VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Fragments, Webs and Weavings: Rwandan-Canadian Perspectives on the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi

Since 1994, many survivors of the Rwandan genocide against Tutsi have migrated to Canada to re-build their lives. The literature has established that a large proportion of the Rwandan population suffers from post-traumatic stress and depression. However, there is also a large body of ‘psycho-social’ and ‘anti-colonial’ literature that problematizes ‘Western’ mental health constructs such as post-traumatic stress and depression. Similarly, anti-oppressive social work theories argue that social workers need to recognize the politics of suffering and helping in order to practice effectively. Some have argued that ‘Western’ approaches (namely: bio-medical), that are harmful, continue to dominate work with survivors of mass violence, whose own views are rarely heard. To address the lack of Rwandan voices in the discourse about the genocide, I conducted 1-on-1 interviews with 9 members of Rwandan-Canadian survivor communities to find out what they have to tell us about their perspectives on genocide survival and healing in the Canadian context. My findings identified a total of eleven interrelated themes re: how Rwandan-Canadian survivors are affected by, deal with and make sense of the 1994 genocide. Ultimately my research supported the findings of psycho-social and anti-colonial frameworks that link individual mental health ‘healing’ to political resistance. My research, integrating literature reviews with the interviews and critical discourse analysis concluded that trauma among Rwandan-Canadian genocide survivors is an individual and collective process rooted in a history of anti-Tutsi systemic discrimination borne out of colonialism. Thus, I argue that supporting survivors requires collective politicized processes of recovery. For Rwandan-Canadians, these collective processes of recovery would include addressing ruptures within Rwandan communities and supporting survivor communities in processes of remembering and authoring Rwandan histories in resistance to ongoing structural and epistemic violence, including genocide denial.

Advisor: Williams, Charmaine
Discovery-Based Transcriptome and Translatome Profiling Reveals Molecular Pathways in the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a complex, multifactorial neurodegenerative disease of aging that results in a cascade of spatiotemporally heterogeneous gene expression changes. Limbic lobe regions such as the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), along with cholinergic neurons of the basal forebrain are particularly susceptible early in AD. Comprehensively characterizing these early changes is a critical area of pre-clinical and clinical study. In this thesis, we hypothesized that discovery-based transcriptional and translational profiling approaches would uncover previously unidentified pathways causing neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as the potential contribution of the aging brain to the disease process. We combined novel RNA extraction techniques, mouse models, young-onset AD (YOAD) patient biofluids, published transcriptome data, and bioinformatics to investigate limbic brain region and cholinergic neuron vulnerability in AD. We first demonstrated that mRNA and microRNA (miRNA) expression is altered during young adulthood in the amygdala, entorhinal cortex, and hippocampus of wild-type mice. While minute changes were observed in the mRNA transcriptome across these regions with age, the miRNA expression profile converged on FoxO signaling and long-term potentiation pathways. The amygdala demonstrated the most robust age-related miRNA expression changes, enriching for GABAergic synapses and axon guidance pathways. Next, we sequenced the actively translating mRNAs in anterior forebrain cholinergic neurons captured by translating ribosome affinity purification (TRAP) in a rapid onset mouse model of AD (TgCRND8). The cholinergic translatome showed long-term potentiation, axon guidance, and neurotrophin pathway changes which distinguished the immune, complement, and microglial response evident in the anterior forebrain transcriptome, a frequent observation in post-mortem AD brain and AD mouse model transcriptomes. Third, we uncovered four miRNAs altered in the cerebrospinal fluid-derived exosomes from sporadic YOAD patients versus healthy controls (miR-16-5p, miR-125b-5p, miR-451a, and miR-605-5p). These miRNAs were predicted to target many pathways reflected in the sporadic YOAD post-mortem PCC and also overlapped with the cholinergic translatome and anterior forebrain transcriptome of TgCRND8 mice, including long-term potentiation, axon guidance, and immune system pathways. These collective findings provide insight into the shared and divergent molecular alterations affecting limbic regions and neuron subtypes throughout aging and early stage AD pathogenesis.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease
cerebrospinal fluid
exosomes
microRNA
transcriptome
translatome
Advisor: Robertson, Janice
Nosocomial Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus: Acquisition, Infection and Decolonization

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, is often carried asymptomatically, but can cause severe disease. In this thesis, I present three retrospective cohort studies conducted in Toronto, Canada, which examine risk factors for infection or acquisition. In a study of 1,125 adult MRSA carriers at a tertiary hospital, risk factors for subsequent MRSA-positive clinically-indicated specimens were recent identification of carriage, older age, male gender, nosocomial acquisition, carriage detection in ICU, and underlying liver conditions. In a study of pairs of patients at two hospitals who shared a room for ≥48 hours, each pair included a MRSA-index case and a patient at risk of acquisition. Fluoroquinolone receipt by either patient increased the probability of MRSA transmission. Nearly half of identified acquisitions in the year following shared occupancy were unrelated to the MRSA-index case. In a study of 62,552 patient admissions, receipt of fluoroquinolone(s) and exposure to high MRSA colonization pressure in the prior week were significant risk factors for MRSA acquisition. The results of the cohort studies suggest that MRSA control should involve consideration of antibiotic exposures among those colonized and those at risk of acquisition. Antimicrobial stewardship and interventions that identify carriers could reduce disease burden.

Keywords: antibiotic resistance
antibiotic use
colonization pressure
MRSA
nosocomial transmission
Advisor: McGeer, Allison
Ecological, functional, and genomic characterization of the bacterial endophytes in plants growing in a hydrocarbon contaminated oil field site

In the last decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the plant microbiota’s role in plant growth and fitness. Of particular interest is the plant-bacterial endophytes’ partnership to degrade organic contaminants. This thesis assessed the ecological diversity and function of bacterial endophytes (BEs) in pioneer plants growing in highly contaminated soil around the vicinity of a crude oil pump in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada. This study focused on the bacteria in the stem endosphere, an understudied ecological niche in the plant-bacterial system. The plants are not only exposed to both soluble petroleum hydrocarbons from the soil, but also to volatile atmospheric hydrocarbons in the ambient air. BEs were isolated and analyzed through culture-dependent and -independent means. 16S-based terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis revealed significant differences between the endophytic bacterial communities, showing them to be plant host specific. Culture-dependent analyses revealed predominance of Actinobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria in the spring and summer seasons, respectively. Notably, there was a >50% taxonomic overlap (genus level) of 16s rRNA high-throughput amplicon sequences with cultivable endophytes. BEs demonstrated hydrocarbon degrading and plant growth promoting potential. Interestingly, our findings revealed that functional capabilities of bacterial isolates being examined were not influenced by the presence of contamination, and that the stem endosphere supports the same predominant BEs in all plant hosts in both contaminated and noncontaminated sites. Genomic analyses of BEs that were present in all the plants sampled in Spring–Plantibacter flavus 251 and Microbacterium foliorum 122 revealed absence of known hydrocarbon degrading genes despite demonstrated utilization of hydrocarbon substrates, indicating potentially novel hydrocarbon degrading genes.

Advisor: Fulthorpe, Roberta R
Beyond the Present: Risk and Body Stigma in Public Health

Risk is a quotidian concept in public health, but how do individuals make sense of it as an embodied phenomenon? What does a present, embodied stigmatized relationship have to do with risk and health? This research brings together public health, sociology of risk, and sociology of the body theories to answer these overarching research questions. Using a post-structural, interpretive research paradigm, 13 participants sculpted, life-lined, and were interviewed to share their understandings of embodied health risk. Key findings from this research include that sculpting and life-lining are useful in critical qualitative research methods; normality and health identity can be de-stabilized when temporality is introduced to understanding embodied health risk; and there are multiple approaches to understanding risk. There are four risk approaches outlined in this thesis: (1) the ‘shit happens’ approach, (2) the sequelae approach, (3) the risk as heuristic approach, and (4) the knowledge approach. These findings have implications for the fields of qualitative methodologies, physical cultural studies, and public health. Methodologically, absurdity, creativity, imagination and embodiment/tactility are proposed as important characteristics of critical qualitative health research. The innovative methods of sculpting and life-lining in health research can facilitate further research of complex social phenomena, and imagination can be explored as an integral piece of health justice. In physical cultural studies, understandings of the relationship stigma represents between normality and identity is extended by including considerations of risk and temporality to questions of biopedagogy. For public health, this research opens new ways of making sense of risk, and new ideas on how individuals’ everyday experiences relate to population-level health statistics. The findings foster development of a public health ethic that is sociologically informed, and can be used to inform future ideas on health risk communication.

Keywords: critical
embodiment
health
qualitative
risk
stigma
Advisor: MacNeill, Margaret
Urban Writing on Disappearing Alleyways and Courtyard Houses, Beijing, 1950-2008

Beijing has transformed tremendously in the recent four decades, and the decline of the signature residential space, alleyways and courtyard houses, is at the center of social and cultural debates. For some, it is an outcome of a profit-driven real estate market that favours international capital rather than local communities. For others, marketization and globalization have otherwise created a niche for the gentrified and commercialized vernacular space as a cultural selling point of Chineseness. This project poses the question differently: what is the role of the cultural intermediaries in this picture of decline with the market and capital on the one hand and the physical changes on the other? This project investigates the cultural intermediaries formed by the architectural trends, planning thoughts, policy tendencies, and heritage system that the capital and market depend on to concretely shape the cityscape. Focusing on multiple genres of texts in urban writing from the 1950s to the 2010s, this project examines them through metaphors. Urban amnesia reveals an architectural forgetting system that marginalizes alleyways and courtyard houses in the fifty years of architectural discourse. City tank provides a cautious approach to housing, land, and demolition and relocation policies that demonstrates how difficult it is for the vernacular space users to cultivate a long-lasting connection with their living environment. The city as organism shed light on the alternative planning practice to preserve vernacular space. Its adaptation into heritage policies in the context of cultural and historical city preservation ironically illuminates on the limitations of organic renewal. The meanings of these metaphors collectively present a complicated picture of how cultural intermediaries promote, oppose to, and negotiate with the erasure of vernacular space in urban redevelopment. To trace these meanings opens up new space to test ideas and practices that emphasize both architectural preservation and social preservation.

Keywords: Heritage preservation
Urban regeneration
Urban writing
Vernacular architecture
Advisor: Meng, Yue
A critical analysis of the overrepresentation of First Nations children and families in the Ontario child welfare system and disparities in providing ongoing child welfare services

First Nations children are chronically overrepresented in the child welfare system in Canada. This is largely a result of the effect that colonization has on Aboriginal peoples, but also evidence of colonialism being reproduced through current discriminatory legislation and practices. This three-paper dissertation employed a secondary analysis of data to examine the extent of the overrepresentation of First Nations children involved with child welfare in Ontario. Moreover, this study critically examines investigations of reported maltreatment to understand what is driving the overrepresentation of First Nations children. The results show that overrepresentation is a predictable outcome in a system predicated on assimilative objectives. In Ontario, First Nations children represent 2.5% of the child population; they represent 7.4% of child maltreatment-related investigations. For every 1,000 First Nations children in Ontario, 160.3 were involved in investigations compared to 54.4 per 1,000 White children. Overrepresentation was most pronounced for investigations of neglect. Rates of substantiation (3.4 times), ongoing services (4.2 times), child welfare court (5.7 times), and child welfare placement (7.5 times) were higher for the First Nations child population and disparities increased as children moved further into the child welfare system. Caregiver concerns were the main drivers of transfers to ongoing services for both First Nations and White children. For investigations involving White children, after controlling for caregiver concerns, workers were more likely to transfer a case for ongoing services when child psychological harm was present. While the proportion of children identified with psychological harm was similar across both groups, workers placed more weight on a White child experiencing psychological harm. The notion that workers might have different standards for decision-making for First Nations children compared to White children is concerning. Overall, the findings indicate that structural risks have not been addressed, putting First Nations families at risk for child welfare involvement. Structural issues such as chronic poverty and systemic racism are indicative of the legacy of the residential school system and produce the conditions that result in children coming to the attention of child protection services. Overrepresentation will continue unabated if the immense social inequities for First Nations children are not addressed.

Keywords: aboriginal
bias
child welfare
decision-making
first nations
overrepresentation
Advisor: Alaggia, Ramona
Pathogenesis and treatments of immune thrombocytopenia: differences between anti-GPIbα and anti-β3 integrin antibody mediated thrombocytopenia

Platelets are anucleate cells in the blood that are critical for the arrest of bleeding. Glycoprotein (GP) Ibα and GPIIbIIIa are two abundant platelet surface receptors that mediate platelet hemostatic plug formation. They are also the major targets for auto- and alloantibodies, which cause several bleeding disorders such as autoimmune thrombocytopenia (ITP). ITP is a disease where one’s immune system mistakenly produces autoantibodies that destroy one’s own platelets, leading to an increased bleeding risk. Currently, potential differences in immune responses (to GPIbα versus GPIIbIIIa) and the consequences following antibody binding to these two antigens in these immune-mediated thrombocytopenias are largely unknown. Antibodies against GPIbα and GPIIbIIIa are hypothesized to have different effects on platelet generation, where and how the platelets are destroyed, and how patients respond to current therapies such as intravenous immunoglobin (IVIG) and thrombopoietin receptor agonists (TPO-RAs). TPO is a glycoprotein hormone produced predominantly in the liver that regulates thrombopoiesis and stimulates the production and differentiation of megakaryocytes. I found that GPIbα-/- mice had decreased circulating TPO. Transfusion of wild-type (WT) platelets but not GPIbα-/- platelets rescued the decreased TPO levels in GPIbα-/- mice. GPIbα-/- mice had lower TPO mRNA levels in hepatocytes than WT, which could also be rescued by WT platelet transfusion. We found that IL4Rα/GPIbα transgenic mice had lower TPO levels than WT mice, indicating that the extracellular domain of GPIbα is important for TPO production. In vitro hepatocyte co-cultures with platelets or GPIbα coupled beads further confirmed the disruption of platelet-mediated hepatic TPO generation in the absence of GPIbα. Furthermore, anti-GPIbα antibodies can disrupt the interaction between platelets and hepatocytes. These findings reveal a novel, non-redundant regulatory role of platelets in hepatic TPO homeostasis. In conclusion, antibodies targeting different platelet antigens delivered different signals to platelets and megakaryocytes. Some antibodies can directly affect the structure and function of these two receptors including the platelet-hepatocyte interaction and TPO production. This study has not only improved our understanding of TPO regulation but also has important implications in diseases related to GPIbα such as BSS and auto- and alloimmune-mediated thrombocytopenias.

Keywords: Antibody
GPIbα
Hepatocyte
Immune Thrombocytopenia
Platelet
Thrombopoietin
Advisor: Ni, Heyu
River Flowing and Fire Burning: A Narrative Inquiry into a Teacher’s Experience of Learning to Educate for Citizenship — from the Local to the Global — through a Shifting Canada-China Inter-School Reciprocal Professional Learning Landscape

Situated within a Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership project (2013-2020) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this four-year study adopts practical narrative inquiry as its theoretical and methodological framework to explore how selected Toronto-based teachers developed their storied experiences and knowledge to educate for citizenship, while teaching in their globalized professional settings shaped by Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning partnerships. By restorying and inquiring into the curriculum-making experience of one particular teacher, Ann Barton, on her evolving Canada-China Sister School landscape, this study engages the metaphors of river flowing and fire burning to illustrate how a teacher becomes a more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator, through telling and living, and retelling and reliving her stories of building a democratic classroom community on a changing Sister School landscape. It also repositions “narrative inquiry” as an educative and generative Way that could be practiced and engaged to nurture a collaborative professional reciprocal-learning community on a Canada-China inter-school landscape that supports teachers in their effort to retell and relive their cultural and historical narrative of educating for citizenship in the midst of their daily classroom-curriculum making. Such a collaborative reciprocal learning community has the potential to transform teachers’ classroom/school into a space where in-service citizenship professional learning can take place within a global-local dialectics, and where practicing teachers can not only educate for citizenship from the local to the global, but also learn to develop their passion, integrity and identity as citizen-teachers in a globalized, multicultural, still problematic and fragmented world. The study ends with an invitation for educators and learners to rethink and reimagine citizenship teaching and learning using the paired imageries of river flowing and fire burning, and through personal and collective storytelling and reflections, across geographies, boundaries and differences.

Keywords: Canada-China
Citizenship Education
Global Education
Narrative Inquiry
Professional Learning
Reciprocal Learning
Advisor: Khoo, Yishin
Learning Towards Better Accuracy and Privacy

The thesis starts from resolving a real-world issue: to provide indoor localization services to satisfy contextual and ephemeral needs, e.g., at conferences or exhibitions events. We design, implement, and evaluate Tack, a new mobile application framework that uses a combination of known landmark locations, contacts over Bluetooth Low Energy, crowdsourcing, and dead-reckoning to estimate and refine user locations. At its core, an inference algorithm integrates all the modules and runs on mobile devices to return accurate position estimates. However, such a crowdsourcing system raises privacy concerns: a user is rarely willing to share its private location with others, but still wishes to retrieve accurate location estimates from the untrusted crowdsourcing server. Hence the second part of the thesis aims at designing a practical privacy-preserving inference system which produces statistically accurate learning results with privacy guarantees. Extending the inference algorithm to general machine learning frameworks, we focus on the contradictory requirements of accuracy and privacy in the last piece of the thesis --- a stricter privacy guarantee is usually achieved with degraded learning accuracy --- and such degradation is even worse with deep learning. We have observed that the fundamental cause of this problem is that the relationship between model accuracy and data privacy is not well characterized, leading to overly strict privacy constraints. We address the problem from an optimization perspective, and formulate the problem as one that minimizes the accuracy loss given a set of privacy constraints. As a highlight of our privacy mechanism, it is highly robust in the high privacy regime, and against any change in the neural network structure and experimental settings.

Advisor: Li, Baochun