VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Al-Ghazālī’s Moral Psychology: From Self-control to Self-surrender

A central difficultly when reading al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) is understanding why he attempts to bring together seemingly disconnected aspects of ethical theory. He inclines toward a more philosophical influence of virtue ethics in his earlier book, The Scale of Action (Mizān al-‘amal), while in his vast encyclopedic work, The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn), his conception of religious practice was greatly informed by the emerging Sufism of his time. These two works, in particular, lay the foundation for understanding his program for Islamic practice and his unique balance of reason and revelation. Al-Ghazālī’s ethical writings are not easily explained by the existing categories and demarcations found in contemporary ethical discourse, so it becomes essential to present what was at the centre of his pedagogy. This dissertation argues that the thread connecting each method of expression is al-Ghazālī’s dramatic and explicit emphasis on self-control as the path to felicity. It demonstrates that the underlying substrate of al-Ghazālī’s ethics is his constant focus on restraining and redirecting the body, emotions, and thought. The study first examines the destructive vices, specifically in relation to eating, sexual desire, anger, and speech. It is then followed by looking at al-Ghazālī’s early work, The Scale of Action which explains his views on controlling the body and achieving moderation through the process of habituation. It then turns to investigate al-Ghazālī’s views on controlling the emotions and how he understands thought and its role in unification of the fragmented self. It is only in the final chapter, entitled self-surrender, that the study attempts to answer the question of why, for al-Ghazālī, the subject of self-control takes such great importance. His directions for self-control are not without purpose and are designed to culminate in a unique form of knowledge. Although the aim of acquiring knowledge is initially for the purpose of inducing proper action, the final result, according to al-Ghazālī, must culminate in a recognition and love of God. For these reasons, the study naturally concludes by answering the question of why these techniques of restraint were of such great significance to al-Ghazālī.

Keywords: al-Ghazālī
Islam
Islamic Philosophy
Sufism
Advisor: Saleh, Walid
The Neural Basis of a Circadian Oscillator Underlying Time Memory

Mice anticipate the time of day that important conditions or events are likely to occur based on their previous experiences with those conditions. They can learn to expect positive (rewarding) or negative (aversive) events. The ability to predict the coming of specific events in its environment (time memory) is crucial for its survival. Current evidence has led to three hypotheses: 1) The clock(s) underlying time memory are located in the dopamine target regions, 2) The hippocampus is a site of cells that register the time of day, and 3) Subpopulations of hippocampal cells that are activated during spatial learning are also responsible for time of day learning. If the same cells that are involved in the formation of spatial memories are also oscillators, then the cells most closely involved in context learning should be the ones most readily phase shifted by a learning experience. Therefore we should be able to distinguish cells linked to specific memories by recording the phase of their circadian rhythms. Using qRT-PCR and ISH, I found that several tissues as a whole do not exhibit shifts of their clocks, particularly, the hippocampus. Instead, behavioral conditioning induced a phase shift in the circadian clock protein PERIOD 2 expression, specifically in the shell region of the nucleus accumbens (NAS) and the dorsal striatum (DS). Next, using the Tetracycline Transactivator Controlled Genetic Tagging of Active Neural Circuits (TetTag) system and ICC, my data suggests that only a few cells in the hippocampus participated in the conditioning. The hippocampal cells whose rhythms were set at the time of conditioning may be critical to the expression of craving. In human health, this research will provide a new perspective on the regulation of craving and as such, will contribute to the development of treatments for drug/substance abuse.

Keywords: Behavior
Circadian Rhythms
Learning and Memory
Advisor: Ralph, Martin R
Lovejoy, David A
The Impact of Malaria in Pregnancy on Fetal Outcomes and Neurodevelopment

Malaria infection during pregnancy is a major contributor to the global burden of adverse birth outcomes including fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, and fetal loss. Despite progress in preventing and treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria in pregnancy, the issue of malaria infection and its impact on maternal-fetal health remains a global health priority. This is in part due to a poor understanding of the pathophysiology of malaria as a driver of adverse birth outcomes. Here, in a large cohort of pregnant women in Malawi, we showed that malaria infection before 24 weeks gestation was associated with dysregulation of inflammatory and angiogenic mediators important for placental vascular development, and an increased risk of preterm birth. We used an experimental model of malaria in pregnancy to show that the angiopoietin-Tie2 pathway is mechanistically involved in placental vascular disruption and adverse birth outcomes. Furthermore, a growing body of evidence links maternal infection during pregnancy to neurocognitive deficits and neuropsychiatric disease in exposed offspring. Since congenital infection is not required for this effect, maternal immune activation is thought to be a critical determinant of neurological outcomes. However, the impact of exposure to malaria in pregnancy on neurodevelopment in children is not well understood. We provide the first clinical evidence in an observational cohort that malaria in pregnancy is associated with neurocognitive delays in children. Mechanistically, we show that malaria-induced inflammation is associated with lower language achievement in children up to two years of age. Collectively, these data suggest that scaling prevention efforts for malaria infection during pregnancy could be a far-reaching strategy to simultaneously reduce maternal-child morbidity and mortality and mitigate the burden of neurological injury in malaria-endemic regions.

Keywords: Fetal development
Malaria
Neurodevelopment
Placental vasculature
Pregnancy
Advisor: Kain, Kevin C.
The Influence of Outcomes-based Funding Models on Two Large Canadian Non-profit Organizations

Through a qualitative case study of two large non-profit organizations, the purpose of this research was to understand and explore how non-profit organizations are being influenced by outcomes-based funding models. During the last two decades, there has been increasing pressure on non-profit organizations to demonstrate the impact of their programs, often as a condition for receiving funding from the government and non-government funders. Traditionally, non-profit organizations have been delivering programs through staff and volunteers (inputs) and measuring success through the number of individuals participating in the programs (outputs). The mission and vision of non-profit organizations are often broad and to assess the organizations’ success by solely measuring the number of participants in a program has been questioned for some time thus leading to a shift towards outcomes measurement process. The outcomes measurement process is a type of evaluation that is focused on measuring how the programs impact the lives of participants lives rather than what the program does for the participants in terms of delivery of activities. More recently, both government and non-government funders have changed their funding models to be outcomes-based and requiring organizations to demonstrate short-term, medium-term or long-term impact of their programs on the participants. The findings of this research study indicate that there is a need for further collaboration and open communication between funders and the non-profit organizations to resolve the tensions between the purpose of outcomes-based funding models and the capacity needed to meet those funding requirements. The study also highlighted the need for different funders to collaborate with one another to support the non-profit organizations in their work on outcomes measurement for measuring short-term, medium-term or long-term impact of their programs. The organizations too need to take leadership on the outcomes-measurement work for their own organizational learning, strategic thinking and planning. While the findings of this study cannot be generalized, they are suggestive and have implications that will be of interest to anyone working in the non-profit sector and not only to funders and leaders of non-profit organizations.

Keywords: Case study methodology
Nonprofit Leadership
Nonprofit Organizations
Outcomes Measurement
Outcomes Measurement Processes
Outcomes-based Funding Models
Advisor: Childs, Ruth Dr.
The Time That Belongs to God: The Christian Prohibition on Usury in the 12th-13th Centuries and the Making of the Subject of Debt

This dissertation traces the meaning of the idea that usurers sell time through 12th- and 13th-century Christian debates about the ethics of usury in the intellectual milieu of the University of Paris. According to a frequently recurring argument, the problem with usury is that the usurer is a ‘thief’ because he sells time, which cannot be bought or sold. The present study reconstructs the philosophical and theological conception of time implicit in this argument.The introductory chapter treats the scope and intervention of the study, as well as its methodological orientation, while the second discusses the intellectual precedents available to medieval writers for connecting time and debt. The core study of the dissertation occupies its third, fourth, and fifth chapters. Each chapter treats one or more of the key medieval texts selected as significant turning points in the idea that usurers sell time. Additionally, each pairs its medieval Christian text with a more contemporary philosophical text treating similar themes, and uses both the medieval and the contemporary text to illuminate the core concerns and impasses of the other. The third chapter reads Peter the Chanter’s Verbum abbreviatum together with Jacques Derrida; the fourth chapter reads Giles of Lessines’ De usuris in communi alongside Gilles Deleuze; the fifth chapter examines Peter Olivi’s rejection of the traditional framing of the argument in De contractibus alongside the work of Giorgio Agamben. The idea that usury is wrong because the usurer sells time, Olivi claims, conflates two times: common time, or the time that one ‘is;’ and proper time, or the time that one ‘has.’ What is at stake turns out to be an incapacity to distinguish between selling one’s time and selling one’s life—an incapacity that can only be bridged by means of a categorical distinction between debt and slavery. Thus, the concluding chapter suggests that it is the invention of race—understood as a difference between the capacity and the incapacity to relate autonomously to one’s own time—which underpins the difference between medieval and modern accounts of time and debt.

Keywords: Christianity
Continental Philosophy
Political Theology
Scholastic Theology
Slavery
Usury
Advisor: Marshall, Ruth
The Development and Application of Environmental Comprehensive Multiphase Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Environmental samples contain multiple phases (solution, gel, and solid) and the synergy and interactions between these phases give rise to their physical structure and environmental reactivity. It is important to analyze samples as close to their intact state as possible to preserve such information. Comprehensive multiphase nuclear magnetic resonance (CMP-NMR) combines all the hardware features from traditional NMR approaches (solution-state, solid-state, and HR-MAS) and can differentiate components in all phases in intact samples. As CMP-NMR technology is relatively new, continued improvement is being made to expand its applicability and compatibility with more multiphase environmental samples. This dissertation focuses on the development of CMP-NMR technologies and expanding their applications on a greater variety of natural samples. The first study introduces a quantitative technique (stepped decoupling) which through effective decoupling, can provide quantification to components in all phases without bias. This approach can be used to quantify specific compounds and to give a quantitative overview of the components in all phases. In the second study, spectral editing techniques, along with stepped decoupling, are applied to differentiate and characterize multiphase components in algae biofuel products that have been extracted under various reaction conditions. The findings demonstrate CMP-NMR’s capability of studying a multiphase reaction process and suggest the possibility to optimize reaction conditions to produce useful biofuel extraction by-products. In the third study, a new coil design is adapted to CMP-NMR, significantly reducing sample heating induced by high-power decoupling for solid-state components. This study not only showcases the improved survival rate of in vivo Hyalella azteca (freshwater shrimp) under high decoupling power but also presents the importance of using proper high decoupling power for natural samples. The fourth study introduces a 7 mm probe, providing significantly larger sample volume compared to the current 4 mm system. The increased sample volume allows for natural non-enriched samples to be studied in a reasonable timeframe and for larger samples such as a pomegranate aril and a softgel pharmaceutical capsule to be studied intact. The work in this dissertation demonstrates the continuing development of CMP-NMR to expand its compatibility with a wider range of multiphase samples and processes.

Keywords: CMP-NMR
Environmental NMR
Multiphase
NMR
Advisor: Simpson, Andre J.
Quantifying Similarity in Paleontological Settings: Accuracy, Complexity, and Macroevolutionary Implications

In paleontological settings, similarity measures serve multiple roles, from arranging taxa into phylogenetic trees, to quantifying overlap between communities in terms of several interrelated factors. Any measure that attempts to incorporate such a wide variety of concepts will struggle to handle lost information, and the well-known biases of the fossil record represent a significant hurdle to accurate quantification of similarity. In this thesis I explore the accuracy of several well-known similarity measures when they are applied in paleontological settings, and discuss how measuring similarity can allow us to better understand long-term evolutionary dynamics. Using a combination of numerical models that simulate the biases of the fossil record, alongside field-based samples from rapidly lithifying environments, I demonstrate that only a small subset of popular similarity measures work in paleontological settings. I explore how the most accurate measures can be modified to incorporate additional information about inter-community overlap, expanding our conception of what constitutes a “similar” ecosystem. While articulating the assumptions underlying the most commonly used similarity indices, I wrote a proof demonstrating that one of the most popular similarity measures in paleontological research (convex hull overlap) does not work like other measures and can return inaccurate results even in unbiased settings. Finally, I looked at two key questions in the application of similarity to paleontological problems. The first of these issues involves the problem of a tie when classifying taxa into groups based on functional similarity. In classical classification protocols, when a given taxon is equally likely to belong to two or more groups, there is no clear solution. Here I explore how the mathematical approach of fuzzy set theory can offer a potential means of solving this problem. Finally, I explore how quantifying similarity can offer a possible mechanistic explanation for one of the most unusual patterns in the fossil record – the decoupling of the taxonomic and ecological consequences of a mass extinction event. My research provides the first quantitative evidence that functional similarity, long proposed to have a stabilizing effect on small-scale ecosystems, could potentially prevent widespread collapse in the face of a global climatic shift.

Keywords: Dissimilarity Indices
Paleobiology
Paleoecology
Paleontology
Similarity Indices
Soft Computing
Advisor: Laflamme, Marc
Rendering Service to the Community: The Spiritual Life of the Ursuline Nuns of Quebec City, 1639-1780

This dissertation explores the spiritual life of the Ursulines nuns of Quebec City as the central feature of their lives. While other historians have illuminated the political power, economic influence, and social role of the nuns, this study places the nuns’ stated goals of dedicating their lives to God at the centre of this examination and as linked with these other roles. It begins with an exploration of the Ursulines in France, the creation and modification of their constitutions, and the unique rules of the Quebec monastery. It then delves into the spiritual imagery of the Quebec constitutions, focusing on the competing images of nuns as Mary and Martha or as brides of Christ. The dissertation then examines the lifecycle of the Ursuline nuns. It brings a fresh examination on how recruitment was conducted, who entered, the process of the novitiate, the selection of the leadership of the community, followed by the spiritual concerns at end-of-life. It particularly brings attention to converse nuns, who although working as servants in the monastery, were just as dedicated to the life of prayer as the choir nuns. Moving from how the nuns lived, the dissertation then examines how they wrote about themselves. Particular attention is paid to the monastery’s annals and necrology, which documented the communal and individual lives of the nuns. These sources reveal that the nuns put a high value on retaining the religious value of charity, acknowledging Divine Providence, and on serving their monastery. Their religious ideals surrounding education and religious practice were evident in the teaching of Indigenous, French, and English girls who were students at the monastery. The nuns were not blind to racial and ethnic identity, but they prioritized religion in their decision regarding how they educated girls, bringing the nuns into conflict with colonial officials. Their dedication to education meant they schooled a significant number of Quebec girls and women resulting in high rates of literacy. Their spiritual intensity persisted all through the century and a half studied here, shaping their devotional practices and love of cloister as well as teaching.

Keywords: education
New France
nuns
spiritual life
spirituality
Ursulines
Advisor: Noel, Jan
Magnetic Field Induced Phases in Kitaev Magnets: A Semiclassical Analysis

The Kitaev honeycomb model is a rare example of exactly soluble S=1/2 frustrated systems with a quantum spin liquid ground state, in which the spins fractionalize into Majorana fermions coupled to a ℤ2 gauge field. The bond dependent Ising interaction that defines the Kitaev honeycomb model is proposed to have a dominant presence in transition metal compounds with partially filled d orbitals and a strong spin-orbit coupling. However, these materials, which are known as Kitaev magnets, generically possess other interactions such that a magnetically ordered ground state is stabilized, instead of the desired Kitaev spin liquid. Intriguingly, recent experiments on the Kitaev magnet α-RuCl3 subjected to external magnetic fields reported a half-quantized thermal Hall effect and a neutron scattering continuum, hinting at a field induced quantum spin liquid. Motivated by these experiments, we theoretically investigate the possible emergent phases in realistic spin models of Kitaev magnets under a magnetic field, via a semiclassical analysis. We identify phases other than the Kitaev spin liquid that are able to account for some of the experimental observations. In particular, we show that the thermal Hall conductivity due to magnons in the polarized state exhibits the same sign structure as in the suspected spin liquid phase, while the energy spectra of magnetic orders with large unit cells resemble an excitation continuum. We also discuss an instance of how the classical S → ∞ model helps us to understand its quantum S=1/2 counterpart, by establishing a correspondence between two phases found in the opposite limits. Finally, we conclude our studies and suggest some potential future research directions.

Advisor: Kim, Yong Baek
Principals and the Hiring Process for Teachers in the Private Schools of Lahore, Pakistan

Based primarily on private secondary schools of Lahore, Pakistan, this qualitative study investigates the processes involved in hiring suitable teachers. In doing so it explores in particular the expectations that principals put forth for teaching candidates and how these, then, dictate the hiring process. Fifteen principals with at least five years’ experience were selected for this study. These principals were in charge of private schools which are uniformly following the local education system of Matriculation and charging tuition fee ranging from Rs. 4000 – 7000. Qualitative research approach is used for this study in which data was collected through one-on-one interviews with the help of a semi-structured interview guide. The participants involved in the study have vast experience of hiring teachers, as their administrative experience ranges from six to twenty years in school setting. The research concludes that a good teaching candidate should have strong content knowledge, good personal characteristics, robust teaching experience and subject-specific pedagogy, proficiency in academic and non-academic tasks, strong written and oral communication skills, good discipline, immaculate handwriting and proficiency in notebook correction, adaptability, and capacity to model oneself to the taught group. The research also lists shortcomings usually found in teaching candidates, which include limited occupational choice, stark differences between paper and real qualifications, lack of teaching qualification/teacher training, poor communication skills, handwriting and work ethics, and gap between university education and practical professional life. The implications of the study suggest that university education programs need drastic, informed changes. It seems imperative to take into account not just how private school teachers are hired but who exactly is hired, and what professional qualifications such candidates hold and what effect this variable has. Based on the findings, the study has made recommendations for teaching candidates and principals as they indulge in the hiring process, and to universities as well in relation to their teacher education programs. Finally, it provides directions for future research and suggests how this study can be enhanced.

Keywords: Lahore
Pakistan
Private Schools
Teacher hiring
Teachers characteristics
Advisor: Flessa , Joseph