VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Race, Empire and the Making of the Global Citizen in the Ontario Curriculum (1920s-2010s)

Pedagogical approaches that emphasize the importance of creating ‘global’ citizens have been experiencing considerable momentum in the past thirty years in Canada and in other Western countries. Relying on the insights of critical race theory and postcolonial approaches in education and using Ontario’s civics and social studies curriculum as case study, this thesis questions the claims advanced by the mainstream liberal literature on Global Citizenship Education (GCE) about this approach’s benevolence and alleged break from traditional forms of citizen education based on nationalism. Instead, this dissertation demonstrates how approaches based on the idea of a global citizen reproduce a moralising liberal educational discourse in which imaginings of the moral white self (as a global citizen), the ‘other' (as a global non-citizen) and the ‘community' (Canada as a post-national entity in a globalized world) intersect, allowing for the organization of differences and similarities at an individual and collective level along racial lines. These representations, in turn, reinforce Canada's national identity as white and imperial, a discourse that traces its origins to the beginning of Canada's national project. The argument presented in this thesis is based on a Foucauldian-inspired analytical framework that treats global citizenship education not as a neutral field of knowledge, but as a discourse that shapes the ways texts, institutions and individuals can speak, write and represent a particular kind of knowledge about a topic and the ways in which they are limited in construing it. This discourse informs the teaching and learning practices adopted in GCE-infused curricula, turning these texts into technologies of power that, through what Foucault calls ‘spirals of power and pleasure', (re)create a particular modernist vision of the polity in which students can be transformed into ‘global citizens'. To demonstrate the historical continuity of the global citizenship education discourse in the Canadian context, this thesis relies on a genealogical analysis of the social studies and civics curricula in Ontario from the 1920s to today, focusing on four historical periods, each representing a distinctive phase in the evolution of the discourse around citizenship education in Canada: the interwar era (1920s-1940s); the post-war era (1950s-1960s); the Multicultural era (1970s-1980s); the post-cold war era (1990s-2010s).

Keywords: Canada
Curriculum
Education
Empire
Foucault
Ontario
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
A Bourdieusian Analysis of Resilience among Victimized Individuals who Smoke Crack Cocaine

Individuals who smoke crack cocaine face pervasive sources of adversity, including chronic victimization; nevertheless, in spite of such experiences many find ways to persevere. However, on trend with research in the general substance use literature, studies of crack use are preoccupied with describing and analyzing vulnerabilities and risks. Consequently, “resilience” is not a lens through which individuals who smoke crack are examined. Indeed, current psychological conceptualizations of resilience remain too narrow to recognize all the potential manifestations of resilience in the daily lives of individuals who regularly use drugs. There is a lack of studies that examine, from a resilience perspective, the practices that may protect individuals who smoke crack from victimization, or assist them in dealing with the effects of such adverse events within a high-risk environment. The primary objective of this PhD dissertation was to theoretically reconceptualize resilience using Bourdieu’s theory of practice and apply it to the particular case of victimization in crack culture. A qualitative study was conducted examining responses to victimization and the types of coping strategies utilized among thirty street-involved individuals who regularly smoke crack in a mid-sized community in Southern Ontario, Canada. Findings show that participants mobilize their capacities and resources to “rebound” from victimization in the crack field through various resilience practices. These individuals rely on their own embodied competencies and the social capital available to them through their networks, in order to avoid or deal with victimization. A focused analysis of self-blame following victimization reveals the dual nature of this practice – which often causes suffering, but also produces opportunities for agency, competency, and survivorship. By providing a theoretically-based broad definition of resilience, this research uncovers hidden, socially marginalized, misunderstood, or de-valued practices that assist street-involved individuals who smoke crack in avoiding or dealing with victimization in a challenging context.

Keywords: Bourdieusian research
Crack use
Persons who use drugs (PWUD)
Resilience
Victimization
Advisor: Strike, Carol
Developing Techniques to Understand Increased Ion Complexity in the Gas Phase

While ions are held in the volume of a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer it is possible to use gas-phase optical spectroscopy to extract intrinsic information from the trapped species. This information is unencumbered by influences and interferences that populate the condensed phase. Under these conditions, it is possible to develop an understanding of the intersection of the intra- and intermolecular influences on a molecule. Doing so by beginning at the baseline of a bare ion and building up complexity in a controlled and calculated fashion. This research aims to fill in existing knowledge gaps by monitoring the effect of discrete changes on trapped ions. Chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis focus on examining intrinsic photophysical properties from groups of common fluorescent dyes (oxazines and rhodamines). The subtle structural change of the deuteration exchange of labile hydrogens resulted in significant changes in the measured fluorescence of oxazines but minimally affected structurally related rhodamine dyes. These may function as benchmark results and enable a better understanding of the interplay between structure and quantum efficiency. In combination with computation, the new insights promise to aid the effective and deliberate design of new fluorescent probes. The fourth chapter of this thesis describes the effects of increasing the internal energy of interrogated systems; via the design, implementation, and application of an intra-vacuum heating system. Effects were monitored using optical probing in combination with heating for several systems. These effects were varied, from the subtle shifting of rhodamine emission spectra to a rejection of the gas phase effectiveness of fluorescence thermometer molecule rhodamine B, and inducing a FRET monitored conformational change in a mutant variant of ubiquitin. Using this method of purposefully added complexity (deuteration and increased internal energy) it is possible to better understand how and why these effects occur. The work in these chapters represents essential steps in taking mass spectrometry from an important tool for sensitive and selective detection to an expanded role as an important investigative space to determine the nature of the molecules we use every day.

Keywords: Fluorescence Spectroscopy
Gas-phase Probes
Instrument Modification
Mass Spectrometry
Advisor: Jockusch, Rebecca A
Relative Effectiveness of Osteoporosis Treatments to Reduce Hip Fractures in Patients with Prostate Cancer on Continuous Androgen Deprivation Therapy:

Background: Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is widely used in men with advanced prostate cancer, and can lead to loss of bone mineral density (BMD) and fractures. Osteoporosis treatments are effective in improving BMD, and reducing risk of hip fractures. Given the potential benefits, risks, and widely varying costs of osteoporosis treatments in our population, we assessed the effects and cost-effectiveness of treatments. Methods: A systematic review and a network meta-analysis were conducted using randomized controlled trials (RCT) that evaluated bisphosphonates, denosumab, toremifene, and raloxifene in patients with non-metastatic prostate cancer on ADT. Outcomes included percentage change in BMD from placebo at different bone sites and incidence rates of any fractures. A cost-utility model was developed using a state transition model simulating the progression of prostate cancer, the incidence of hip fractures and an adverse event from osteoporosis treatments. The risk of fracture was conditional on BMD changes, which were modeled as the means of determining the effect of treatment on health and cost outcomes. The outcomes were predicted hip fracture incidence, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), expected costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. Results: Thirteen RCTs were included for analysis. The largest BMD improvement compared to placebo at 12-month at femoral neck site was risedronate 6.77% (95% CrI:-6.87-20.27%). Two studies reported fractures; toremifene and denosumab studies reported improved incidence of new vertebral fracture outcome vs placebo (2.5% vs 4.9%;p

Keywords: androgen deprivation therapy
fracture
osteoporosis
prostate cancer
Advisor: Krahn, Murray
Sex Differences in the Spinal Mechanisms Underlying Chronic Pain

Microglia-neuronal signalling has been critically implicated in mediating pain hypersensitivity associated with peripheral nerve injury (PNI). PNI causes upregulation of the purinergic receptor P2X4 (P2X4R) on microglia, which elicits brain-derived neurotrophic factor release (BDNF). BDNF acts on spinal dorsal horn neurons, leading to enhancement of NMDA receptor (NMDAR) activity and downregulation of the potassium chloride cotransporter KCC2. Together, these neuronal changes cause hyperexcitability of lamina I neurons which transmit pain information to the brain. Unfortunately, the P2X4R-BDNF-NMDAR/KCC2 framework was delineated through experiments employing exclusively male rodents. This sex bias in subject inclusion is rampant in preclinical pain research. Here, we found that disrupting microglial P2X4R-BDNF signalling, which blocked pain hypersensitivity in males, had no effect in females. Thus, we concluded that microglia-neuronal signalling does not contribute to neuropathic pain hypersensitivity in female mice. Furthermore, we found that females lacking T cells, which are critical mediators of adaptive immunity, ‘switched’ to using the microglial-dependent pathway. These findings suggest that T cells may play an analogous role to microglia in females with pain hypersensitivity. Our qPCR and flow cytometry experiments indicated that this sexual dimorphism appears to be dependent on a lack of increased P2X4R activity in females after nerve injury. Additionally, we found that modulators of microglia functioning attenuated CFA-induced hypersensitivity in males only, demonstrating that a sexually dimorphic role for microglia also exists in inflammatory pain. We also demonstrated that this sex difference in pain signalling likewise occurs in rats, thus there is conservation of this phenomenon between different rodent species. Further, we showed that nerve injury downregulated KCC2 in both sexes, and pharmacologically targeting KCC2 or NMDARs rescued pain hypersensitivity in females and males. Thus, despite sexually dimorphic immune pain signalling, NMDARs and KCC2 contribute to pain hypersensitivity in both sexes. Therefore, neuronal mechanisms downstream of microglia are convergent between the sexes, which reveal that pain hypersensitivity is degenerate, in that multiple processes can lead to the same pathological change. Our findings demonstrate that future development of drug therapies for chronic pain should target non-degenerate mechanisms and highlight the importance of including female subjects in preclinical pain research.

Keywords: Chronic Pain
Microglia
Neuropathic Pain
Rodents
Sex Differences
T cells
Advisor: Salter, Michael W
Development of a Hybrid Brain-Computer Interface Based on Imagined Speech Using Electroencephalography and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

The primary goal of brain-computer interface (BCI) research is to provide communication capabilities for individuals with severe motor impairments. However, using BCIs for communication can be nonintuitive, often requiring the performance of a conversation-irrelevant task. The primary objective of this research was to propose an intuitive BCI based on imagined speech tasks and investigate the reliability of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals, separately, in detecting these tasks. The secondary objective was to develop a hybrid EEG-fNIRS BCI based on speech tasks, leveraging the advantages of each measurement modality. In the first study, EEG signals were used to classify three different mental tasks: unconstrained rest or the mental repetition of the words “yes” or “no”. An average offline binary (“yes” versus “no”) and ternary classification accuracies of 63% and 54% were reached across participants, respectively. These results were validated in a second study using two online BCIs, one to differentiate between rest and “no” and the other between “yes” and “no”, which yielded average online accuracies of 76% and 69%, respectively. The third study consisted of two phases. In the first phase, a 3-class online BCI based on imagined speech (“yes”, “no” and rest) was developed using fNIRS and yielded an average online ternary classification accuracy of 64%. EEG data were collected from participants but were not analyzed in this phase. In the second phase of this study, the collected EEG data were used to develop a multi-class hybrid fNIRS-EEG offline BCI. An average ternary classification accuracy of 69% was attained, exceeding accuracies of BCIs based on EEG or fNIRS alone. These studies demonstrate that imagined speech is a promising activation task for selected users. Concurrent neuroelectric and hemodynamic measurements can improve BCI classification accuracy and information transfer rate when using imagined speech as the activation task.

Keywords: brain-computer interfaces
classification
electroencephalography
functional near-infrared spectroscopy
imagined speech
machine learning
Advisor: Chau, Tom
Metabolic Engineering of Lyase-Based Biosynthetic Pathways for Non-Natural Chemical Production

Metabolic engineering efforts have led to the development of bioprocesses implemented at an industrial scale for the production of natural and non-natural chemicals. However, several challenges need to be addressed in order to develop more bioprocesses that can reduce our reliance on petroleum-based feedstocks. One area of improvement is to expand the types of chemicals that can be produced. Often, the limitation lies in the unavailability of known enzymes to catalyze steps in novel biosynthetic pathways. This thesis investigates the application of carbon-carbon bond-forming enzymes in biosynthetic pathways to produce chemicals from renewable resources. In addition, this thesis provides insights into aldehyde metabolism in microbes by elucidating side reactions that need to be addressed in order to utilize aldehyde-associated reactions. First, we demonstrated the production of a non-natural chemical, 1,3-butanediol, from glucose in Escherichia coli using an aldolase-based pathway that also produced acetaldehyde via pyruvate decarboxylase. By combining strain and pathway engineering strategies, 1,3-butanediol reached a titer of 2.4 g/L and 11 % of the maximum theoretical yield from glucose in strain BD24. We suspected that a combination of challenges remained in the engineered strain including poor NADPH balancing and carboligation activity of pyruvate decarboxylase resulting in acetoin and 2,3-butanediol production. Therefore, we designed an alternative acetaldehyde production module from glucose, using an acetylating acetaldehyde dehydrogenase in attempt to prevent acetoin production. In combination with a metabolic model-guided approach, we identified gene knockouts that could further improve 1,3-butanediol yield on glucose. Deleting the following genes predicted by the model: ilvB, pykF, sfcA, and sthA led to the highest 1,3-butanediol yield in our study (16.8 % of the maximum theoretical yield). Finally, we demonstrated the tuning of 2,3-butanediol isomer production in E. coli using a shorter and novel pathway via the carboligation activity on acetaldehyde to produce acetoin. The final strain BD38 led to the production of 2S,3S-butanediol directly from glucose with a yield of 21 % of the maximum theoretical yield. Harnessing the potential of lyases, including aldolases and carboligases, has led to the production of a non-natural chemical, 1,3-butanediol, and a non-inherent chemical, 2S,3S-butanediol, in E. coli.

Keywords: Aldolase
Butanediol
Lyase
Metabolic Engineering
Synthetic Biology
Systems Biology
Advisor: Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan
The Influence of Fantastical Discourse Context on Young Children's Online Sentence Comprehension

Real-time eye-movement measures were used to ask how a fantastical discourse context competes with stored representations of real-world events to influence moment-by-moment interpretation of a story by 7-year-old children and adults. Listeners heard stories about fantastical characters such as witches, who performed unusual actions such as eating keys. Results from Chapter 2 demonstrate that 7-year-olds were less effective at bypassing stored real-world knowledge during real-time interpretation than adults. Nevertheless, an effect of discourse context on comprehension was still apparent. In Chapter 3, the effect of generic language on children’s and adults’ performance was examined. Generic language implies a type of universal truth that applies to categories, and may therefore enhance the salience of fantastical information in listeners’ mental representations of story events. When stories referred either to the actions of an individual, using non-generic language (e.g., ‘Wendy the witch has keys for her lunch’) or used generic language to attribute these actions to a category (‘Witches have…’), adults used discourse-based information, whereas children relied on stored semantic knowledge during real-time comprehension regardless of language type. Contrary to expectation, children were less able to override their stored semantic knowledge when they heard generic than when they heard non-generic language. When stories referred to novel fantastical creatures about which listeners possessed no background information, children were able to integrate information from the discourse and generic language supported their performance, whereas adults’ performance degraded across both language types. I conclude that generic language is more supportive of children’s than of adults’ use of a fantastical discourse context during anticipatory language processing, and that children interpret unusual actions by familiar fantastical characters about whom they already possess background information as violations of their prior knowledge. I also examine the relation between listeners’ performance and individual variation in their cognitive skills.

Keywords: Development
Discourse
Eye tracking
Generic language
Semantics
Sentence comprehension
Advisor: Ganea, Patricia A
Spatial Information Modulates the Neurocognitive Dynamics of Episodic Autobiographical Memory Retrieval

Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM) enables reliving past experiences, recalling the sensory information associated with that event. Spatial information is thought to play an early and important role in EAM, contributing to the dynamics of retrieval. Using a combination of behavioural, neuroimaging, and neurostimulation approaches, this dissertation aimed to examine the temporal dynamics of EAM and the role spatial information plays in its retrieval. Chapter 2 demonstrated a temporal precedence for spatial information at the behavioural level, but importantly found high individual variability in early recall of spatial information. Further, individual differences in spatial aspects of EAM were reflected in hippocampal and precuneus grey matter volumes. Chapter 3 examined the temporal dynamics of EAM at the neural level using magnetoencephalography (MEG). While cueing individuals with familiar locations altered the dynamics of retrieval, it did not confer an early neural advantage. Together with the findings from Chapter 2, these results indicate that early spatial information alters the dynamics of EAM retrieval, but does not play a ubiquitous or automatic role in EAM. This study also found that spatial perspective during EAM retrieval was associated with a well-established neural component of episodic memory recollection. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) administered to the precuneus disrupted this association, demonstrating that this region is crucially involved in neural processing of spatial perspective during EAM. In Chapter 4, I assessed how regions representing spatial information, such as the precuneus and medial temporal lobe (MTL), interact dynamically during EAM retrieval. Using MEG to measure oscillatory activity, this study found that theta (3-7 Hz) and high gamma (65-85 Hz) oscillations underlie MTL-parietal communication, demonstrating the importance of coupling between theta and gamma oscillations in EAM. TMS to the precuneus disrupted this oscillatory activity, suggesting that this region plays a causal role in network-wide theta and gamma oscillatory activity. Together, these studies elucidate the behavioural and neural dynamics of EAM retrieval, as well as spatial contributions to EAM. Future research is needed to further clarify the key contributions of specific regions and the dynamic activity underlying widespread neural communication during EAM.

Keywords: Autobiographical Memory
Cognitive Neuroscience
Neural Oscillations
Parietal Lobe
Spatial Cognition
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Advisor: Gilboa, Asaf