VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
High Resolution Quantitative MRI in a Non-Surgical Model of Spinal Cord Injury

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very sensitive to the presence of damage resulting from injury or disease, but often lacks specificity. Quantitative MRI can significantly increase the specificity in the presence of pathology but must be validated, often using an animal model, for each type of injury or disease. In the case of spinal cord injury (SCI) most models are difficult to image, either due to the location of the injury, or as a result of damage to surrounding tissues resulting from invasive surgical procedures. This thesis describes a non-surgical model of rat SCI which uses MR guided focused ultrasound and microbubbles to create an injury the cervical spinal cord which is optimal for performing quantitative MRI, and compares it with other models of SCI using MRI, histology, and immunohistochemistry. It also describes the difficulties encountered when implementing the quantitative T2 (qT2) MR sequence at the very high resolution required to image the rat spinal cord, the limitations on the qT2 sequence due to the presence of diffusion, and how the effects of diffusion were minimized. Using the new SCI model and qT2 sequence, qT2 and diffusion data were acquired at 24 hours, 1 week, and 2 weeks following SCI, and the quantitative MRI parameters were correlated with histology. The increased specificity gained using quantitative MRI will increase the information available at each timepoint, reducing both the variability and cost of longitudinal studies aimed at developing treatments for SCI.

Keywords: Diffusion
Focused Ultrasound
MRI
qT2
Spinal Cord Injury
Advisor: Stanisz, Greg J
The Right to Rule of the European Court of Human Rights: A Democratic Defense

In this thesis, I develop an objection to the claim that the "right to rule" of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be reconciled with the democratic-procedural standards by which state parties, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, decide about the content and scope of human rights norms. First, I suggest drawing the attention to the neglected balancing exercise of the review process, in which the Court has to determine whether a violation is nevertheless "necessary in a democratic society". Second, I shed light on the role that "pluralism" plays in the balancing of the Court and on the implications it has on the identification of duties and duty-bearers (with particular emphasis on Articles 8-11). Third, I argue that Thomas Christiano's egalitarian argument for democracy can best illuminate the Court's emphasis on pluralism, making the search for public equality the implicit normative ideal of the Court.

Advisor: Dyzenhaus, David
Palaeoecology and taphonomy of the Early Permian cave system near Richards Spur, Oklahoma, and its parareptilian fauna

The Early Permian Richards Spur locality, located at the Dolese Brothers limestone quarry in Oklahoma, USA, is one of the most unique and important terrestrial tetrapod faunas of the Palaeozoic. As one of the few upland localities known from this period, it offers a view of the Early Permian that is distinct from those available at the more common and well-studied lowland deltaic/fluvial assemblages. The locality is represented by a vast cave system that possesses a highly fossiliferous infill. Well over 30 tetrapod taxa have been described from Richards Spur, many of which are endemic, making it the most taxonomically diverse terrestrial Palaeozoic locality currently known. However, aside from alpha taxonomy, there has been little to no work done looking at other aspects of the locality, such as taphonomy and palaeoecology. This thesis represents the first large scale study of the unique Richards Spur locality. I further add to the immense tetrapod diversity of the site through the description of several new parareptiles, as well as new parareptile material, which also grants a much better understanding of the early evolution and diversification of the clade. Furthermore, I reconstruct the distinct preservational environment associated with the cave system at Richards Spur, as well as use taxonomic and relative abundance data to interpret details of the locality's paleoecology, allowing for better comparisons with other Early Permian localities to be made.

Keywords: Palaeoecology
Palaeozoic
Parareptilia
Permian
Richards Spur
Taphonomy
Advisor: Reisz, Robert
Singing for Two: Experiencing Pregnancy as a Classical Singer

The purpose of this study was to understand more fully the experience of pregnancy for the classical singer. Though research has uncovered the physical implications of pregnancy for the non-singer, aspects which can impact the classical singer, such as breath mechanics, hormonal fluctuations, and the many other physical changes brought on by pregnancy, have not been fully investigated. My first objective was to find out how the physical aspects of pregnancy impact singers as they continue to perform through these changes. My second objective was to discover what the emotional implications of pregnancy for the classical singer. Did emotional changes instigated by pregnancy occur that influenced the singerâ s performance anxiety, routine and sense of self as a performer? My final objective was to investigate the social implications of pregnancy for the classical singer. How are pregnant classical singers viewed and treated within the performance realm? Is there support for singers who become pregnant? What are the implications for career trajectory and timing? This study uses mixed methods to enhance and expand the range of information gathered. In-depth interviews were conducted on two pregnant and one recently pregnant classical singers. An exploratory survey was conducted with 444 participants from around the world. Extensive data was collected from both groups, including a large amount of qualitative data from the survey group in the form of additional comments made online. After analyzing the data sets separately, the survey and interview results were merged to provide deeper meaning to the findings. This resulted in additional questions which were posed to the interviewees through written conversations, and which further illuminated the subject. This study provides insight into the experience of pregnancy for the classical singer, explores factors which contribute to positive learning and growth for the singers involved and uncovers numerous questions for future research.

Keywords: Classical
Pregnancy
Pregnant
Qualitative
Singers
Singing
Advisor: Dolloff, Lori-Anne
The Pleiotropic Roles of Yorkie in Planarian Homeostasis and Regeneration

The freshwater flatwormâ Schmidtea mediterranea, commonly known as the planarianâ displays remarkable feats of regeneration. Planarians amputated into fragments are capable replacing all their missing tissues and restore proper proportion and scale within a two weeks. Previous work has provided foundational understanding into the regulators of planarian stem cells and the molecules that are required for repatterning and scaling; however, it remains unknown how these two seemingly disparate processes are integrated. My aim was to understand how Hippo signaling, a universal regulator of growth control across metazoans, may be integral in planarian homeostasis and regeneration by regulating stem cell maintenance, differentiation, and patterning. Prior to my work, no one had characterized this pathway in planarians. I found that Yorkie (vertebrate homolog YAP and paralog TAZ), the effector of the Hippo signaling cascade, has roles in patterning the excretory system and anterior-posterior axis, and restricting stem cell proliferation. My results also demonstrate that Yorkie is a crucial node in the integration of the injury responses of proliferation, apoptosis, injury-induced transcription, and patterning to coordinate regeneration and proper scaling of tissues.

Keywords: Adult Homeostasis
Hippo Signaling
Planarian
Regeneration
Stem Cells
Yorkie
Advisor: Pearson, Bret J
Family Literacy and Colonial Logics

This thesis is located in my relationship to Treaty 4 land, the traditional land of the Cree, Saulteaux, Lakota, Nakota, Dakota and Métis people. It starts with me, a 5th generation white settler, learning to see myself as a treaty person. Intertwined with this awareness is my developing understanding of the way that the “myth of the fort” and “colonial frontier logics” (Donald 2009b, 2009c, 2012a) shape educational practice in Saskatchewan. The focus of my research is family literacy programs, policy and research, and the assumption of deficit that I argue pervades this area of literacy education practice. As a community-based family literacy practitioner, working for many years mostly with New Canadians, I have wondered about a tension between the rhetorical commitment to strengths-based practice in the field and the ongoing presence/tenacity of deficit thinking in literacy practice. In exploring deficit thinking I have come to see how it is racialized and racializing (Valencia, 1997, 2010). As I explored in my study deficit thinking and race in family literacy work in Saskatchewan, I further came to recognize the significance of settler colonialism in shaping literacy practice. Eventually I understood, in a new way, that all family literacy programs in Saskatchewan take place on treaty land, and that the people in the programs, practitioners and families alike, are “all treaty people.” This analysis has been shaped by literature on race, whiteness and colonialism (Ahmed, 2007b; Donald, 2009c; Leonardo Porter, 2010). I have been informed by the ways in which feminist poststructuralists (Ahmed 2002, 2006, 2007a; Pillow, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2015; St. Pierre, 2000) talk about power, subjectivity and discourse. Feminist genealogical approaches (Pillow, 2003, 2004; Tamboukou 2003b; Tamboukou Ball, 2003) have directed me to explore the history of family literacy. The methods of Métissage (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, Leggo, 2009) and Indigenous Métissage (Donald, 2009b, 2012b) have informed how I have made sense of my research journey. Observing community programs in Aboriginal settings has led me to focus on how a robust understanding of respect might enable movement away from a racializing deficit thinking and towards ‘better’ relationships (Ahmed, 2002) or towards what Donald (2009c) calls “ethical relationality” in education practice and policy.

Keywords: adult literacy
decolonization
deficit thinking
family literacy
settler colonialism
whiteness
Advisor: Jackson, Nancy
Redefining Social Comparisons: Self-Other Overlap and Social Comparisons of Close Others

For more than 60 years, researchers have assumed that social comparisons (i.e., comparisons that occur between the self and another person) must involve the self directly. The self, however, can also include close others. In the present research, I examine whether individuals respond to comparisons involving close others as they would to comparisons involving the self. Four studies (N = 2210) using recalled (Studies 1-3) and actual (Study 4) comparisons about attractiveness (Study 1) and relationship skills (Studies 2-4) demonstrated that individuals high in self-other overlap decrease domain relevance following upward (i.e., the close other is outperformed by another person) but not downward comparisons (i.e., the close other outperforms another person) to protect their positive partner perceptions. This strategy was absent among those low in self-other overlap. Study 2 demonstrated that this effect extends to best friends, but not casual friends, due to the degree of self-other overlap. Furthermore, when reminded of their partner’s inferiority in a domain, high overlap participants maintained positive global partner perceptions, whereas low overlap participants’ global perceptions were negatively affected (Study 3). Studies 5-8 (N = 884) examined whether this effect extends to children and parents, who are also included in the self (Study 5), using recalled comparisons about parents (Study 6) and children (Studies 7-8). Study 6 demonstrates that this effect extends to mothers but not fathers. Parents, however, decreased domain relevance when their child was inferior regardless of overlap (Studies 7 8). Moreover, parents and high overlap children demonstrated an attributional bias for their family member’s comparison outcomes: They protected family members by attributing less responsibility to them after upward comparisons and enhanced them by attributing more responsibility to them after downward comparisons. Finally, I examined the causal attributions individuals make following these comparisons to test whether they engage in these strategies to protect themselves, rather than the close other, because they feel personally responsible for the close other’s comparison outcomes. These results suggest that individuals do experience comparisons involving a close other and another person as if they were directly involved, but only if their close other is incorporated into their self-identity.

Keywords: Close Relationships
Self-Other Overlap
Social Comparisons
Advisor: Lockwood, Penelope
Growth of the Mammalian Golgi Apparatus during Interphase

The Golgi apparatus is an important processing station in all eukaryotic cells, where proteins and lipids are glycosylated and sent to their final destinations. For this reason, it is expected that the Golgi apparatus must be duplicated during the cell cycle to ensure subsequent daughter cells have sufficient Golgi content following mitosis. In mammalian systems, extensive research has been focused on the Golgi apparatusâ inheritance process during mitosis, yet research investigating its growth during interphase has been limited. Challenges in monitoring mammalian Golgi growth have been attributed to its elaborate ribbon structure, thus any theories of its growth have mostly been based on observations in lower eukaryotes. The aims of my thesis were to definitively characterize the growth of the mammalian Golgi apparatus during interphase, and elucidate the underlying mechanisms regulating this process. To circumvent the challenges associated with the intricacies of the mammalian Golgi structure, I employed a combination of flow cytometry, fluorescent microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to measure different aspects of its growth. Here I demonstrate the growth of the mammalian Golgi apparatus in its protein content and volume during interphase. Through ultrastructural analyses, physical growth of the mammalian Golgi apparatus was revealed to occur by cisternal elongation of the individual Golgi stacks contrary to previous speculations. By examining the timing and regulation of Golgi growth, I establish that Golgi growth starts after passage through the cell growth checkpoint at late G1 phase and continues growing in a manner highly correlated with cell size growth. Finally, by identifying S6 kinase 1 as a major player in Golgi growth, I reveal the coordination between cell size and Golgi growth via activation of the protein synthesis machinery in early interphase.

Keywords: Golgi apparatus
Golgi growth
Interphase
Mammalian system
Organelle growth
Advisor: Harrison, Rene E
A study of the inclusion of students' perspectives in Ontario school board improvement planning through student trustee representation

Students are the largest stakeholders in education and school board improvement plans have a direct impact on their educational experience. This study examined the inclusion of students’ perspectives in improvement planning as represented by student trustees. Based on an adaptation of Fielding’s (2012) framework for student engagement. The study was guided by the assumption that the nature of student trustee engagement in the improvement planning process related to the ways in which education leaders created the conditions to invite students’ input. Responses to on-line questionnaires completed by a sample of 26 English school board supervisory officers and 28 former student trustees all of whom served in their respective roles prior to September 2014 in English school boards in the province of Ontario provided the primary source of data. Both supervisory officers and former student trustees indicated a high level of agreement about the importance of including students’ perspectives in improvement planning. However, overall, across all phases of the board improvement planning process, both supervisory officers and former student trustees indicated that student trustees were not very involved. The study concluded that both supervisory officers and former student trustees would like to see a more participatory role of student trustees in informing the improvement planning process. To do so would require overcoming the challenges identified by these groups. Articulating an appropriate and meaningful role for student trustees in an improvement planning process will be an important consideration when thinking about modifications to existing practices. Provision should be given for enhanced interaction between student trustees and their fellow peers and between student trustees and school board staff when developing improvement plans. Education leaders are encouraged to use an expanded framework for student trustee representation to include opportunities for student trustees to co-lead and co-learn with their fellow peers and staff. Student trustees are encouraged to advocate locally within school boards and provincially through student trustee organizations to elevate the importance of including students’ perspectives in the improvement planning process from students themselves in order to achieve a more authentic response to improving student achievement and well-being in Ontario’s publically funded school system.

Keywords: inclusion of students' perspectives
school board improvement planning
student trustees
Advisor: Campbell, Carol
Responsiveness to Infant Cues in Postpartum Depressed and Non-Depressed Mothers: Functional Neural Correlates and Their Relation to Behaviour

Postpartum depression (PPD) is the most common maternal birth complication, affecting approximately 5-20% of women. PPD disrupts the normal repertoire of parenting abilities and is thought to have long-term consequences for the developing infant, even after the mothers’ depression remits. Despite its prevalence and potentially enduring effects, we understand very little about the neural correlates of PPD. Recent evidence suggests that postpartum depression (PPD) is associated with reduced amygdala (AMY) response to negative stimuli. However, given the anhedonic features of PPD, it is also important to consider the brain response of depressed mothers specifically to positive infant stimuli and to other positively valenced stimuli. In the current work, mothers with clinically determined PPD (n=31) and without PPD (n=23) viewed smiling pictures of infants (both their own and other), and positive non-infant stimuli during an fMRI. Four studies were completed which examined: 1) multidimensional measures such as current parenting stress, early experiences (e.g., being parented themselves as well as experiences of trauma), current mood and anxiety levels, and relationship satisfaction to better characterize our sample of mothers with and without PPD, 2) PPD and Non-PPD mothers’ response to infants and other positive non-infant stimuli, using AMY region-of-interest as well as amygdala connectivity analyses, 3) subregion-level differences in AMY response and connectivity during the viewing of infant and non-infant stimuli 4) whether and/or how behavioural measures of maternal sensitivity and responsiveness (quality of mother-infant interaction) relate to brain response in the AMY as a whole as well as at the subregion level. Knowing how a depressed mother’s brain responds to her own and other infants is critical as many of the symptoms of PPD focus on the mother-infant dyad and involve a subjective evaluation of one’s parenting abilities. This work adds to the existing literature that examines the brain response of mothers with PPD to various stimuli. Furthermore, it has the long-term potential to inform treatment and intervention programs designed for PPD.

Keywords: Amygdala
fMRI
Mothering
Postpartum Depression
Advisor: Fleming, Alison S
Reproducing Care: Changing Geographies of Nursing Work in the United States

Nurses provide essential care to people in their most vulnerable times and perform myriad tasks that support the healthcare system as a whole. In spite of their essential role, nurses in the United States have been subject to devaluation individually and systemically, through underinvestment in nurse training, understaffing of facilities, and a lack of recognition for the work that they do. This dissertation is a qualitative study of nursing work in the US, focusing on nursesâ experiences of their jobs since the 2008 financial crisis until 2014. I base my argument on interviews I conducted with 37 nurses working in New York City and St Louis, Missouri. I also analyzed a variety of texts including media stories, union publications, and discussion boards, as a complement to nursesâ own stories. I examine three means of managing nursing work: the restructuring of the built environment of health services, the lengthening of the working day, and the changing modes of measuring and counting nursing work. I demonstrate different ways and scales at which nursesâ work and working conditions are changing during a dynamic period of restructuring in US health care. By drawing on interviews with nurses working in the New York and St Louis metropolitan regions, complemented with secondary textual analyses, I examine how broader changes to the political economy of health care, specifically the built environment, shift length, and ways of measuring work, impact the mundane and everyday aspects of the nursing job. Through these three means of governing nursing work, I add texture to theories of social reproduction. Social reproduction, or the reproduction of people and of everyday life and institutions, includes historically feminized work that sustains life, such as nursing work. Health and health care work, however, are under-theorized in the social reproduction literature. This dissertation contributes to feminist geography by foregrounding nursing work and the workplace of the hospital. While there is a rich literature in geography on the global migration of nurses and on the gendered dynamics of work, few scholars have engaged with the everyday experiences of nurses in their most common worksite. Furthermore, health geography has paid scant attention to the crucial roles that health care workers play in the making of health. Therefore, in this dissertation, I contribute to these literatures by focusing on the workers, how they and their work are regulated, and their subjectivities in relation to their work as it is restructured.

Keywords: care
health
labour
nursing
social reproduction
Advisor: Silvey, Rachel