VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Art of Railing: Knowledge and Satire from Skelton to Shakespeare

This dissertation argues that satire, or more specifically “railing,” provided the writers of the English Renaissance with a means of making epistemological change perceptible through poetry. Chapter 1 traces the beginnings of railing in John Skelton’s satiric attacks on Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, arguing that the paradoxes and inconsistencies of Skelton’s poems are an attempt to explore how the centralized Tudor state was turning reason into a decentralized political force that could both legitimize and resist the truth claims of the ruler. Chapter 2 examines the verse satires of John Donne, in which Christian figuralism allows Donne to see individual morality as something involved in larger social and economic forces. In “Satyre 3,” railing becomes a way to articulate a problem that arises from the Christian-figural viewpoint: how can you discern the true religion if historical forces emanate from everything and everyone? Next I turn to Edmund Spenser, whose satiric poetry in The Shepheardes Calender, Mother Hubberds Tale, and The Faerie Queene interrogates the emerging gap between human thought and the natural world. Spenser uses the limitations of satire and complaint, with their focus on the world as it is, to gesture at a higher possibility for poetry that imagines how the world could or should be. The final chapter examines how Shakespeare’s As You Like It expands on the socially transformative promise of art that Spenser depicts in The Faerie Queene. Jaques, the play’s satirist, tries to use the descriptive methods of natural philosophy as a model for curing the corruption of the world, but this approach ends up preventing him from imagining any alternative. Jaques, however, is a poet as well as a natural philosopher, and the poetry of his railing gestures at another form of truth that he himself is not entirely conscious of. This truth turns out to be the conditional truth of the aesthetic, the virtue of “if” that Rosalind uses to imagine a new life for the exiles in the Forest of Arden. Satire may not be able to change the world, but it makes it possible to imagine a kind of art that can.

Keywords: Aesthetics
Drama
Epistemology
Poetry
Renaissance
Satire
Advisor: Warley, Christopher
Stigma, Stress, and Stories: Refining our Understanding of Suicidal Behavior among Adult Gay, Bisexual, and other Sexual Minority Men

Background: Sexual minority men are approximately four times more likely than heterosexual men to have attempted suicide. Epidemiologic evidence of this disparity is robust; however, research exploring how and why this disparity persists is sparse. Objective: To refine our understanding of suicidal behavior in adult sexual minority men, with the goal of improving relevant public health strategies to prevent suicide. Methods and aims: Data were drawn from adult sexual minority men who participated in: the population-based Canadian Community Health Survey (N=4675), a gay menâ s community-based national online survey (N=7872), and in-depth interviews with men who attempted suicide (N=7). Quantitative bias analysis was used to estimate the degree of misclassification of sexual orientation and associated bias in estimates of suicidal ideation among sexual minority men in general population-based surveys (Aim 1). Structural equation modeling was used to identify specific psychosocial challenges that mediate relationships between constructs of sexual stigma and recent suicide attempts (Aim 2). Dialogical narrative analysis was used to construct life narratives used by sexual minority men with histories of suicide attempts (Aim 3). Results: Disparities in suicidal ideation comparing bisexual (odds ratio[OR]=4.91) and gay (OR=3.63) to heterosexual men persisted after adjustment for misclassification bias but were attenuated, with greater attenuation for bisexual (adjusted OR=3.53) than for gay (adjusted OR=3.52) men. Three measured constructs of sexual stigma (enacted stigma, anticipated prejudice, and sexuality concealment) were associated with suicide attempts (p

Keywords: epidemiology
gay and bisexual men
mental health
minority stress
sexual stigma
suicide
Advisor: Gesink, Dionne
Reconstruction of 3D Histology Volumes from Breast Lumpectomy Specimens

Three dimensional reconstruction and examination of microscopic images of tissue sections can enhance the study of normal and disease processes, particularly in studies concerned with structural changes. 3D histology volumes can also be used as ground truth in validating new volumetric medical imaging techniques. The accuracy of the histology volume reconstruction is hindered by sparse sampling of the clinical specimens, the deformation of the tissue during the histology processes, and variations in staining. The existing methods for histology volume construction of human breast specimens are either manual or applicable only to small cropped densely sampled regions. In this thesis, we hypothesize that by using image registration algorithms, 3D histology volumes can be automatically reconstructed from stacked 2D images of histology sections. We present an image registration framework for histology volume reconstruction, which is also extendable for registration of the histology to ex vivo medical images. The framework is first validated using a pre-clinical model and then further improved by optimizing the deformable registration for histology images obtained from highly deformable human breast specimens. Finally, the histology volumes of five lumpectomy specimens are reconstructed using the proposed framework to study tumour features in 3D, specifically tumour volume and focality. The proposed approach is shown to be suitable for 3D histology volume reconstruction from 2D histology images of breast lumpectomy specimens. The average target registration error for the breast specimens was measured as 0.47 Âą 0.31 mm based on manually selected landmarks and the optimized deformable registration was shown to significantly improve the registration comparing to rigid registration. It is also shown that this method has the potential to provide more accurate information about 3D tumour measurements, such as volume, and presence of multi-focality.

Keywords: Breast histology
Deformable registration
Histology image registration
Histology volume reconstruction
Advisor: Martel, Anne L
Measurement of Di-photon Induced Production of W-Boson Pairs and Limits on Anomalous Quartic Gauge Couplings

Extension of the Standard model can enhance the interactions between four vector bosons, so the couplings deviate from their predicted value due to new quartic-gauge-boson interactions. Searches for those deviations are model-independent and cover a wide range of possible new physics. This thesis describes the measurement of exclusive production of W-boson pairs and the search for WW\gamma\gamma anomalous quartic gauge couplings at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using a data set corresponding to 20.2 fb-1 of proton-proton collisions collected by the ATLAS detector in 2012. This analysis considers the W+W- decay modes leading to e\mu leptons. At the LHC, exclusive interactions are characterized by the absence of additional activity in the vicinity of interaction vertices. A technique based on tracks was developed to select the exclusive event candidates. The technique accepts approximately 60% of the signal, while eliminates most of the background due to suppression by 3--4 orders of magnitude. Additional background reduction is achieved by rejecting the region pT^{e\mu}

Keywords: Accelerator
Collider
High energy Physics
Physics
Quartic gauge coupling
Standard Model
Advisor: Trischuk, William
Mutable Aspirations and Uncertain Futures: Everyday life and The Politics of Urgency in Kathmandu

This dissertation interrogates the right to the city as a category of analysis with recourse to an account of extreme marginality. As a starting premise, it seeks inspiration from Kristin Ross’ (1987) take on everyday life as a site of dominant relations of power on the one hand, and an incubator of utopian possibilities on the other. To this end, the dissertation probes three key questions. The first question asks: what are the conditions of possibility enabling the “slum dwellers” (sukumbasi in Nepali) in Kathmandu, Nepal, to make claims for the right to the city? I document the rituals of everyday life and the capacity to make claims that are organized through a metaphorical framework of a “house with three pillars." The second question broaches the issue of how claims for a right to the city come up against governmental programs seeking to secure norms of private property, environmental sustainability, and elite aesthetics. It asks: How does the threat of violence forge sukumbasi political subjectivity and inform renewed strategies of inhabitance? The third question investigates what implications these strategies have for diminishing, or modifying, the right to the city project? The last two questions prompt us to locate the practices of the poor within the context of a “politics of urgency” – an ad hoc creative and counterintuitive “non-movement” forged in the crucible of crisis, in which the organized ritual of everyday life is disrupted and stretched in new and uncertain directions. It is under these conditions that the demand for the right to the city loses its aspirational spirit on the one hand, while ushering in an evolving politics of possibility, on the other. In considering the politics and contingencies of the right to the city, we are presented with a stark understanding of the possibilities and limits of the political aspirations of the poor. The dissertation draws on ethnographic research of “the slum” in Kathmandu, and aims to combine Postcolonial Urbanism, Planning Theory and Critical Urban Studies to constructively probe the role of urban everyday life in troubling the political contours of the right to the city project.

Keywords: Citizenship
City
Kathmandu
Right
Slum
Urban Planning
Advisor: Rankin, Katharine N
Integrated Genomic and Epigenomic Analyses of Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumour

CNS rhabdoid tumours (ATRTs) are lethal childhood cancers with SMARCB1 loss as the only reported recurrent alteration in a remarkably stable genome. ATRTs exhibit substantial clinical heterogeneity which has made therapeutic advances challenging. To uncover the molecular basis for clinical heterogeneity in ATRTs, this thesis undertook transcriptional profiling of ATRTs, which demonstrated that ATRTs encompassed two broad transcriptional subgroups, which correlated with distinct clinical phenotypes. Group 1 ATRT, had a proneural signature, upregulation of NOTCH signalling, and predominant supratentorial location, correlated with superior survival with radiation-free treatments. While group 2 ATRTs are characterized by mesenchymal signalling, increased BMP expression and infratentorial locations, correlated with more aggressive disease phenotype and poor survival despite high-dose chemo-radiotherapy regimens. I further investigated mechanisms of differential therapeutic outcomes in ATRTs, by performing an integrated multiplatform epi-genomic analysis of a large cohort of ATRTs. These studies showed ATRT coding regions were predominantly targeted by structural mechanisms and identified novel coding alterations that targeted loci with functions in neural development and epigenetic regulation in up to 20% of ATRTs. Using methylation and chromatin openness profiling, I demonstrated that group 2 ATRTs could be further segregated into subtypes 2A and 2B with distinct clinical associations. Group 2A comprised predominantly infratentorial tumours arising in very young patients, while group 2B comprised spinal as well as supra and infratentorial tumours arising in all ages. The chromatin landscapes of ATRT subtypes also correlated with distinct therapeutic sensitivities of subgroup-specific ATRT cell lines to a panel of signalling and epigenetic inhibitors. Significantly, I discovered that differential methylation of a novel PDGFRÎ˛-associated enhancer element confers robust sensitivity to Dasatinib and Nilotinib in group 2 ATRTs. Collectively, my thesis demonstrate that ATRTs can be segregated into 3 molecular subtypes with different therapeutic profiles, and provides important rationale for therapeutic stratification of ATRTs patients.

Keywords: Brain Tumours
Cancer
Rhabdoid
Advisor: Huang, Annie
Development of Lanthanide Nanoparticles for High Sensitivity Mass Cytometry Immunoassays

This thesis describes the synthesis and characterization of lanthanide nanoparticle (NP) based reagents for mass cytometry (MC) immunoassays. MC is a single cell analysis technique that uses metal-based tags and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) time-of-flight (TOF) detection. Currently, mass tags contain ~ 200 lanthanide (Ln) ions per antibody (Ab) conjugate. These conjugates are effective at detecting abundant surface markers (> 10^4 per cell). As an approach to increase the sensitivity of MC, I designed NP reagents which contain > 10^4 Ln metal ions per NP. In my research, I developed a series of uniform lanthanide NPs such as LaF3 and NaLnF4 (Ln: Y, Sm to Ho) with sizes between 5 to 30 nm. I optimized the reaction parameters such as the heating rate, temperature, heating time and solvent ratio for each lanthanide in order to obtain uniform NPs. In the second step, I developed two methods to render the NPs colloidally stable in water and in buffers: ligand exchange and lipid encapsulation. For ligand exchange, I used PEGylated phosphate/phosphonate ligands to transfer the NPs into water. However, these NPs showed poor colloidal stability in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). To understand this process, I quantified the ligand footprint of mono- and multidentate polyethylene glycol (PEG) phosphate ligands using three independent analytical techniques. The ligand density measurements obtained from each technique were in good agreement. For lipid encapsulation, I coated the NPs either with a lipid monolayer or a lipid bilayer. For the lipid monolayer coating, I encapsulated oleate-capped NPs with PEG lipids, but these NPs were stable in water but not in PBS. To improve the colloidal stability, I coated the NPs with a lipid bilayer. The hydrophobic NPs were modified with citrate and then treated with a ternary lipid mixture. The resulting NPs exhibited exceptional colloidal stability in both water and PBS for up to 1 month. Finally, secondary antibodies were conjugated to the NPs using the post-insertion method for specific binding to cells. The specific-to-nonspecific binding ratio of the Ab-NP conjugates evaluated with Ramos (CD20+) and HL60 (CD20-) cells was 10 to 20.

Keywords: lanthanide
lipid encapsulation
mass cytometry
nanoparticles
surface modification
Advisor: Winnik, Mitchell A
Essays in Dynamic Pricing of Multiple Substitutable Products

I study the dynamic pricing problem of a firm selling limited inventory of multiple differentiated products over a finite planning horizon, where the firm wishes to maximize the expected revenue. I formulate the firm's optimization problem as a Markov decision process and investigate the pricing problem in the presence of a variety of operational settings. First, I integrate consumer's sequential search behavior into the pricing problem. The consumer inspects products one at a time by incurring non-zero search cost, and makes decision by comparing the utility of the best product so far versus the reservation utility, a threshold at which the consumer is indifferent between continuation and stopping of the sequential search. The firm aims at maximizing the expected revenue by offering the products in the right sequence and at the right prices. I analytically derive the optimal prices in each period. I show that under some condition it is optimal to present products in the descending order of quality. Second, I address a problem in which the firm is subject to a set of sales volume constraints required to be satisfied at different time points along the sales horizon. Due to stochastic nature of sales, I incorporate a risk measure that allows the firm to manage the total sales while the expected revenue is maximized. I formulate the problem as a chance-constrained dynamic programming and show that the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions are not only necessary but also sufficient for the optimal price. Third, I assimilate consumer's consideration sets to the dynamic pricing problem. When to make a purchase decision, consumers use a two-stage decision-making process, i.e., consumers constitute a consideration set including a subset of the available products using a screening rule (e.g., brands, quality, and budget), and they only evaluate the products in the consideration set using a utility comparison process and opt for the product with the maximum utility. I show that the first-order condition is sufficient for the optimal price of products if consumers apply a quality-based screening rule.

Keywords: Consumers' Consideration Sets
Consumers' Sequential Search
Dynamic Pricing
Revenue Management
Sales Milestone Constraints
Substitutable Products
Advisor: Lee, Chi-Guhn
Across Enemy Lines: A Study of the All-party Groups in the Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom

The Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom are now home to a growing number of informal bodies that are formed by politicians from all parties who wish to cooperate on specific policy issues or relations with other countries. Such all-party groups (APGs), which deal with topics from the steel industry to genocide prevention, work to share information, meet with stakeholders, and conduct policy studies. Most also have partnerships with external actors who support their activities. This dissertation explores why the number of APGs is rising in each jurisdiction, but also why there are relatively fewer APGs in the two Canadian cases. Using statistical analyses of APG membership patterns as well as interviews with parliamentarians, lobbyists, and journalists, it finds three main factors behind APG expansion. First, the growth of APGs has helped both parliamentarians and external actors to continue to achieve their goals despite changes in the external political environment such as rising policy complexity and increased demands from citizens. Second, APG expansion has been facilitated by the evolution and increasing modularity of the APG format, which has allowed it to be adapted to a broader range of issues and activities. Finally, the increasing acceptance of APGs as a standard tool of political advocacy has led to the creation of groups by parliamentarians and external actors who feel it is important do so as part of broader lobbying campaigns, even if APG activity is not the most effective way to achieve their goals. The dissertation also finds that differences in APG prevalence are caused primarily by variations in levels of party discipline, with those jurisdictions that feature high discipline, such as Canada, tending to have fewer groups. Strong party discipline also limits the policy advocacy conducted by those APGs that do form in those legislatures.

Keywords: All-party groups
British politics
Canadian politics
Legislative behaviour
Legislative studies
Representation
Advisor: White, Graham
The Application of 1H NMR-Based Metabolomics to Understand the Biochemical Changes of Daphnia magna Exposed to Sub-lethal Levels of Environmental Stress

Traditional tools used in aquatic toxicology are restricted to examinations of lethality and fecundity and provide little biochemical insight into toxicity. This thesis is predicated on providing this insight using metabolomics. For this, various stressors were examined with Daphnia magna as a subject. The first study examined the response of D. magna to sub-lethal levels of arsenic, copper or lithium and found that copper and lithium responded similarly, suggesting an impairment in sodium-potassium adenosine triphosphatase function. The second study optimized the extraction procedure and dry mass requirements for metabolomics experiments, using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microprobe. A D2O-based buffer provided the most comprehensive metabolite profile and the best signal to noise ratio. The third study examined the response of D. magna to a gradient of sub-lethal concentrations of an organophosphate (diazinon and malathion) or bisphenol-A (BPA). With increasing concentrations, the D. magna metabolome response was not linear and responded in a manner that corresponded with the severity of the stressor. The fourth study focused on the response of the D. magna to chronic BPA exposure. This was compared to a reproduction test and measurements of 20-hydroecdysone (20HE). While the reproduction test showed no response, the metabolome responses indicated that energy production was impaired by 14 days, though by 21 days there were signs of adaptation. 20HE levels were unaltered and therefore BPA does not act on the D. magna endocrine system. The fifth study examined the stress incurred by D. magna when carbon sources were altered. Cyanobacteria induced a toxic response, shown as a compensatory strategy to produce energy. When supplied with dissolved organic carbon, metabolome changes indicated that D. magna were undergoing starvation. The work in this thesis demonstrates that NMR-based metabolomics can provide biochemical insight into the response of D. magna to environmental stress.

Keywords: contamination
daphnia
ecotoxicology
metabolomics
nmr
Advisor: Simpson, Myrna J
Across an Open Sea. Mediterranean Networks and Italian Trade in an Era of Calamity

In the eleventh century, commercial dominance of the Mediterranean passed from the Muslim and Jewish traders of the House of Islam to the Italians of such maritime cities as Pisa or Amalfi. Although the outcome of this economic transition is well-known, the purpose of this study is to consider the mechanisms that motored Italian takeover. An examination of the characteristics of the trade network, both before and after the economic transition, finds that little structural change occurred; it is therefore argued that Italian merchants operated in conformity with the commercial paradigms of the existing Muslim and Jewish trade network, which are known to us from the Cairo Geniza. It was only the coincidence of major political failure in the large Mediterranean polities that enabled a realignment of Italian merchants from participants to dominant players in the existing trade network. This political failure, which I term “the great calamity,” saw the end of the Caliphate of Cordoba and left both Byzantium and the Fatimid Caliphate much reduced, a situation which rebounded to the advantage of smaller polities. Among them, the city of Pisa serves as a test case for this study’s assertions about Italian integration into the Mediterranean network of Muslim and Jewish traders Following the emphasis of the “New Mediterranean Studies” on interconnectivity, a key conclusion is that the spaces defined by trade, such as the decks of ships shared between Jewish, Muslim and Christian merchants, provided an almost neutral medium for the exchange not only of commodities, but also their conceptual, material or stylistic commensals. The final chapters of this thesis concentrate on the social mechanisms that propelled merchants, material culture and knowledge across the Mediterranean. They look at the shared visual culture that permeated the Mediterranean and its concomitant lexicon of shared symbols and motifs. This common visual culture includes architecture, the famous bacini of Pisa, and the broad category of spices, incense and materia medica. This last group, it is suggested, marked an expanding locus of practices shared across both the Christian and Muslim shores of the Mediterranean.

Keywords: Amalfi
Fatimid
Geniza
Mediterranean
merchant
Pisa
Advisor: Meyerson, Mark