VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Inclusion without Potential: Disability and the Biopolitics of Neuro-logical Human Capital Investments

Parents challenged Canada’s National Children’s Agenda (NCA)—a policy umbrella for neoliberal investments in early childhood introduced in 1999—for mobilizing a brain-focused conceptualization of child development they felt excluded children with disabilities. This conceptualization cast early brain formation as a critical developmental stage and investment phase for human capital development at the population level, assembling a linkage between brain-economy-population that I term the “neuro-logical” model. Although studies show that political efforts to invest in human capital through early childhood reproduce inequality for many, few have considered the exclusionary effects on children with disabilities. To elucidate the inclusion/exclusion of disability, I examine how developmental differences were discursively incorporated in attempts to mobilize and operationalize the neuro-logical model in policy between 1994-2011. Drawing on Lemke’s approach to Foucauldian biopolitics, I conceptualize the NCA as an effort to assemble knowledge and strategies for optimizing life at the population level, and read the neuro-logical model as a strategy to calibrate biopolitics to both emergent neuroscientific “truths” and rapid social and economic change. Using a critical interpretive, “anthropology of policy” methodology that analyzes policy as both discourse and governmental technique, I analyze the neuro-logical model through relevant documentary sources. While the NCA was rhetorically about investing in all children, it was more directly about investing in normal and normalizable brain development as a means to optimize population vitality and ensure global economic competitiveness. I develop the argument that the possibilities for including disability as a form of developmental difference were inscribed in the neuro-logical model itself. Specifically, cognitive impairments that were considered permanent were positioned as the non-normalizable remainder in the investment agenda. Framing the investment in early childhood in neuroscientific terms obscured both the discursive reproduction of disabled children’s marginality and the deflection of alternate conceptualizations of human value, child potential, and inclusion. This thesis contributes to theorizing how models of normal and normalizable child development shape the discursive incorporation of children with disabling differences, with implications for policy, theory, and practice. Ethnographically rich policy research is needed to investigate how policy models are reproduced or transformed through local implementation.

Keywords: Biopolitics
Brain
Canada
Child development
Disability
Inclusion
Advisor: Poland, Blake
Modal Development: Input-divergent L1 Acquisition in the Direction of Diachronic Reanalysis

This thesis explores the proposed causal link between child language development and language change from the language acquisition perspective. While theorists have argued for a causal link between acquisition and change for over a century (Meillet, 1912; Paul, 1920; i.a.), but little research has investigated whether this proposal makes sense for child language (c.f. Baron, 1977; van Gelderen, 2011: 21-26; Cournane, 2014). I investigate whether child input-divergent patterns (i.e., analyses which diverge away rather than converge towards the adult target) are compatible with innovations we see in the historical record. I present a series of naturalistic and experimental studies focusing on modal expressions (e.g., must, can, have to, be going to) in English development. Modal expressions develop diachronically in a unidirectional manner: (a) syntactically, from verbs to functional verbs to INFL-elements (Roberts, 1985; i.a.), and (b) semantically, from root meanings (e.g., ability, obligation), to epistemic meanings (e.g., inference) (Traugott, 1989; i.a.). The studies in this thesis first propose what would need to be true of child language in order for child input-divergence to be the source of historical innovations, and second, test whether these input-divergent patterns indeed occur in child development. The corpus studies on naturalistic modal development provide evidence for syntactic re-categorization biases (i.e., for treatment of expressions which belong to lower categories like v in the input, as higher categories, like INFL, in the child grammar). These studies also show that the delayed onset of epistemic modal uses relative to root modal uses is best explained by grammatical development, not conceptual development (Papafragou, 1998; i.a.). The experimental studies provide evidence that preschool age children increasingly attribute epistemic-type interpretations to polysemous modal constructions, regardless of the presence or absence of meaning-determining aspect cues which adult speakers rely on (Condoravdi, 2002; Hacquard, 2006). Children appear to show U-shaped development for modal meaning and the direction of non adult-like meaning attributions is compatible with the diachronic root > epistemic trajectory. Taken together, the studies in this thesis show that children have persistent input-divergent developmental biases in both the syntactic and semantic development of their modal expressions. Both developmental patterns are consistent with the view that there are grammar internal biases in development towards treating modal expressions as increasingly abstract and functional (higher scope, higher in the tree), the same directionality observed in historical development (von Fintel, 1995; Roberts Roussou, 2003; i.a.).

Keywords: Child Language
Development
Language Change
Modality
Reanalysis
Semantics
Advisor: Perez-Leroux, Ana Teresa
Essays in Market Microstructure

This thesis examines the impact of various financial market innovations on trading in limit order markets, with a focus on financial market quality and investor welfare. Chapter 1 is a joint work with Katya Malinova. We model a financial market where privately informed investors trade in a limit order book monitored by low-latency liquidity providers. Price competition between informed limit order submitters and low-latency market makers allows us to capture trade-offs between informed limit and market orders in a methodologically simple way. In Chapter 2, I develop a model to examine the impact of dark pool trade-at rules. Dark pools—trading systems that do not publicly display orders—fill orders at a price better than the prevailing displayed quote, but do not guarantee execution. This improvement is known as the “trade-at rule”. In my model, investors, who trade on private information or liquidity needs, can elect to trade on a visible market, or a dark market where limit orders are hidden. A competitive liquidity provider participates in both markets. The dark market accepts market orders from investors, and if a limit order is available, fills the order at a price better than the displayed quote by a percentage of the bid-ask spread (the trade-at rule). The impact of dark trading on measures of market quality and social welfare depends on the trade-at rule, relative to the price impact of visible limit orders. A dark market with a large (but not too large) trade-at rule improves market quality and welfare; a small trade-at rule, however, impacts market quality and social welfare negatively. Price efficiency declines whenever investors use the dark market. For a trade-at rule at midpoint or larger, the liquidity provider does not post limit orders to the dark market. Chapter 3 is also a joint work with Katya Malinova. We study a financial market where investors trade a security for liquidity reasons. Investors pay a ‘take’ fee for trading with market orders, or a ‘make’ fee for limit orders—so-called ‘maker-taker pricing’. When all investors face the same fee schedule, only the total exchange fee per transaction has an economic impact, consistent with previous literature. However, when a subset of investors pay only the average exchange fee through a flat fee per trade---a common practice in the industry---maker-taker fees have an impact beyond the total fee. In comparison to a single-tier fee system, a ‘two-tiered’ fee system leads to a fall in trading volume and investor welfare; investors who pay maker-taker fees directly earn higher average profits than investors that pay an average flat fee per trade. Under this “two-tiered pricing”, increasing or decreasing the maker rebate can improve trading volume and welfare; however, only a reduction in the maker fee maximizes volume and welfare, and reduces differential profits to zero.

Keywords: Dark Trading
Informed Trading
Limit Order Markets
Trading Fees
Advisor: Park, Andreas
Malinova, Katya
Virtual Braids and Virtual Curve Diagrams

There is a well-known injective homomorphism from the n-strand braid group B_n into Aut(F_n), the automorphism group of a free group on n symbols, first described by Artin. This homomorphism induces an action of B_n on F_n that can be recovered by considering the braid group as the mapping class group of H_n (an upper half plane with n punctures) acting naturally on the fundamental group of H_n. Kauman introduced virtual links [Ka] as an extension of the classical notion of a link in R^3. There is a corresponding notion of a virtual braid, and the set of virtual braids on n strands forms a group VB_n. In this thesis, we will generalize the Artin action to virtual braids. We will define a set, VCD_n, of "virtual curve diagrams" and define an action of VB_n on VCD_n. Then, we will show that, as in Artin's case, the action is faithful. This provides a combinatorial solution to the word problem in VB_n. In the papers [B, M], an extension of the Artin homomorphism was introduced, and the question of its injectivity was raised. We find that this extension is not injective by exhibiting a non-trivial virtual braid in the kernel when n = 4.

Keywords: curve diagrams
virtual braids
Advisor: Bar-Natan, Dror
Utilization of Meta-analysis in Identifying Rare Adverse Drug Effects: Focus on Reproductive Age

It often takes many years after a drug is introduced to the market for its causative role in producing rare adverse effects to be identified. This is critical especially when an adverse effect occurs in the fetus of a pregnant woman who used the drug. Typically, safety data are collected through case reports, case series, and then through small observational cohorts. These cohorts invariably lack statistical power to establish statistical significance. Thus, the need has arisen to optimize the use of meta-analyses in an attempt to close this gap. Of particular importance, epilepsy is a serious neurological disorder that affects about 1% of people worldwide. It is estimated that 0.5% of pregnant women in the United States are diagnosed with epilepsy, and many pregnant women continue to use antiepileptic drugs (AED). Similarly, the use of anti-infective agents is considered prevalent among women of childbearing age, where vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC) can affect up to 75% of women. Therefore, our goal was to conduct detailed studies that detect incidence of rare adverse drug effects associated with use of rufinamide (RUF), topiramate (TPM), and fluconazole. We pursued three challenges to establish rare adverse effects by conducting meta-analyses based on observational studies or randomized trials. The first meta-analysis, based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) compared the incidence of adverse central nervous system (CNS) events associated with the use of RUF in drug-resistant epilepsy. The second, synthesizing observational studies, examined exposure to TPM during the first trimester of pregnancy and the risks of oral clefts (OC) in the offspring. The final study, using observational studies, examined maternal exposure to fluconazole and the risks of congenital malformations. Our findings suggest that meta-analyses are powerful approaches for detecting rare adverse effects in special populations. The emerging information on rare adverse effects of RUF, TPM, and fluconazole needs to be widely disseminated, not only to women of reproductive age, but also to clinicians and policy-makers. Such dissemination is required to optimize treatment, to minimize toxicities, and to develop a superior study design that permits efficient utilization of meta-analysis of individual studies, in order to guide future long-term studies.

Advisor: Koren, Gideon
Improving Concrete Sustainability and Durability by Optimization of Aggregate Particle Packing and Use of Microfine Fillers

A methodology was developed in this study to increase the packing efficiency of concrete aggregate combinations and use of microfine fillers (finer than 75 μm) in order to make better use of scarce aggregate resources near urban centres while simultaneously reducing the required cement paste content of concrete to improve sustainability, durability, strength, workability, and cost. A 32% reduction in the portland cement content of a typical 35 MPa concrete mixture was successfully made, meeting all performance criteria evaluated, including workability, CSA A23.1 low-shrinkage and C-1 exposure class requirements, while significantly improving compressive strength. Several concretes that included a significant aggregate volume proportion of low-value intermediate aggregate materials and/or manufactured sands successfully met all performance criteria evaluated. Concrete mixtures conducted indicate that the effectiveness of the predominantly used 0.45 Power Chart for optimization of the total combined aggregate gradation can be substantially improved by considering the influence of aggregate particle shape, angularity and surface texture. A practical method for accurately measuring separate shape, angularity, and surface texture parameters, along with specific surface area of aggregates was developed in this study using images acquired from a flatbed scanner and an optical microscope, combined with use of ImageJ analysis software. Subsequently, this information was used to more effectively optimize the combined aggregate proportions by using the Excess Paste Theory to maximize the thickness of the excess cement paste available to coat the aggregate particles after filling the voids between compacted aggregate particles. Fresh concrete performance, measured by multi-range water-reducing admixture dosage needed to meet workability requirements, improved while compressive strength and drying shrinkage were similar to those concretes optimized using the 0.45 Power Chart. The thickness of excess cement paste had a strong correlation with RCPT charge passed, and moderately strong correlation with multi-range water-reducing admixture dosage needed to meet workability requirements.

Keywords: Aggregates
Concrete
Microfine filler
Mixture design
Particle characterization
Sustainability
Advisor: Hooton, R. Doug
Implementation, Verification and Application of Real-time Hybrid Simulation

This dissertation presents the implementation, verification and application of a state of the art dynamic testing method, namely the real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) technique, using two cost-effective and reliable computational/control platforms. RTHS is a practical and economical experimental technique that complements the realism of physical testing with the power of numerical simulation. In this method, by dividing the structure into two parts, known as the experimental and analytical substructures, and synchronizing them, the equations of motion are solved in real-time, thus capturing the load-rate dependencies in an accurate manner. In the first part of the dissertation, the RTHS method is implemented using a small-scale shaker available for research and education. The implementation of the method is followed by the verification experiments to assure the reliability of the RTHS platform. As an application example, this platform is utilized to investigate the dynamic behavior of structures equipped with tuned liquid dampers (TLDs) in small scale. The second part of the dissertation presents a user re-configurable computational/control platform developed to conduct RTHS. The architecture of this platform is based upon the integration of a real-time controller and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). This not only enables the user to apply user-defined control laws to control the experimental substructures, but also provides ample computational resources to run the integration and analytical substructure state determination algorithms in real-time. After the presentation of the hardware design and software development details, the platform is validated experimentally. The effect of force measurement errors on the RTHS results is the next topic discussed in this dissertation. An application example of the developed platform that investigates the performance of different structural systems equipped with large-scale TLDs is presented. Additionally, further developments on the inner loop control as well as outer loop computations are accomplished in collaboration with other researchers.

Advisor: Mercan, Oya
The Countryside and the City: A Spatial Economy of the New Village Movement in 1970s South Korea

This study looks into the transformation of farmers’ living spaces during the period of rapid industrialization in 1970s South Korea. Under the name of the New Village Movement, the Park Chung Hee government conducted diverse reconstruction and renovation projects to alter the residential environment of rural areas. While delving deeply into this specific event and period in Korean history, the main focus of this study is not fixed on the New Village Movement itself, nor on a particular person or agrarian policy. The purpose of this study is to capture the dynamics and relationships between capital and living spaces in the detailed historical context of the New Village Movement. This project of examination is further guided by the overarching argument that the reconfiguration process of farmers’ daily living spaces played a central role in renewing and reconfiguring unequal exchange relationships between the countryside and the city, thereby assisting the growth of manufacturing capital. Chapter 1 focuses on South Korean Land Reform in 1950 and its concomitant agro-economic conditions in the 1950s and 1960s, which explained farmers’ post-war poverty and industrial demand for rural reformation. The subsequent chapters of this study trace the rural New Village Movement of the 1970s and its focus on roof replacement (Chapter 2), house construction (Chapter 3), interior designing (Chapter 4), and village relocation (Chapter 5). Each chapter also pays close attention to the process by which the new rural spaces under transformation were filled with particular commodities such as slate, cement, televisions, and rice. Small-landed farmers, growing industrial capital, and the developmentalist state reflected their different desires and expectations respectively through the new rural spaces and commodities. Tracking all those dynamics, this study emphasizes the centrality of exchange relationship between agriculture and manufacturing or between the countryside and the city in understanding the historicity of the New Village Movement.

Keywords: 1970s Korea
Farmers
New Village Movement
Park Chung Hee
Saemaul
Space
Advisor: Schmid, Andre
Vocabulary Skill of Bilingual Adolescents: The Effects of First Language Background and Language Learning Context

This thesis investigated the vocabulary skill of bilingual adolescents and young adults with two studies. Study 1 examined the contributions of English phonological awareness and morphological awareness to English vocabulary in 80 Spanish-English and 117 Chinese-English bilingual adolescents educated in Canada. Using Structural Equation Modelling, the study showed that English derivational awareness, word reading and length of residence contributed to English vocabulary for both language groups. In addition, for the Chinese-English bilingual group, English phonological awareness contributed to English vocabulary both directly and indirectly through the mediation of English word reading. Study 2 compared the contributions of Chinese compound awareness and homograph awareness to Chinese vocabulary between Chinese L1 young adults educated in China and in Canada. Participants included 96 and 66 first-year university students in China and Canada, respectively. Using hierarchical regression analyses, Study 2 showed that Chinese homograph awareness and character reading contributed to Chinese vocabulary for both groups of Chinese L1 young adults; however, the contribution of Chinese compound awareness was not significant. The association of Chinese homograph awareness with Chinese vocabulary was not significantly different between the two groups, whereas the association of Chinese character reading with Chinese vocabulary was stronger for the Chinese L1 young adults in China. Overall, the thesis highlights the importance of morphological awareness to vocabulary across English and Chinese for older students.

Keywords: bilingual adolescents
character reading
morphological awareness
phonological awareness
vocabulary
word reading
Advisor: Chen, Xi Becky
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Pediatric-onset Multiple Sclerosis: Relation to Structural Damage and Cognition

Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is increasingly being recognized, with special concern being placed on how the demyelinating disease process affects normal brain development and the acquisition of cognitive abilities required for vocational success in adulthood. While pediatric MS patients are at risk for cognitive impairment early in their disease, many youth with pediatric MS appear to function at the same level as their age-matched peers despite the accrual of disease-related structural brain damage. This thesis aims to investigate whether functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can help understand mechanisms for cognitive preservation as well as the discrepancy between performance and accrual of structural disease insult, using both resting-state and a task-based processing speed paradigm. It was observed overall that pediatric MS patients demonstrate higher resting-state functional connectivity, particularly of the default-mode network, compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, higher functional connectivity of the precuneus within the default-mode network was associated with reduced white matter structural integrity as measured using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). There is, however, a breakdown specifically of thalamo-cortical networks with increasing lesion accrual and reductions in thalamic volume. It was also observed that lower cognitive performance was associated with greater functional connectivity of the frontal medial cortex with the anterior cingulate and precuneus during resting-state, suggesting less neural efficiency in patients who demonstrate some cognitive challenges though are not yet impaired. During the performance of an actual processing speed fMRI task, faster performance was associated with activation of a greater number of brain regions suggesting that a compensatory mechanism is present during actual task performance. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that pediatric MS is associated with brain activation abnormalities during resting-state that relates to the extent of neuronal injury. This work also sheds light on the factors which may be accounting for preservation of cognitive abilities, namely greater overall group activation during resting-state and greater activation associating with faster performance during a task that probes processing speed.

Keywords: Cognition
fMRI
MRI
Multiple Sclerosis
Neuropsychology
Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis
Advisor: Banwell, Brenda