Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

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Open Access
Generic on-board-computer hardware and software development for nanosatellite applications
(2012-11) Borschiov, Konstantin; Lee, Regina; Quine, Brendan
This study outlines the results obtained from the development of a generic nanosatellite on-board-computer (OBC). The nanosatellite OBC is a non-mission specific design and as such it must be adaptable to changing mission requirements in order to be suitable for varying nanosatellite missions. Focus is placed on the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) principle where commercial components are used and evaluated for their potential performance in nanosatellite applications. The OBC design is prototyped and subjected to tests to evaluate its performance and its feasibility to survive in space.
Open Access
Towards an Ontology and Canvas for Strongly Sustainable Business Models: A Systemic Design Science Exploration
(2013-09-13) Upward, Antony; Johnston, David
An ontology describing the constructs and their inter-relationships for business models has recently been built and evaluated: the Business Model Ontology (BMO). This ontology has been used to conceptually power a popular practitioner visual design tool: the Business Model Canvas (BMC). However, implicitly these works assume that designers of business models all have a singular normative goal: the creation of businesses that are financially profitable. These works perpetuate beliefs and businesses that do not create outcomes aligned with current natural and social science knowledge about long term individual human, societal and ecological flourishing, i.e. outcomes are not strongly sustainable. This limits the applicability and utility of these works. This exploratory research starts to overcome these limitations: creating knowledge of what is required of businesses for strongly sustainable outcomes to emerge and helping business model designers efficiently create high quality (reliable, consistent, effective) strongly sustainable business models. Based on criticism and review, this research project extends the BMO artefact to enable the description all the constructs and their inter-relationships related to a strongly sustainable business model. This results in the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Ontology (SSBMO). To help evaluate the SSBMO a practitioner visual design tool is also developed: the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Canvas (SSBMC). Ontological engineering (from Artificial Intelligence), Design Science and Systems Thinking methodological approaches were combined in a novel manner to create the Systemic Design Science approach used to build and evaluate the SSBMO. Comparative analysis, interviews and case study techniques were used to evaluate the utility of the designed artefacts. Formal 3rd party evaluation with 7 experts and 2 case study companies resulted in validation of the overall approaches used and the utility of the SSBMO. A number of opportunities for improvement, as well as areas for future work, are identified. This thesis includes a number of supplementary graphics included in separate (electronic) files. See “List of Supplementary Materials” for details.
Open Access
Critically Evaluating the Role of the Judiciary in the Good Governance Paradigm: A Study of Pakistan
(2014-06) Muhammad Azeem; Ruth M Buchanan
In this dissertation, I critically evaluate the central role assigned to the judiciary in “the good governance” paradigm (as promoted by international institutions such as the World Bank), through a study of Pakistan. I argue that the paradigm’s focus on institutional arrangements/rearrangements, in order to produce a strong judiciary, judicial reforms, and to implement ‘the rule of law’, is problematic. I find, in contrast, and based on a detailed historical study of the different judicial regimes in the post-colonial era, that the judiciary is a part of the state, and has served to reproduce the state, in its democratic and military forms, as well as political and structural inequality in Pakistan. I document in detail how the judiciary increasingly gained autonomy in state power leading to result in what I term as a ‘judicial dictatorship’ by the 2000s. Through the thesis, I advance an alternative structural analysis of the state and institutional arrangements, using a class analysis and historical-contextual approach. My study argues that a strong (‘activist’) judiciary cannot be a substitute for a weak and inadequately representative legislature. The fallback position of the judiciary - in promoting a ‘rights’ discourse, or protection of minorities - is also an inadequate remedy for the lack of a deeper democracy in the society. My research in Pakistan contributes to the view that the role of the judiciary ultimately is to uphold political ends crafted elsewhere, rather than be seen as an agent to ‘cause’ political betterment. This study is based on most of the relevant case law in the post-colonial era, primary sources such as interviews, speeches, and judge’s monographs, as well as the available secondary material such as journal articles, books, and newspaper reports.
Open Access
Buffalo Death Mask
(2014-07-09) Hoolboom, Mike; Schwartz, Judith
The thesis essay has arrived in six parts. It opens with a discussion of my method, and closes with a detailed look at Buffalo Death Mask, the short digital movie I made in 2013 about AIDS. In between are a pair of what moviemakers like to call establishing shots. There are a couple of chapters on emotional establishing shots narrating fear and death. And there is a chapter that tries to approach the simple and complicated question of what artists might be doing when making experimentalist movies. Why all this need to trouble the form?
Open Access
AMP- Activated Protein Kinase (AMPK) Activation for the Treatment of Mitochondrial Disease
(2014-07-09) Green, Alexander Edward; Hood, David A.
There are multiple copies of mtDNA per cell and each mtDNA molecule contains the information to encode 13 electron transport chain (ETC) proteins. When mtDNA is depleted, there is a decrease in ETC activity. 5' AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) is a kinase that can initiate mitochondrial biogenesis and mitophagy. We hypothesized that treating cells harbouring low numbers of mtDNA with an AMPK activator (5-Aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleoside; AICAR) would ameliorate the decrease in ETC activity and improve mtDNA copy number. We developed myoblasts (C2C12 cells) depleted of mtDNA with long-term ethidium bromide treatment. We treated selected clones for 24 hours with 1 mM AICAR to activate AMPK. AICAR treatment decreased markers of mitochondrial biogenesis, mitochondrial function (e.g. maximal cellular respiration), and mitochondrial degradation. Thus, failing to increase the energy producing capacity of the cell, activation of AMPK may have induced an energy sparing mechanism.
Open Access
Presentness: Developing Presence Through Psychophysical Actor-Training
(2014-07-09) Ravid, Ofer; Levin, Laura
Abstract There is a variety of understandings of the notion of presence in theatre and performance studies as well as in the field of actor-training. Presentness, an aspect of presence, is the experience of the emerging here and now as shaped by the performer’s psychophysical engagement with his or her surrounding. It is, thus, a tangible aspect of presence that can be enhanced and developed through training. Presentness developed through training is an acting skill although it does not necessarily determine how actors act in terms of style or form. Rather, techniques of presentness are meant to develop and fine-tune the actor’s instrument as a psychophysical whole that can be used for any style and type of acting. This dissertation examines processes of developing presentness in the practice of three prevalent psychophysical acting techniques in North American actor-training: Viewpoints, Suzuki, and Lecoq. It is based on three years of practice-based research as participant and observer in various training sites with these techniques. Building on detailed descriptions of practiced moments accompanied by interviews and conversations with practitioners and teachers, various emerging manifestations of presentness are exposed to make a complex and deep understanding of this term. Using Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology alongside theories from the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience grounds the experiential accounts of ephemeral processes within concrete existing constructs of motility, perception, and cognition.
Open Access
Institutional Strategies and Factors that Contribute to the Engagement of Recent Immigrant Adult Students in Ontario Post-Secondary Education
(2014-07-09) Grabke, Sheldon Vaughn Richard; Axelrod, Paul D.; Theory of participation
The purpose of this study is to provide a unique investigation that yields vital data on barriers experienced by recent immigrant adult students (RIAS), the policies, practices and supports in PSE and their impact on RIAS engagement, and factors that contribute to the engagement of RIAS in Ontario PSE. This examination contributes to and furthers the student engagement in PSE literature by providing an original view into RIAS engagement in PSE. This dissertation involves qualitative and quantitative research methods including 18 key informant interviews, six focus groups, one interview and 434 survey responses as well as historical data, policies, procedures and artifacts at colleges and universities in Ontario. These different methodological attributes bring triangulation of sources and methods into the study. All of the data is analyzed using the student engagement conceptual framework. This study finds that PSE in Ontario seems to know little of the number, type, experiences and engagement of RIAS on campus. This research argues how and why the traditional model of engagement does not apply well to RIAS. Key findings include that RIAS are performing well academically in PSE despite the numerous barriers that they face and their lack of engagement. RIAS strong motivation to complete PSE and their inherent optimism is such that many persist to completion. One fundamental factor contributing to the lack of engagement for RIAS is their minimal social involvement in PSE. Using the findings, this dissertation provides numerous recommendations for changes to institutional policies and procedures to further RIAS engagement. Both academic and social engagement of RIAS in PSE significantly predict the hallmarks of a liberal education. This is a noteworthy reason for PSE to make an investment in the engagement of RIAS in Ontario PSE. This study therefore has implications for theory and practice in PSE in Ontario. Through developing creative ways to remove barriers and augment supports for RIAS in PSE, RIAS may begin to be more engaged in PSE. This noble endeavour can help RIAS more fully develop into engaged citizens and truly assist them in their settlement experience in Ontario.
Open Access
Psychonalysis, Fantasy, Postcoloniality: Derivative Nationalism and Historiography in Post-Ottoman Turkey
(2014-07-09) Ercel, Erkan; Canefe, Nergis
Probably nowhere are the themes of tolerance and multiculturalism more prominently at display than in the recently flourishing literature on Ottoman religious-ethnic communities in Turkey, wherein Ottoman rule, particularly the Millet System of the 15th -17th centuries, is romanticized by Turkish nativist historiographers as a perfect model of peaceful coexistence distinguished by exemplary hospitality and multicultural tolerance toward the Other, the “minorities”, be they Jews, Armenians or Greeks. In this dissertation, I investigate the role of these nativist historians and their historiography in the recuperation of Turkish national imagery, as well as the pitfalls of this sort of remembrance. While doing so, I draw upon the psychoanalytically-inspired concept of fantasy and postcolonial theory to demonstrate how the fantasy of Ottoman tolerance as a melancholic attachment to the past deals with the empire’s loss by pointing to internal and external enemies as threats to the unity and coherence of the nation. Domestically speaking, this fantasy promises to bring back the golden age in as much as enemies new and old will be eliminated on the way to restoring the nation’s power. At the same time, this fantasy takes on an international significance as it captures the essence of the reaction to the European imperative: “you should become multicultural and liberal like us.” The fantasy of the Ottoman Tolerance beats its European Other at its own game by claiming: “we were already multicultural.” Seen in these terms, the analysis of the nostalgic literature on Ottoman peace can illuminate how the “Occident/Western” and “Oriental/Derivative” (i.e. the Ottoman and Turkish) formations of the national imaginary are constructed, remembered and contested in the contemporary Global South. In light of these discussions I will question the conditions and possibilities of the ethics of remembering the Empire, and of entertaining a different relationship to the past in contemporary politics in Europe and Turkey. The key concern of my work is then to inquire into alternative ways to remember the Empire without remaining trapped in the fantasy of Ottoman tolerance, or its obverse, the fantasy of Oriental/Ottoman Despotism.
Open Access
Synthesis of Electron Deficient N-heterocyclic-carbenes and Activity of Imidazol-2-imine Thioureate Ligand on Group 10 Transition Metals
(2014-07-09) Harkness, Michael Byron; Lavoie, Gino G
Previous work in the Lavoie group has resulted in the synthesis of new imidazol-2-imine ligands that have low activity towards ethylene polymerization due to their electron rich nature. In an attempt to alleviate this an electron poor naphthalene-1,4-dione-IMes imidazol-2-imine ligand (L) was synthesized in 90% yield (14a) and coordinated to titanium (LTiCpCl2, 15). The resulting complex successfully polymerizes ethylene at a rate of 75 kg PE mol catalyst–1 h–1. A separate study focused on the coordination of functionalized imidazol-2-imine thioureate ligands (L’) to late transition metal. Three complexes were synthesized. Ni(methylallyl)L’ (7), Pd(allyl)L’ (8), and NiL’2 (9) were isolated in 85, 85, and 61% yields, respectively and all spectroscopically characterized. The X-ray crystallographic structure of 9 shows the unexpected N^S binding mode for the ligand. Complexes 7 and 8 have sparing activity towards ethylene polymerization, neither having productivity above 2 kg PE mol–1 h–1.
Open Access
Operation Untitled
(2014-07-09) Demers, Joshua Andrew; Buchbinder, Amnon
Operation Untitled is a screenplay exploring the self-empowerment of the individual against the socio-political and religious forces that inform the hierarchy of a Catholic high school. The protagonist, Peter Charles who becomes known by the moniker “the Prophet,” is a hard-working student from a lower class background who’s infatuated by his school and society’s promise that hard work = success. When he learns that he loses a life-changing scholarship simply because the recipient, “the Golden Boy” Richard Harding, has influence, his faith in this system is shattered. His subsequent journey of rebellion creates a school-wide revolution and with the power it brings him, the Prophet has a fateful decision: to replace Richard as “the Golden Boy” or to break the cycle of this broken system forever.
Open Access
Dynamics and Control of Smart Structures for Space Applications
(2014-07-09) Orszulik, Ryan Russell; Shan, Jinjun
Smart materials are one of the key emerging technologies for a variety of space systems ranging in their applications from instrumentation to structural design. The underlying principle of smart materials is that they are materials that can change their properties based on an input, typically a voltage or current. When these materials are incorporated into structures, they create smart structures. This work is concerned with the dynamics and control of three smart structures: a membrane structure with shape memory alloys for control of the membrane surface flatness, a flexible manipulator with a collocated piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair for active vibration control, and a piezoelectric nanopositioner for control of instrumentation. Shape memory alloys are used to control the surface flatness of a prototype membrane structure. As these actuators exhibit a hysteretic nonlinearity, they need their own controller to operate as required. The membrane structures surface flatness is then controlled by the shape memory alloys, and two techniques are developed: genetic algorithm and proportional-integral controllers. This would represent the removal of one of the main obstacles preventing the use of membrane structures in space for high precision applications, such as a C-band synthetic aperture radar antenna. Next, an adaptive positive position feedback law is developed for control of a structure with a collocated piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair, with unknown natural frequencies. This control law is then combined with the input shaping technique for slew maneuvers of a single-link flexible manipulator. As an alternative to the adaptive positive position feedback law, genetic algorithms are investigated as both system identification techniques and as a tool for optimal controller design in vibration suppression. These controllers are all verified through both simulation and experiments. The third area of investigation is on the nonlinear dynamics and control of piezoelectric actuators for nanopositioning applications. A state feedback integral plus double integral synchronization controller is designed to allow the piezoelectrics to form the basis of an ultra-precise 2-D Fabry-Perot interferometer as the gap spacing of the device could be controlled at the nanometer level. Next, an output feedback linear integral control law is examined explicitly for the piezoelectric actuators with its nonlinear behaviour modeled as an input nonlinearity to a linear system. Conditions for asymptotic stability are established and then the analysis is extended to the derivation of an output feedback integral synchronization controller that guarantees global asymptotic stability under input nonlinearities. Experiments are then performed to validate the analysis. In this work, the dynamics and control of these smart structures are addressed in the context of their three applications. The main objective of this work is to develop effective and reliable control strategies for smart structures that broaden their applicability to space systems.
Open Access
From Clowns to Computers: Performing Theatrical Interactivity and Pervasive Transmedia Fictions
(2014-07-09) Laviolette, Byron James; Rubin, Donald H.
The Collins English Dictionary defines “Interaction” as “a mutual or reciprocal action or influence”, and “Interactivity” as “allowing or relating to continuous two-way transfer of information between a user and the central point of a communication system”. This study will analyze the range of pre-existing interactive theatre types, using the model of interaction theorized by Gary Izzo in The Art of Play. This model will be used to categorize and problematize the various strategies developed and deployed through seven years of practical interactive research in the theatre. The sites of this research include five productions I worked on as a director, from 2008-2012, with Toronto-based U.N.I.T. Productions, featuring clown duo Morro and Jasp, and an eight-month long, massive, trans- media fiction project called ZED.TO, created by The Mission Business, a local event design company where I worked in 2012 as both writer and narrative designer. The central research question steering this dissertation is twofold. First, what strategies of interactivity already exist and how has the pre-existing theory of audience interaction behind these strategies evolved through the production and performance of these two projects? Second, in what ways have these strategies been proven effective, in real-time or during online encounters, to encourage an audience to believe, trust, share, play and ultimately participate inside an interactive theatre production? To prove the efficacy of these strategies, observations and opinions of both the public and the press are examined. The answers to these research questions trace the sources, evolution and distribution of these strategies from within the established theatre practice (including improvisation and clown) as well as interactive approaches sourced from game design and social media. This multidisciplinary research helps to define what strategies work towards achieving interactivity in the theatre and how, or when, it is appropriate to utilize it during a theatrical production. In essence, this study examines, through a survey of the history of immersive and interactive theatre, the strategies realized by the Morro and Jasp clown series and ZED.TO and how these projects have contributed to the evolving theory and practice of interactivity in the theatre. Analyzing such strategies will create a sourcebook for those seeking to bring theatre into the digital world as well as understand (and perhaps even undertake) the performance of pervasive interactive narratives in the future.
Open Access
Law, the American Corporation, and Society
(2014-07-09) Stewart, Fenner Leland; Zumbansen, Peer
This book explores how American legal scholarship treats the corporation by providing a history of American corporate legal theory, a history of corporate (social) responsibility from the perspective of the Berle–Dodd debate, an analysis of how legal scholars understand corporate lawmaking in America, and an initial inquiry into how the prevailing opinions about the corporation are realized in the context of a critical assessment of whether or not this resulting corporate governance holds the potential to compliment the efforts of new governance regulators. This book consists of four essays about American corporate governance. Three essays trace how three particular presumptions about the corporation came to become part of the dominant narrative about the corporation within the American academic context. The first presumption is that the American contractarian theory of the corporation most accurately frames an understanding of the corporation. This presumption underpins much of Delaware’s corporate law. Second is the notion that shareholder value maximization provides the necessary precondition for effective corporate governance. The modern incarnation of this presumption was inadvertently inspired by the early 20th Century work of Adolf A. Berle. Third is the idea that there is market competition for incorporations between states, and this competition creates a “race to the top.” Such presumptions help shape the dominant narrative about the American corporation. In the final chapter, the elements of these presumptions, and the narratives they weave, are reconsidered within the context of new governance, which encourages private actors, like corporations, to play larger roles within the administrative functions of governments. It is explained how new governance thought presumes that corporations are becoming more imbued with a sense of public spiritedness. This presumption is closely examined and then ultimately rejected as dangerously optimistic considering the narratives that dominate corporate legal thinking—at least in the American context. Each of the four chapters has been published in U.S. law reviews, creating a portfolio of essays regarding the American corporation and its place in society.
Open Access
Black Diasporic Disasters and the Africanization of Poverty in Western Print Media: a Case Study of Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian Earthquake in the New York Times
(2014-07-09) Saisi, Boke; Robinson, Danielle
Thousands of poor, mainly black Americans were plastered across the news in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Correspondingly, after the devastating Haitian earthquake in January 2010, images and readings of black impoverishment were rife. I argue during both disasters, news media depicted both populations as Africanized, discursively linking blackness and black African-ness with impoverishment. I conducted a critical discourse analysis of eighty New York Times articles, comparing both cases and found that black subjects were homogenously depicted as both threatening and helpless, as “others from within” in coverage of Hurricane Katrina and “others from without” in coverage of the Haitian earthquake; the former being black others who pose an immediate threat by proximity to white majority populations, and the latter as black others whose implied inferiority helps bolster a sense of superiority amongst whites. I conclude that depictions of these essentialized and denigrated black others are problematic as they may inform the mistreatment and management of black populations worldwide.
Open Access
Is it Worth the shot? Ontario Women's Negotiations of Risk, Gender and the Human Papillomavirous(HPV) Vaccine
(2014-07-09) Wyndham-West, Catherine Michelle; Adelson, Naomi
This research project has been an endeavor in understanding how Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine policy became gendered in Canada, how women in Ontario negotiated the concepts of “risk” and “gender” deployed in pharmaceutical marketing and public health programming, and how they folded these mediations into decision making about the vaccine. Eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork revealed that the federal and Ontario governments developed HPV vaccine policy by using gender based analyses frames, based on the parameters of Merck Frosst’s gender-based marketing. This case study of the HPV vaccine highlights how corporations and governments work hand and hand to set public health policy in the neoliberal era of public health. However, these sales/governance strategies and the gendered at-risk subject formation they created and circulated were not passively integrated by women into their daily lives. The women interviewed – mothers of daughters affected by the grade eight school vaccination program, women university students and patients at a hospital vaccine clinic – demonstrated that the concepts of “risk” and “gender” are productive and movable ontological modes of being, which shift in and out of focus depending upon the context. Mothers were intensely focused on gender and doing mothering, students were doing gender politics and intermittent risk, and patients were living with risk. What sales/governance strategies had tried to “fix,” women continually unfixed. These accounts of situated risk and gender demonstrated that when assembled, women’s experiences helped transform their ethical being or sense of self. This knowledge of the self then informed vaccination decisions. Thus, decision making was not a discrete event or a linear, cost-benefit analysis. Instead it was an inherently social and cultural process, which was embedded in women’s experiences of finding meaning in their efforts to be good mothers, strong young women emerging into adulthood and pre-cancerous patients seeking respite amid the anxiety of protracted medical procedures. Women’s ontological decision making provides an analytical framework through which to tie together risk- and gender-related theory, individual accounts of risk encounters and the social, political, historical and economic context in which these mediations occur.
Open Access
Kewekapawetan: Return After the Flood
(2014-07-09) Dysart, Jennifer Faye Leigh; Hoffman, Philip J
The people of South Indian Lake Manitoba are slowly leaving behind a long period of social crisis brought on by the damming of their namesake lake in the 1970’s. The environmental devastation still exists, but the community returns to their original village site once a year for a gathering called Kewekapawetan, meaning “going back” or “looking back” in the Cree language. My film documents my interactions with family members at this gathering in 2008, and uses archival and found footage spanning fifty years, to show how this yearly event represents a positive cultural change for the community. As the filmmaker, I am not only documenting these subtly monumental events; I am also tracing my own disconnected personal history to this place. Central to the story is my father’s unwillingness to return to his family home that he left a long time ago, and my own desire to forge new bonds with this “home” where I have never resided. For the community, revisiting the place where our grandparents lived brings hope for the future after a long period of despair. In parallel, my film documents my personal hope that I will be one day be able to unite my family.
Open Access
Conditions Variable: Assemblage Theory and Systems Theory in Creative Practice
(2014-07-09) Ouellette, Troy David; Couroux, Marc G.
This dissertation will situate the twenty-first century phenomenon of Assemblage theory, which originated in the field of philosophy, within the last 100 years of creative practice. Drawing from Manuel DeLanda’s application of Assemblage theory, I will devise a means to discuss creative practice without reducing its analysis to ‘structured fields’ or ‘closed systems’. Rather, comparisons will be made between a system and an assemblage to illustrate how the two part ways, and find common ground. To better understand the way in which systems have been applied in artistic practice, an investigation of two major twentieth-century paradigm shifts will be examined. The first example is the Bauhaus school and its post-European formal offshoot in America, the New Bauhaus, and how it adapted its European predecessor’s principles of design. The second is the technological revolution, which engendered Jack Burnham’s Systems Esthetics, Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In light of these developments, I argue that a flexible, descriptive, Assemblage theory is needed to better articulate how art (the work and its making) functions within an expanded field of practice as it now exists. The adaptable and transmutable nature of Assemblage theory is also illustrated through example. In the process this dissertation will offer new ways to articulate and understand creative practice and propose a new strategy for art to be understood. Finally, I will employ Assemblage theory to analyze my own creative endeavours.
Open Access
Characterization of PRD-1 Mutation in Neurospora crassa
(2014-07-09) Firoozi, Ghazaleh; Lakin-Thomas, Patricia
In Neurospora crassa, rhythmic conidiation is controlled by several oscillators such as FRQ/WCC and FLO. The frequency (frq) gene and white collar genes (WC-1 and WC-2) are the most important components of the FRQ/WCC oscillator and prd-1 and prd-2 genes could be important components of the FLO. This project aims to characterize the prd-1 mutation. This involved mapping the mutation using PCR analyses based on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. After determining a minimal interval, candidate genes were sequenced, and knockout mutants were screened in this interval for prd-1 phenotype. A candidate gene was found to have a mutation that affects the splicing of the mRNA. The identity of the gene was confirmed by complementing the prd-1 mutant with a wild type copy of the identified candidate gene. The prd-1 gene is identified as an RNA helicase.
Open Access
"Talking About Down There": The Development of a Public Discussion of Cervical Cancer in the Twentieth Century
(2014-07-09) Hadenko, Mandy Lee; Rutherdale, Myra
This dissertation emerged from personal and political concerns and aims to fill a historiographical lacuna. This thesis is a study of how Canadian women learned about cervical cancer and its prevention in the twentieth century. In particular, this thesis seeks to understand how, when and in what forms did a public discussion of cervical cancer prevention develop in late twentieth century Canada. Cervical cancer is significant in terms of its place in disease history. When discovered in the pre-cancerous stage, cervical cancer is quite preventable. Since the 1960s, the medical community has been aware that Pap smears can be used to recognize pre-cancerous lesions and that deaths from cervical cancer were avoidable. Its uniqueness as a “preventable” cancer provides an example of the relationship between scientific knowledge, public health, and popular practice. The public dialogue about cervical cancer prevention, I argue, was complex. There were numerous groups that were part of this public discussion including medical doctors, the medical profession, medical educators, women’s health activists, women’s organizations, newspapers, women’s press, individual women and support groups, and the municipal, provincial and state agencies. This thesis demonstrates that while dialogue among these historical actors was rarely in conflict, tensions did emerge as medical practitioners, women’s health activists and public health officials debated how best to link biomedical knowledge with preventive health policies.
Open Access
Effect of Saline and Non-Specific Insulin Binding on the Phase Behavior of Poly (Ethylene Glycol)-Grafted Phosphoethanolamine-Succinyl Model Membranes
(2014-07-09) Shahid, Muhammad Naeem; Tsoukanova, Valeria
Poly (ethylene glycol)-grafted membrane-mimetic surfaces bearing negatively charged phospholipid headgroups have gained significant attention due to their promising contributions in numerous biomedical applications. The conformational properties of PEG chains have been mainly studied at the air/water interface, which does not elucidate much about its behavior at the physiological pH ~ 7.4. In this contribution, binary mixtures of a phosphoethanolamine-Succinyl bearing C16 aliphatic chains, DPPE-Succinyl, and a PEG-phospholipid conjugate bearing a PEG chain of 2000 Da, DPPE-PEG2000, have been used as ideal models of bio-nonfouling membrane-mimetic surfaces. The effect of PBS with pH ~7.4 as well as each of its individual constituents including Na2HPO4, KCl, KH2PO4, and NaCl on the biophysical properties of model membrane was examined. Our findings suggest that saline and each of its individual constituents play a pivotal role in the phase and conformational behavior of PEG-grafted membrane models. Insulin as a model protein was then selected to further investigate the effect of phase and conformation behavior of PEG-grafted membrane models on protein/membrane interactions. The insulin/membrane interactions were quantified in terms of monolayer area expansion, ΔA, penetration area, Ap, as well as protein binding degree, χp. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first insight into mechanistic aspects of protein interactions with model negatively charged PEG-grafted membranes. This knowledge, may aid in understanding the in-vivo performance of advanced targeted therapeutic carriers.