VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Culture and Family Relationships: Examining Young Sibling Conflict, and European and South Asian Canadian Mothers

Mothers are salient influencers of their children’s development, and the strength of their influence is contingent on cultural values and beliefs. Cross-cultural research has primarily investigated parental relationships and their associations with individual child behaviour. The unique contribution of this thesis is the cross-cultural examination of three dyadic relationships in the family: the sibling, parent-child, and marital relationships. Data was drawn from Kids, Family Places. Two hundred and seventy-three Canadian families (222 European and 51 South Asian) were included. There was data from a total of 546 siblings (i.e., 273 dyads). Observational measures of interaction between young sibling dyads were collected in the home, and mothers reported on negative and positive qualities of their parenting, and conflict in their marriage. Cross-culturally equivalent measures of parenting and marital conflict were first established using structural equation modelling. Establishing measurement equivalence was an important component as it allowed for meaningful mean comparisons of the constructs between European and South Asian Canadian mothers. Mean differences were examined with t-tests and there was evidence of cultural variation in parenting and marital conflict patterns. South Asian Canadian mothers reported more negativity with both of their children and positivity with their younger 18-month-old, and lower frequency of destructive marital conflict, than European Canadian mothers. Sibling conflict (aggression and hostility) was investigated in the context of positive parenting and constructive marital conflict, their interaction, and culture. Culture was examined as a moderator on the association of sibling conflict with positive parenting and constructive marital conflict using multilevel modelling. As expected, sibling conflict was found to be negatively predicted by positive parenting. This association was attenuated by the frequency of constructive marital conflict. Consistent with literature, culture moderated the negative association of positive parenting on sibling conflict. Specifically, positive parenting was more strongly associated with sibling conflict in European Canadian than in South Asian families. These findings are discussed in the context of values and beliefs associated with conflict and cooperation amongst individualistic Western cultures and collectivistic Eastern cultures such as the South Asian community.

Keywords: culture
marital conflict
parent-child relationship
sibling conflict
South-Asian
Advisor: Jenkins, Jennifer
Towards an Automatic Caption Quality Assessment Model Reflecting the Subjective Views of Deaf, and Hard of Hearing Audiences

Closed Captioning (CC) was designed to serve Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers, but the quality of CC has been assessed without much inclusion of these primary consumer groups. Currently, caption quality is mostly measured using arithmetic counts based on “errors” between the original spoken words and the caption text. A method to assess the quality of CC that includes the subjective perspective of D/HoH viewers could provide descriptive evaluations and ratings reflective to hearing conditions. Furthermore, using machine learning algorithms based on subjective ratings from D and HoH audiences could automate the process of assessment while reflecting human subjective assessment. Towards the goal of automatic caption quality assessment based on target consumer group perspectives, three studies were conducted to: 1) determine the potential of neural network prediction model feasibility; 2) generate a probability model of human caption quality assessment using the Signal Detection Theory framework; 3) construct and train neural networks to represent human quality assessors using Active Learning; and 4) carry out a benchmarking analysis to compare the newly developed assessment system with existing measures. The main findings from the studies include: 1) statistically significant difference in subjective assessment between D and HoH audiences; 2) correlation between caption error sensitivity and the perceived quality ratings on captions; 3) empirical evidence of the relationship between the values of the four quality factors (Delay, Speed, Number of missing words, and Caption paraphrasing) and the subjective quality rating; 4) use of Signal Detection Theory for modeling D and HoH audience error detection behaviour from watching CC; 5) implementation of Caption quality Assessment Intelligence System (CAIS) which can automatically rate the quality of CC by replicating human subjective assessment on various captions. The main contributions of this research are: 1) the development of a quality assessment neural network model for Closed Captioning which includes Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewer’s subjective opinions; 2) the development of probability decision models for Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers based on caption error detection; and 3) provision of additional quantitative evidence of subjective difference between Deaf and Hard of Hearing groups.

Keywords: Active learning
Broadcasting
Closed Captioning
Human Factors
Quality assessment
Signal Detection Theory
Advisor: Chignell, Mark H
Fels, Deborah I
The Resilient Musician: Positive Psychology and String Players Studying at the Graduate Level

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how theories in positive psychology manifest in the lived experience of graduate-level students majoring in a stringed instrument (violin, viola, cello, or double bass). Research was conducted using narrative inquiry, a qualitative methodology that analyzes the human experience, understood through a participant’s own telling of their lived experience. An exploratory survey was used to identify individuals for the narrative study and three participants (two violinists and a violist) were chosen for the narrative study. Their unique stories revealed a number of common themes, reflecting on the influence of early childhood experiences, teachers, the role of hard work, music performance anxiety (MPA), enjoyment, individuality, and finding balance. Future studies that include a larger participant pool may result in more widespread implications for the community of graduate-level string majors.

Keywords: graduate-level
music
performance
positive psychology
resilience
strings
Advisor: Dolloff, Lori-Anne
Resettled Syrian Refugee Children in Canada: Oral Language, Literacy and Well-being

The Canadian government has resettled over 57,000 Syrian refugees since 2015. This influx of migrants has offered a chance to evaluate the language development and overall well- being of such a unique group. The primary goals of this dissertation were to examine the extent to which morphological awareness skill predicted Arabic reading skills, as well as to investigate the role of child-specific and family-related predictors of English reading in school-aged Syrian refugee children resettled in Canada.The first study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal role(s) of morphological awareness in Arabic word reading and reading comprehension. A total of eighty-three native Arabic Syrian refugee children aged 6-13 years resettled in Canada were administered measures of nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading and reading comprehension at two points in time. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that morphological awareness was related to word reading and reading comprehension concurrently and longitudinally, after controlling for age, cognitive abilities, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Interestingly, these relations remained statistically significant even with the addition of autoregressive controls. The second study was designed to examine the extent to which children’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms, as reported by their parents, predict English word reading, in a sample of one-hundred and thirty-three Syrian refugee children 6-13 years. Using multilevel modeling, child’s ADHD score was a strong predictor of English word reading accuracy, above key cognitive variables. Family time spent in refugee camps significantly moderated the association between ADHD symptoms and English word reading. The findings of the study showed that children with higher ADHD scores performed lower on word reading task after controlling for key cognitive variables. Children who spent more time in refugee camps before resettling in Canada showed higher ADHD symptoms and lower word reading performance compared to children who spent less/no time in refugee camps. Overall, the findings of this dissertation support the relevance of cognitive variables in the development of literacy skills in refugee children who are Arabic native speakers relocated in an English dominant country. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of overall well- being and pre-migration factors on children’s learning.

Keywords: ADHD
Arabic first language
English second language
Literacy skills
Morphological awareness
Refugees
Advisor: Chen, Xi X
Investigating Mechanisms of Nuclear mRNA Export

In eukaryotes, the segregation of the RNA synthesis/processing in the nucleus from the translation machinery in the cytoplasm has important implications for nuclear export and retention of mRNAs. This division ensures that only correctly processed mRNAs are exported to the cytoplasm to be translated into proteins, while misprocessed and aberrant transcripts are retained in the nucleus to be degraded by various nuclear surveillance mechanisms. In the first half of this work, I show that mature mRNAs containing the 5’ splice site (5’SS) motif are retained in the nucleus. Although a fraction of 5’SS motif containing mRNAs are rapidly degraded, those that escape decay are targeted to nuclear speckles. We show that ZFC3H1, a component of the nuclear exosome associated PolyAdenylation Exosome Targeting (PAXT) complex, is required for the nuclear retention and degradation of such transcripts. Similarly, we demonstrate that U1 snRNP, a component of the spliceosome that recognizes and binds to the 5’SS motif, mediates the nuclear retention of these aberrant mRNAs. We show that ZFC3H1 and U1-70K are not required for targeting 5’SS motif containing mRNAs to nuclear speckles, and these mRNAs phase-separate into this sub-nuclear compartment by some unknown process. Next, I perform RNA Frac-Seq and demonstrate that ZFC3H1 is required for the decay and nuclear retention of intronic polyadenylated transcripts, which naturally contain intact 5’SS motifs. In the second half of this thesis, I characterize the role of TPR, a nuclear pore basket protein, in mediating nuclear retention and export of mRNAs. While splicing has been shown to enhance nuclear mRNA export, it remains unclear whether RNAs generated from intronless genes use specific machinery for their export. We show that TPR is required for promoting the efficient export of intronless or intron-poor mRNAs and lncRNAs. Furthermore, we observe a strong correlation between transcripts generated from short pre-processed RNAs and TPR mediated nuclear export. My observations suggest that TPR acts in a late step of mRNA export and is most likely required for the mRNA docking with the nuclear pore. In summary, I show that mRNA export/nuclear retention processes are ‘two sides of the same coin’ and collectively mediates the export of bona fide mRNAs while simultaneously promotes the nuclear retention/degradation of misprocessed transcripts. Furthermore, the export of certain subtypes of RNAs (as exemplified by intronless genes) requires additional factors for their nuclear export, demonstrating that this process is more complex than previously envisioned.

Keywords: mRNA
mRNA export
Nucleocytoplasmic transport
RNA biology
RNA decay
RNA quality control
Advisor: Palazzo, Alexander F
A Proximity Biotinylation Map of a Human Cell

Compartmentalization is an essential characteristic of eukaryotic cells, ensuring that cellular processes are partitioned to defined subcellular locations. High throughput microscopy and biochemical fractionation coupled with mass spectrometry have helped to define the proteomes of multiple organelles and macromolecular structures. However, many compartments have remained refractory to such methods, partly due to lysis and purification artefacts and poor subcompartment resolution. Recently developed proximity-dependent biotinylation approaches such as BioID and APEX provide an alternative avenue for defining the composition of cellular compartments in living cells. Here I report an extensive BioID-based proximity map of a human cell, comprising 192 markers from 32 different compartments that identifies 35,902 unique high-confidence proximity interactions and localizes 4,145 proteins expressed in HEK293 cells. The recall of our localization predictions is on par with or better than previous large-scale mass spectrometry and microscopy approaches, but with higher localization specificity. In addition to assigning compartment and subcompartment localization for many previously unlocalized proteins, our data contain fine-grained localization information that, for example, allowed us to identify proteins with novel roles in mitochondrial dynamics. As a community resource, my work enabled the creation of the humancellmap.org, a website that allows exploration of our data in detail, and aids with the analysis of BioID experiments.

Keywords: BioID
Compartment
Human
Map
Mass spectrometry
Organelle
Advisor: Gingras, Anne-Claude
Geometric Behaviour of Solutions to Equations of Ginzburg-Landau type on Riemannian Manifolds

In this thesis, we demonstrate the existence of complex-valued solutions to the Ginzburg-Landau equation –Δu + (1/ε2)u(|u|2 – 1) = 0 on M, for ε ≪ 1, where M is a three dimensional compact manifold without boundary, that have interesting geometric properties. Specifically, we argue the existence of solutions whose vorticity concentrates about an arbitrary closed nondegenerate geodesic on M. In doing this, we extend the work of Jerrard and Sternberg (2009) and Mesaric (2009) who showed that there are solutions whose energy converges, after rescaling, to the arclength of a geodesic as above. An important ingredient in the proof is a heat flow argument, which requires detailed information about limiting behaviour of solutions of the parabolic Ginzburg-Landau equation. Providing the necessary limiting behaviour is the other contribution of this thesis. In fact, more is achieved. Provided that N ≥ 3, we give a structural description of the limiting behaviour of solutions to the parabolic Ginzburg-Landau equation on an N-dimensional compact manifold without boundary (M, g). More specifically, we are able to show that the limit of the renormalized energy measure orthogonally decomposes into a diffuse part, absolutely continuous with respect to the volume measure on M induced by g, and a concentrated vortex part, supported on a codimension 2 surface contained in M. Moreover, the diffuse part of the limiting energy has its time evolution governed by the heat equation while the concentrated part evolves in time according to a measure theoretic version of mean curvature flow. This extends the work of Bethuel, et al. (2006) who proved this for N-dimensional Euclidean space provided that N ≥ 2.

Keywords: Ginzburg-Landau
Partial Differential Equations
Advisor: Jerrard, Robert L
Protocol Development for the Discovery of Angiogenesis Inhibitors via Automated Methods Using Zebrafish and the Discovery and Validation of PD 81723 as a Novel Angiogenesis Inhibitor

Their optical clarity as larvae and embryos, small size, and high fecundity make zebrafish ideal for whole animal high-throughput screening. A high-throughput drug discovery platform (HTP) has been built to perform fully automated screens of compound libraries with zebrafish embryos. A Tg(kdrl:EGFP) line, marking endothelial cell cytoplasm, was used in this work to help develop protocols and functional algorithms for the system, with the intent of screening for angiogenesis inhibitors. Indirubin 3’ Monoxime (I3M), a known angiogenesis inhibitor, was used at various concentrations to validate the protocols. Consistent with previous studies, a dose-dependent inhibitory effect of I3M on angiogenesis was confirmed. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Collections Libraries I II (NIHCCLI) were screened for angiogenesis inhibitors with these methods as a pilot project for the HTP. The 727 compounds were screened in triplicate and 14 compounds were considered hits. The 5 compounds that corresponded to the most diminished endothelial network with a relatively normal overall morphology were selected for further analysis. A dose response experiment of each of the top 5 compounds was conducted and only PD 81723 and raclopride yielded a significantly smaller endothelial network. Evaluation of the chemical phenotypes of PD 81723 and raclopride led to the exclusion of raclopride as a possible candidate. PD 81723 appeared to be working in a dose-dependent manner and was selected as the main compound of interest. Zebrafish exposed to PD 81723 exhibited several signs of a diminished endothelial network due to the inhibition of angiogenesis. Immunochemistry experiments did not reveal any significant apoptotic or mitotic activity in the zebrafish. Assays with cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) elucidated the ability of PD 81723 to inhibit capillary tube formation, wound healing/migration, and proliferation of endothelial cells. An annexin V/PI flow cytometry assay did not reveal significant levels of apoptotic events in PD 81723 treated cells. These results indicate that PD 81723 may be driving endothelial cells into a quiescent state. In addition, immunoblotting revealed that PD 81723 significantly down regulated p21, AKT, VEGFR-2, p-VEGFR-2, eNOS, and p-eNOS, with no notable change in endogenous VEGF-A.

Advisor: Singh, Krishna K.
Connelly , Kim A.
Faculty Perceptions on Contextual Factors as Affordances or Constraints to Innovative Teaching and Learning in Polytechnic Institutions

The current global context and the ongoing disruptive nature of technological advancements continue to shape the narrative surrounding the relevance of traditional models of higher education. Although innovation in teaching has been identified as a priority for most institutions of higher education, there is limited research on the perception of innovative teaching directly from the innovators themselves – faculty members. Furthermore, there is a lack of empirical research on the institutional conditions conducive to innovative teaching practices in a polytechnic model of education in Ontario, Canada. Using an adaptation of Cognitive Work Analysis and the Human-tech Framework (Vicente, 2006), the purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of innovation from the perspective of college faculty members and to explore the contextual factors that enable or constrain the development and use of innovative teaching approaches. This inquiry utilized extreme case sampling to investigate the perceptions of five faculty members in Ontario Colleges offering a polytechnic model of education. Using Seidman’s (2013) three-series interview process, and an analysis of teaching artifacts and publicly available institutional documents, a detailed picture of the participants’ teaching experience and professional identities in the context of their institutions has been painted. Key affordances and constraints related to their innovative teaching practice are identified. The major findings emerging from the study are, first, a social justice identity was found to be a key factor in shaping the participants’ innovative teaching practice, as was their induction into the profession. Second, the participants identified that organizational culture factors, including negative relationships with peers and leadership, misaligned institutional priorities, and staffing models, were impacting their ability to innovate. Last, the participants highlighted the design of the higher-education system as a barrier to the progression of innovative teaching. That includes constraints associated with the evolution of Ontario colleges to polytechnic institutions. The results of this study contributes knowledge and provide insights into the contextual factors that impact the development and use of innovative teaching practices in polytechnic institutions. This information will be of interest to educational developers, policy makers and administrators interested in advancing innovative teaching practices at their institutions.

Keywords: College
Human-tech Framework
Innovative pedagogy
Polytechnic Institutions
Teaching and Learning
Technology
Advisor: Rolheiser, Carol
Evaluating Kidney Transplantation for Adults with End-stage Renal Disease

Kidney transplantation is widely accepted as the optimal treatment for most adult patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Due to the rising scarcity of donor kidneys and the ageing of the patient population, performance of kidney transplantation warrants careful clinical and economic considerations. This dissertation comprised three projects to examine kidney transplantation for treating adult ESRD patients in the contemporary era, including (1) the role of pre-existing psychosocial conditions on the survival of deceased-donor kidney transplant (DDKT) recipients; (2) the economic consequences of i) receiving a DDKT as an adult ESRD patient and ii) donating a kidney as an adult living donor; and (3) machine-learning-based algorithms for managing older adults who have received a DDKT at age beyond 60 years by predicting i) their risk of posttransplant mortality, ii) their status of being a high-cost user of publicly funded health care during the year of transplantation, and iii) their total health care expenditures over the first posttransplant year. Person-level linked administrative data of all cases of DDKT performed in Ontario, Canada between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2013 were used in projects (1) and (3). The results of this dissertation confirmed psychosocial conditions being diagnosed at 1-year prior to entering dialysis to be a strong and independent risk factor of posttransplant mortality. The systematic review and meta-analysis suggested that while DDKT was generally cost-effective over dialysis, the benefits diminished for patients over the age of 60 years and might further decrease for those older patients with diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease and long wait times. For living kidney donors, they incurred costs between $900 to $19,900 (US dollar in 2019 values) from pre-donation evaluation to the first postoperative year. The machine learning studies implied the feasibility of incorporating data mining techniques to support the decision-making and care planning of older DDKT recipients. Jointly, these findings have implications for an array of clinical and resource allocation policies to optimize ESRD management and highlight the potential utility of novel statistical methods in transplant outcomes research.

Keywords: End-stage renal disease
Health economics
Kidney donor
Kidney transplantation
Machine learning
Renal transplantation
Advisor: Coyte, Peter C