor readers group, who performed below average on RC and each skill. For ELLs in Grade 3, three groups emerged, consisting of poor readers, and good readers with either average or strong word-level skills. For ELLs in Grade 6, groups of poor, average, and good readers emerged. Overall, results provide nuanced support for the LQH in both language groups, but suggest that it takes longer for the components of the LQH to align for ELLs than for their EL1 peers.

Keywords: English language learners
Language comprehension
Reading comprehension
Advisor: Geva, Esther
Orientalismus und unvollständige Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Arabische Identitätsfigurationen in deutschsprachiger Literatur und Film nach 1945

In meiner Arbeit analysiere ich die Darstellungen von AraberInnen in literarischen und filmischen Werken und Diskursen der Nachkriegsgeneration und dem Jahrzehnt nach dem 11. September. Anhand der Repräsentation von AraberInnen veranschauliche ich die Mangel und Lücken im Prozess der Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Deutschland und Österreich. Dabei demonstriere ich, inwieweit rassistische Grundgedanken, die zu den Verbrechen und Massakern des Dritten Reiches führten, weiterhin in veränderter Form fortbestehen. Durch den Vergleich mit den Repräsentationen nach dem 11. September, zeige ich wie diese Bilder und die Diskurse um AraberInnen sich verändert haben. Von besonderem Interesse sind die kritischen Dekonstruktionen hegemonialer Orientdiskurse in den untersuchten Werken. Meine Arbeit demonstriert die Komplexität und Heterogenität des deutschsprachigen Orientalismus und veranschaulicht dies an exemplarisch ausgewählten Romanen und Filmen, die in den einzelnen Kapiteln in Form von Fallstudien untersucht werden. Im ersten Kapitel: Tourismus in Ägypten und Reiseliteratur: Barbara Frischmuths Vergiss Ägypten (2008) und Ingeborg Bachmanns Das Buch Franza (1965/1978) werden die Werke der österreichischen Autorinnen untersucht. Anhand der Repräsentationen von AraberInnen demonstriere ich, wie Bachmann, beeinflusst durch Fanon, antikoloniale Diskurse thematisiert und ein frühzeitiges Verständnis von Intersektionalität entwirft. Frischmuths Roman wird unter dem Gesichtspunkt ihrer Auffassung von Multikulturalismus analysiert. Ihre Verwendung von orientalischen Tropen werden nachgezeichnet und ihrer Intervention in eurozentrische Hegemonialdiskurse durch die Verwendung von Mystik gegenübergestellt. Im zweiten Kapitel: Arabische Migranten in Deutschland: Benjamin Heisenbergs Schläfer (2005) und Rainer Werner Fassbinders Ali: Angst essen Seele auf (1974) wird das Thema Migration und die Präsenz arabischer Migranten in Deutschland diskutiert. Die Weiterführung kolonialer Arbeitsmigrationspolitik wird anhand der Filme nachgezeichnet, um zu zeigen welche Funktion arabische Migranten innerhalb des Migrationsdiskurses einnehmen. Das dritte und abschließende Kapitel: Arabische Länder in deutschen Nachrichten: Volker Schlöndorffs Film Die Fälschung (1981) und Lancelot von Nasos Film Waffenstillstand (2009) befasst sich mit dem Thema der Medienrepräsentation von AraberInnen und im Besonderen der Nachrichtenberichterstattung von Kriegen im Nahen Osten. Durch den Vergleich von Diskursen in der Auslandsberichterstattung in arabischen Ländern in deutschen Medien und der filmischen Darstellung von Auslandsreportern zeige ich welche orientalischen Narrative weitergeführt und welche kritisch dekonstruiert werden.

Keywords: Arabs
gender
German film
German literature
migration
Orientalism
Advisor: Fenner, Angelica
Cest livre est a moy: French Books and Fifteenth-century England

Although English eventually became its dominant language of new literary composition, medieval England maintained a multilingual textual culture. Scholarly narratives that link English monolingualism to national identity have overshadowed the prolonged circulation of French. This thesis demonstrates the centrality of French to fifteenth-century England’s textual culture. Through the first large-scale codicological study of manuscripts from England containing French texts, I uncover the continuous, widespread, and diverse presence of French in books, upsetting narratives of French’s decline and English’s triumph. French—Insular and Continental, old and new—challenges any nationalistic, monolingual myth of textual culture. I argue for a new understanding of an embedded English multilingualism in which French, as language and material, overlaps with and influences English and Latin. In books, French becomes English. Chapter 1 argues that medieval documents create the category of “French books,” embedded within a larger, multilingual textual culture. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 on lexical glosses, readers’ summaries, and physical adaptations of French books reveal that English book users drew linguistic, textual, and material connections between French, English, and Latin, even in the process of interpreting a monolingual book. Through each form of reception, English book users place French books within a continuum of Francophone textual culture, connecting specific manuscripts to other texts, owners, or time periods. Chapter 5 returns to the category of “French books” to contend that, while scholars have argued that French books survived as old-fashioned luxuries, French manuscripts produced interconnected communities of book users through language, paratext, text, and material. Luxury, not as aesthetic category but as a series of use practices that attend to value, defines the reception of French in England. England’s textual community developed linguistic, social, cultural, and material responses to French texts through their books, which trace the history of French, including its relation to English and Latin. Rather than upholding ideas about the decline of French or separate, hierarchical roles for each language, I instead argue for an embedded English multilingualism negotiated on the page. This codicological approach, examining England’s French books transhistorically and transnationally, broadens our understandings of the relationship among nation, literature, and language.

Keywords: book history
fifteenth century
French of England
history of reading
manuscript studies
medieval England
Advisor: Gillespie, Alexandra
The Devil’s Advocates: The Exoneration of Iblīs in Persian Mysticism

This dissertation investigates the portrayal of the Devil, known as Iblīs, in Perso-Islamic sources from the 3rd/9th to the 8th/14th centuries, with a focus being on mystical literature. Drawing upon a variety of primary source, including the Qurʾan and its commentaries; the legends of the prophets; general histories; heresiologies; and Sufi texts and Persian mystical poetry, it aims to demonstrate that, in contrast to orthodox Islamic dogma, which describes Iblīs as a fiendish and malevolent being, numerous medieval Islamic sources, in both Arabic and Persian, portray him either as an ambiguous figure or in a positive light. According to the story of Iblīs in the Qurʾan, when God created Adam, he ordered all the angels to bow down before him. They all obeyed except Iblīs who refused, and for this reason God cursed and banished him. While based on this account, Muslim theologians viewed Iblīs as disobedient and evil, some Persian mystics viewed him as an angelic, luminous sage (pīr) who is a perfect Sufi, a true monotheist, and a steadfast lover of the Divine. Their esoteric interpretations of the Qurʾanic story of Iblīs and his downfall were fundamentally different from those of mainstream Muslim theologians and exegetes. In the view of these Persian mystics, Iblīs’s refusal to prostrate himself before Adam, although exoterically considered an act of rebellion, was seen esoterically as the purest form of love and devotion to God, which elevated him to the highest ranks of Sufi sainthood. While this study will examine the notion of the sainthood of Iblīs in the works of some medieval Persian Sufis, it also proposes that the Persian mystics’ embrace of Iblīs was more widespread than previously thought, and it influenced not only Persian mystical literature but also certain non-mystical genres, such as historiography, heresiology, and folklore.

Keywords: Devil
Iblīs
Mysticism
Persian
Satan
Sufism
Advisor: Subtelny, Maria E
Novel Immunometabolic Therapies and Prognostic Markers for Lymphedema

Lymphedema is a chronic, disabling health condition affecting over 40 million people globally. There are limited treatments for lymphedema and none are effective for the late stages of the disease. Fibrosis is a key pathology contributing to the chronic irreversibility of this clinical entity. New therapeutics are needed to target lymphedema fibrosis, and improved prognostic models are required to reliably predict who will develop chronic, severe lymphedema to appropriately triage and monitor patients for timely diagnosis and treatment. It is unknown if: (1) gene expression changes in tissue are associated with the development of fibrosis in lymphedema, (2) stimulating a non-fibrotic gene expression profile using drug therapy can reduce fibrosis in lymphedema tissues, and (3) biomarkers can reliably predict the occurrence and severity of lymphedema. Temporal RNA-sequencing of murine lymphedema tissues identified that increased interleukin 17 (IL-17) signaling and decreased peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) signaling occurred early in lymphedema and were sustained chronically. These gene expression changes co-occurred with fibrosis, which began to develop as early as two weeks after lymphedema development and continued until at least 35 weeks after the initiation of lymphedema. Using both mechanism of action- and pharmacogenomics-based approaches, drugs candidates were identified to target IL-17 and/or PPAR gene expression, and reduced lymphedema fibrosis in cellular and animal models. Additionally, in a prognostic biomarker study of 373 breast cancer patients with and without lymphedema, a novel prognostic model based on metabolic and inflammatory risk factors (e.g. breast fat density, BMI, age) was able to predict the occurrence and severity of lymphedema. Together, this research offers important novel insights into risk model development and therapeutic approaches for lymphedema.

Keywords: Fibrosis
Inflammation
Lymphedema
Metabolism
Advisor: Liu, Fei-Fei