VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Evolution of the Stress Axis in Ground Squirrels

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, or stress axis, is a key physiological system that mediates the relationship of the organism with its environment. Because activation of the HPA axis mobilizes energy stores for immediate use, but sustained activation can have deleterious effects on survival, the HPA axis has been implicated in the tradeoff between reproduction and survival. In this thesis, I investigate whether there is an association between one life history trait, reproductive lifespan, and the functioning of the HPA axis as predicted by the “adaptive stress hypothesis”. The adaptive stress hypothesis predicts that species adopting life history strategies characterized by short lifespans and early reproduction should maximize the energy available for reproduction through high levels of circulating glucocorticoids caused by the dysregulation of the HPA axis in the breeding season, whereas those characterized by long lifespans and extended reproduction should maintain a functioning HPA axis with low levels of glucocorticoids throughout life. To test this hypothesis, I studied five species of ground squirrels that vary dramatically in male reproductive lifespan: arctic, Richardson’s, Columbian, thirteen-lined, and Franklin’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii, U. richardsonii, U. columbianus, Ictidomys tridecemlineatus, and Poliocitellus franklinii). I used a stress profile to characterize the HPA axis of male ground squirrels immediately before and immediately after the breeding season. The stress profile included measures of plasma glucocorticoid concentrations, determinants of plasma glucocorticoid concentrations (corticosteroid binding globulin levels, adrenal sensitivity/capacity, negative feedback, and intrinsic restraint), and markers of the biological effects of glucocorticoids (energy mobilization, health, and immune function). Contrary to the adaptive stress hypothesis, I found no relationship between reproductive lifespan and postbreeding glucocorticoid levels. Species also varied significantly and unexpectedly in how determinants of glucocorticoid levels changed over the breeding season, and in how glucocorticoids levels translated into biological effects. I also observed unexpected patterns of individual variation within species. Thus, life history alone did not predict HPA axis functioning. My results suggest that the HPA axis is so flexible in its functioning, that we will need to adopt a much more detailed model of the HPA axis in order to fully understand the relationship between the HPA axis and life history variation.

Keywords: physiological ecology
comparative endocrinology
Advisor: Boonstra, Rudy
Using Community Authored Content to Identify Place-specific Activities

Understanding the context of a person’s interaction with a place is important to enabling ubiquitous computing applications. The ability for mobile computing to provide information and services that are relevant to a user’s current location—which is central to the vision of ubiquitous computing—requires that the technologies be able to characterize the activities that a person may potentially perform in place, whatever this place may be. To support the user as she goes about her day, this ability to characterize the potential activities for a place must support work on a city scale. In this dissertation, we present a method to process place-specific community-authored content (e.g., Yelp.com reviews) to identify a set of the potential activities (articulated as verb-noun pairs) that a person can perform at a specific place and apply this method for places on a city scale. We validate the method by processing the place-specific reviews authored by community members of Yelp.com and show that the majority of the 40 most common verb-noun pairs are true activities that can be performed at the respective place; achieving an average mean precision of up to 79.3% and recall of up to 55.9%. We applied this method by developing a Web-service (the Activity Service) that automatically processes all the places reviewed for a city and provides structured access to the activity data that can be identified for the respective places. To validate that the place and activity data is useful and useable, we developed and evaluated two applications that are supported by the Activity Service: Opportunities Exist and Vocabulary Wallpaper. In addition to these applications, we conducted a design contest to identify other types of applications that can be supported by the Activity Service. Finally, we discuss limitations of the activity data and the Activity Service, and highlight future considerations.

Keywords: context
activity
location-aware
community authored content
Advisor: Truong, Khai N.
Représentations de la femme dans les récits orientalisants français du dix-huitième siècle

La présente thèse explore les représentations de la femme dans des récits orientalisants de sept auteurs français du XVIIIème siècle, classés par ordre alphabétique : Caylus, Crébillon, Diderot, Mme de Genlis, Hamilton, Montesquieu et Voltaire. Les chapitres analysent cinq types de femmes regroupées selon leur rôle narratif. Dans le chapitre premier, j’étudie les figures féminines orientales dans Zadig et La princesse de Babylone de Voltaire. J’y tiens compte de la façon dont la voix narrative perçoit les femmes dans ces récits et quelle place elle leur attribue dans la narration. Dans le chapitre deux, je me penche sur la représentation des Orientales voilées dans « Aphéridon et Astarté », un récit inséré dans Lettres persanes de Montesquieu, et dans Nourmahal de Mme de Genlis. Je considère la femme voilée comme un personnage Autre, je relève ses caractéristiques principales, j’examine son rôle narratif, et j’identifie la valeur significative de son voile. Dans le chapitre trois, je tiens compte des personnages féminins orientaux dans Fleur d’épine de Hamilton et « Ibrahim et Anaïs », un autre récit enchâssé dans les Lettres persanes. Je m’interroge sur le rôle de la femme qui est représentée dans une situation inverse, je considère la place qui lui est attribuée dans le texte et son influence sur les autres personnages du récit. Dans le chapitre quatre, j’analyse les femmes interlocutrices dans Le Sopha de Crébillon et Les Bijoux indiscrets de Diderot. J’étudie la voix féminine dans ces récits et ses interventions dans la narration. J’examine ensuite l’effet de cet engagement sur le fond et la forme du récit. Dans le cinquième et dernier chapitre, j’étudie les femmes dans les Contes orientaux de Caylus. J’explore les différentes fonctions qu’elles remplissent ; je distingue alors entre les narratrices et les femmes objets du discours. Je m’intéresse particulièrement à montrer comment les personnages féminins qui se chargent de la narration utilisent le récit pour influencer le narrataire.

Keywords: 18th Century French Fiction
Oriental Women
Narratology
Advisor: Kerslake, Lawrence
Paterson, Janet
The Relationship between Nurse Staffing and Patient Satisfaction in Emergency Departments

Patient satisfaction is a key outcome measure being examined by researchers exploring the relationships between patient outcomes and hospital structure and care processes. Only a few non-generalizable studies, however, have explored the relationship of nurse staffing and patient satisfaction with nursing care in emergency departments of hospitals. This dissertation aims to address that gap. Using more than 182,000 patient satisfaction surveys collected over a five-year period from 153 emergency departments (EDs) in 107 hospitals throughout Ontario, this study explores the relationship between nurse staffing and patient perceptions of nursing care in a range of Canadian ED settings, including urban and rural, community and academic, and small and large healthcare institutions with varying sizes and case mix. Using an established conceptual framework for investigating the relationship between nurse staffing and patient outcomes, nineteen nurse staffing variables were initially investigated. Ultimately, however, only five staffing variables were used in the multi-level regression analyzes. These five variables included registered nurse (RN) proportion, RN agency proportion, percent full-time nurse worked hours, RN worked hours per patient length of stay and registered practical nurse (RPN) worked hours per length of stay. Emergency department case mix index, patient age and gender, hospital peer group, size, wait times, cleanliness of the emergency department, physician courtesy, and year of measurement were controlled to account for their effect on the relationship between nursing staffing and patient satisfaction in the ED. The study revealed a subset of six patient satisfaction variables representing the overall variation in patient satisfaction with nursing care in the ED. Although RN proportion and RPN worked hours per length of stay were found to have a statistical association with patient satisfaction in the ED, the association was weak and not administratively actionable. Interpersonal and environmental factors such as physician and nurse courtesy, ED cleanliness and timeliness, however, were areas which hospital administrators should consider since they were highly associated with patient satisfaction in EDs.

Keywords: Nurse Staffing
Patient Satisfaction
Emergency Departments
Advisor: Barnsley, Janet
The Role of Zfhx1b in Mouse Neural Stem Cell Development

Construction of the vertebrate nervous system begins with the decision of a group of ectoderm cells to take on a neural fate. Studies using Xenopus ectodermal explants, or with mouse ectoderm cells or embryonic stem (ES) cells, demonstrated that this process of neural determination occurred by default – the ectoderm cells became neural after the removal of inhibitory signals. Whether ectoderm or ES cells directly differentiate into bona fide neural stem cells is not clear. One model suggests that there is an intermediate stage where “primitive” neural stem cells (pNSC) emerge harbouring properties of both ES cells and neural stem cells. The goal of my research was to address this question by evaluating the role of growth factor signaling pathways and their impact on the function of the zinc-finger homeobox transcription factor, Zfhx1b, during mouse neural stem cell development. I tested whether FGF and Wnt signaling pathways could regulate Zfhx1b expression to control early neural stem cell development. Inhibition of FGF signaling at a time when the ectoderm is acquiring a neural fate resulted in the accumulation of too many pNSCs, at the expense of the definitive neural stem cells. Interestingly, over-expression of Zfhx1b was sufficient to rescue the transition from a pNSC to definitive NSC. These data suggested that definitive NSC fate specification in the mouse ectoderm was facilitated by FGF activation of Zfhx1b, whereas canonical Wnt signaling repressed Zfhx1b expression. Next I sought to determine whether Zfhx1b was similarly required during neural lineage development in ES cells. FGF and Wnt signaling modulated expression of Zfhx1b in ES cell cultures in manner resembling my observations from similar experiments using mouse ectoderm. Knockdown of Zfhx1b in ES cells using siRNA did not affect the initial transition of ES cells to pNSC fate, but did limit the ability of these neural cells to further develop into definitive NSCs. Thus, my findings using ES cells were congruent with evidence from mouse embryos and supported a model whereby intercellular signaling induced Zfhx1b, required for the development of definitive NSCs, subsequent to an initial neural specification event that was independent of this pathway.

Keywords: mouse
embryonic stem cells
neural stem cells
Zfhx1b/SIP1
FGF
Wnt
Advisor: Tropepe, Vincent
I Could have been a Contender: A Semiotic Analysis of Representative Films on Italians Outside Italy

This thesis offers an in-depth analysis of five films (Pane e cioccolata, Queen of Hearts, L’Emmerdeur, Mediterraneo sempre, Raging Bull) which deal with the Italian reality outside of Italy. The segment-by-segment study of these works reveals overlapping themes that define parameters that can be used to define a deterritorialized culture which the author of this study names the Italic culture. The analytical system produced can help scholars and students to understand what constitutes the filmic narrative of ethnic films. The title of the thesis derives from a monologue spoken by Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull by Martin Scorsese, which is a paraphrase of another monologue said by Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront by Elia Kazan. Though the words of the speeches are similar, their meaning is different. What for Malloy was a need for success becomes for LaMotta a criticism of this success. Presented at once as a study of forms and a survey of cultural connotations, this investigation proposes a journey into the representative world created by immigrants and children of immigrants who, by refusing to disappear into sameness, question what it means to be Italian in the world today.

Keywords: Cinema
Italian outside Italy
Advisor: Capozzi, Rocco
Regulation of B Lymphopoiesis: The Role of IL-7, SOCS-1, Heparan Sulfate and CD19 in Mediating B Cell Development

B lymphopoiesis is regulated by cytokines, chemokines and cell surface proteins that initiate signal transduction pathways necessary for maturation to proceed. Many of these factors are expressed by cells in the surrounding bone marrow (BM) microenvironment, which also form the niches that support development. Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is an essential cytokine for progenitor B cells and is important in providing survival, proliferation and maturation signals. By growing BM B cells for extended periods of time in vitro with IL-7 it is possible to select for cells that possess the ability to grow indefinitely, and these cultures can be used to generate cell lines. Data presented herein describe the generation and characterization of IL-7-dependent B cell lines as well as their utility in investigating aspects of B cell development. As B cells mature they lose responsiveness to IL-7, yet retain IL-7 receptor expression. I demonstrate that a B cell’s ability to respond to IL-7 is controlled by the expression of suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) proteins, which are regulated by a variety of signaling pathways including those initiated by IL-7. Development of progenitor B cells to mature immunoglobulin secreting B cells is mediated in part by surface proteins present on stromal cells as well as on B cells themselves. Heparan sulfate and CD19 play important roles in regulating this transition and I provide data that demonstrates how their ability to regulate Erk activation downstream of the pre-B cell receptor (pre-BCR) alters the proliferation and maturation of developing B cells.

Keywords: B Cell Development
Advisor: Paige, Christopher J.
Expressive Motion Editing Using Motion Extrema

When animating characters, a key goal is the creation of a believable, expressive performance that gives a character a unique personality with a distinct style of movement. While animators are skilled at creating expressive, personalized performances, it remains challenging to change performance-related aspects of movement in existing motion data. In recent years, motion data reuse has become increasingly important as recorded motion capture data has come into widespread use. This thesis investigates the use of a sparse set of pose-centric editing controls for editing existing motion data using techniques similar to those used by keyframe animators when they create new motion. To do this, this thesis proposes the use of motion extrema--the poses a character passes through when there is a significant change in movement--as a means for choosing effective pose-centric editing controls. First, I present algorithms for identifying motion extrema. Motion extrema can be associated with individual joints or the full body of the character. I introduce a set of approaches for identifying motion extrema; these include the use of extrema of differential measures and the explicit search for times at which the body or a joint is in a spatially extreme configuration. I then present three motion editing applications that use motion extrema as a foundation for applying motion edits. The first application, pose-centric editing, allows users to interactively change poses in a motion, and the system modifies the motion to respect existing ground contact. The second application--staggered poses, introduces a model of character pose that explicitly encodes how timing varies among motion extrema on different parts of the body. This timing variation is commonly used by animators to model overlapping action. By introducing an algorithm for finding timing variation on motion extrema in existing motion, this system enables users to make high-level changes to timing patterns to change overlap effects in existing motion. Finally, I present a procedural motion editing application that targets a specific aspect of motion style; this technique is called spatial exaggeration. Spatial exaggeration changes the geometric relationships among extreme poses. Such edits cause movement to appear more or less energetic. Overall, these applications demonstrate that performance-related aspects of existing motion can be edited using a sparse set of controls in the form of motion extrema.

Keywords: Motion Editing
Animation
Advisor: Singh, Karan
Knowledge Mobilization Intermediaries in Education: A Cross-case Analysis of 44 Canadian Organizations

The term ‘knowledge mobilization intermediary’ (KMI) is used to describe third party organizations whose role between research producers and users is a catalyst for knowledge mobilization (KM) - targeted, systematic efforts to increase connections between research, policy and practice in public services. This study analyzes 44 Canadian KMIs in education exploring types (governmental, not-for-profit, for profit, and membership), organizational features (mission, scope, target audience, size, resources, membership composition) and processes (message, strategies, functions, dissemination mechanisms). This study maps the landscape of research mediation in education and reports on these findings using a multiple-paper format. The introductory chapter sets the stage for the papers by providing the background of the study and introducing the concept of knowledge mobilization. The first conceptual paper provides a typology of KMIs and a framework of knowledge brokering characteristics with seven elements (mission, resources, staff roles, political affiliation, autonomy, message, and linkages). The second paper reports on an approach to measuring and comparing KM efforts of diverse organizations using a common matrix of elements arising from the research utilization literature: KM strategies (products, events and networks) and KM indicators as they relate to strategies (different types, ease of use, accessibility, focus of audience and so on). The third paper outlines what KMIs exist in Canada, their organizational features, and reports on their activities, ultimately providing a typology of brokering strategies utilized in research mediation and a framework of eight major brokering functions used to increase research use and its impact: awareness, accessibility, engagement, capacity building, implementation support, facilitating linkages and partnerships, policy influence and organizational development. The fourth paper presents empirical findings of online practices of KMIs such as blogging and microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, multimedia, share buttons on websites, and RSS feeds. Overall, use of social media is not pervasive and, when it is used, the content is often not research-based. The concluding chapter synthesizes the findings in relation to each research question, summarizes the implications arising from each paper, and makes recommendations for research producers, users and intermediaries across public service sectors.

Keywords: knowledge mobilization
research use
K-12 education
intermediaries
research mediation
knowledge brokers
research brokering
Advisor: Levin, Ben
The Role of Low Temperatures in Determining the Northern Range Limit of Kudzu (Pueraria montana var lobata), an Invasive Vine in North America

Invasive non-indigenous species are among the principle drivers of global change, altering nutrient cycles, changing disturbance regimes, and generally threatening biodiversity. Climate change is widely expected to exacerbate invasions by relaxing abiotic barriers, such as low temperature, but the mechanistic evidence supporting this is limited. Here, I evaluate the hypothesis that low temperatures determine the northern range limit of kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata), an invasive Asiatic vine in North America, by assessing freezing and chilling tolerance of kudzu plants in winter, spring, summer, and fall. Kudzu was widely planted throughout the southeastern U.S. in the early 20th Century to prevent erosion. It is winter-deciduous and reproduces primarily from buds on stem nodes. In the last 40 years, kudzu has migrated northward in concert with a northward shift in the -20oC minimum winter temperature isocline, indicating that less severe winter cold is permitting northward migration. Freezing mortality during winter does not explain this correlation. Electrolyte leakage assays demonstrate that above- and belowground kudzu stems can survive to -27oC and -17oC. Insulation provided by soil and snow protects belowground stems from lethal temperatures to well north of kudzu's current range limit. Severe spring chill stops growth and photosynthesis and causes some shoot mortality, but both growth and photosynthesis recover quickly following the chill. Summer growth rates are rapid (up to 22 cm/d), responding within hours to temperature changes, and are unimpaired by nighttime lows. Photosynthesis is reduced at cool temperatures, but on cool days, kudzu leaves tend to be warmer than air temperature, so photosynthesis rates generally remain close to optimal values. In autumn, growth stops below 15oC, but leaves are retained and maintain modest photosynthetic competence until killed by frost in November. In colder climates that occur far north of kudzu's current range, reductions in the length and quality of the growing season could accumulate over time to reduce kudzu's success. There is, however, no strong evidence that low temperatures in any season will prevent kudzu from migrating throughout southern Ontario, making kudzu a good candidate for invasive species regulations.

Keywords: climate change
physiological ecology
invasive species
range limits
freezing tolerance
chilling temperatures
gas exchange
temperature response
Advisor: Sage, Rowan F.