Knot/Knotting Practice in Craft and Space

Knot/knotting Practice in Craft and Space is a three part research-creation project that used a study of knotting techniques to locate craft in an expanded field of spatial practice. The first part consisted of practical, studio based exercises in which I worked with various natural and synthetic fibres to learn common knotting techniques. The second part was an art historical study that combined craft and architecture history with critical theory related to the social production of space. The third part was an exhibition of drawing and knotted objects titled Opening Closures. This document unifies the lines inquiry that define my project. The first chapter presents the art historical justification for knotting to be understood as a spatial practice. Nineteenth-century German architect and theorist Gottfried Semper’s idea that architectural form is derived from four basic material practices allies craft and architecture in my project and is the point of departure from which I make my argument. In the second chapter, to consider the methodological concerns of research-creation as a form of knowledge production and dissemination, I adopt the format of an instruction manual to conduct an analysis of knot types and to provide instructions for the production of several common knots. In the third chapter, I address the formal and conceptual underpinnings of each artwork presented in my exhibition. I conclude with a proposal for an expanded field of spatial practice by adapting art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss’s well-known framework for assessing sculpture in 1960s.

Using phase-space localized basis functions to obtain vibrational energies of molecules

For decades scientists have attempted to use ideas of classical mechanics to choose basis functions for calculating spectra. The hope is that a classically-motivated basis set will be small because it covers only the dynamically important part of phase space. One popular idea is to use phase space localized (PSL) basis functions. This thesis improves on previous efforts to use PSL functions and examines the usefulness of these improvements. Because the overlap matrix, in the matrix eigenvalue problem obtained by using PSL functions with the variational method, is not an identity, it is costly to use iterative methods to solve the matrix eigenvalue problem. We show that it is possible to circumvent the orthogonality (overlap) problem and use iterative eigensolvers. We also present an altered method of calculating the matrix elements that improves the performance of the PSL basis functions, and also a new method which more efficiently chooses which PSL functions to include. These improvements are applied to a variety of single well molecules. We conclude that for single minimum molecules, the PSL functions are inferior to other basis functions. However, the ideas developed here can be applied to other types of basis functions, and PSL functions may be useful for multi-well systems.

IN SITU AND IN VITRO IMMUNOLOCALIZATION OF OVIDUCTIN BINDING SITES ON HAMSTER UTERINE EPITHELIAL CELLS AND DETECTION OF A HAMSTER OVIDUCTIN HOMOLOGUE IN THE FEMALE RAT REPRODUCTIVE TRACT

Oviductin is an oviduct-specific and high-molecular-weight glycoprotein that has been suggested to play important roles in the early events of reproduction. The present study was undertaken to localize the oviductin binding sites in the uterine epithelial cells of the golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) both in situ and in vitro, and to detect a hamster oviductin homologue in the female rat reproductive tract. Immunohistochemical localization of oviductin in the hamster uterus revealed certain uterine epithelial cells reactive to the monoclonal anti-hamster oviductin antibody. In order to study the interaction between hamster oviductin and the endometrium in vitro, a method for culturing primary hamster uterine epithelial cells has been established and optimized. Study with confocal microscopy of the cell culture system showed a labeling pattern similar to what was observed using immunohistochemistry. Pre-embedding immunolabeling of cultured uterine epithelial cells also showed gold particles associated with the plasma membrane and microvilli. These results demonstrated that hamster oviductin can bind to the plasma membrane of certain hamster uterine epithelial cells, suggesting the presence of a putative oviductin receptor on the uterine epithelial cell surface. In the second part of the present study, using the monoclonal anti-hamster oviductin antibody that cross-reacts with the rat tissue, we have been able to detect an oviduct-specific glycoprotein, with a molecular weight of 180~300kDa, in the female rat reproductive tract. Immunohistochemical labeling of the female rat reproductive tract revealed a strong immunolabeling in the non-ciliated oviductal epithelial cells and a faint immunoreaction on the cell surface of some uterine epithelial cells. Ultrastructurally, immunogold labeling was restricted to the secretory granules, Golgi apparatus, and microvilli of the non-ciliated secretory cells of the oviduct. In the uterus, immunogold labeling was observed on the cell surface of some uterine epithelial cells. Furthermore, electron micrographs of ovulated oocytes showed an intense immunolabeling for rat oviductin within the perivitelline space surrounding the ovulated oocytes. The findings of the present study demonstrated that oviductin is present in the rat oviduct and uterus, and it appears that, in the rat, oviductin is secreted by the non-ciliated secretory cells of the oviduct.

Dispossessing bare life: Towards a theoretical framework for examining power relations through economic development at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa

In the past twenty years an increasing number of Global South nations have vied for the rights to host prestigious and expensive sport mega events. This trend requires significant reflection given the enormous economic costs of these events, which often produce little capital gain for the host nation (Whitson & Horne, 2006). Furthermore, sport mega events are often utilized for their symbolic capital (Belanger, 2009), which sometimes manifests through forcing people from their land for the sake of “beautification” (Davis, 2006). In this project, then, I asked how technologies of power were utilized by FIFA, corporate stakeholders, and the South African government to control people who were marginal to, or impeded the success of, the World Cup in Nelspruit, South Africa. This project consisted of two parts: the first involved constructing a theoretical framework for better understanding power as it operates through sport mega events in general. To this end I employed Marxian notions of the ordering of physical space, Foucauldian conceptions of sovereignty and governmentality, and Agamben’s (1998) state of exception to determine how particular bodies are constituted and controlled through sport mega events. In the second part, I applied this theoretical framework to the events in South Africa to better elucidate how people became displaced and killed because of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. I used South African popular news and documentaries as empirical evidence and conducted a discursive analysis of said news media. Through this coverage it became apparent that the mega event created the conditions in which new forms of rogue sovereign partnerships could arise through a historically and spatially contingent process of capitalism. The rogue sovereigns’ para-juridico-political orders, the discourses and practices of accumulation by dispossession as a tactic and effect of govermentality, and other historical non-capital subjectivities such as racial identity, all contributed to constituting Agamben’s state of exception in which people could be displaced, killed or left to die in the events surrounding the World Cup.

"The Black Imprint of Sandals in White Mosaic Floors": H.D.'s Mythomystical Poetics

My dissertation examines the traces of inverse (mytho)mysticism, more synchronous with mythical alchemy than transcendent mystery, in H.D.’s mature work (1946-1961). Whereas H.D.’s earliest works respond to a fin de siècle occultism and a collective psyche troubled by the eschatological distress that, as Susan Acheson writes, “was widespread amongst modernist writers grappling with …world events and with the implications of Nietzsche’s inaugural annunciation of modernity in terms of the death of God” (187), her later oeuvre is dedicated to the same work of soul undertaken by the “secret cult of Night” in Vale Ave. Here, her thematic scope faces two ways: backward to ancient Greek mystery cults and their palingenesic rites and forward to depth psychologists searching for the Soul of the World. Vale Ave plays a pronounced role in my study as symbolic guide; in its seventy-four sequences the layering of time in the “trilogy” of past, present, and future that H.D. had explored during the years of the Second World War in order to get behind the fallen walls of cause and effect collapses into two distinct phases of human origin—“meeting” (evolution) and “parting” (involution)—and the poem invites Lilith and Lucifer to be its archetypal guides. My method for the study is imaginal, entering such disciplines as history, philosophy, and theology and bringing psychological understanding to them. John Walsh’s introduction to Vale Ave notes H.D.’s theme “that the human psyche exists in a dimension outside of time and space as well as within them. In Vale Ave, H.D. presents the extremity of this dual-dimensionality: metempsychosis” (vii). However, the concept that H.D. investigates is more than a literary processus of characters who adopt different masks and appear at various junctures in a chronological unwinding of history. I explore H.D.'s works as part of a Modernist tradition of writing “books of the dead” designed not to guide the soul after death, but to draw the gaze upon “a nearer thing,” as H.D. writes in Erige Cor Tuum Ad Me In Caelum, the wisdom intrinsic in the spirit of life itself.

Melancholy and the Early Modern University

Critics have observed that in early Stuart England, the broad, socially significant concept of melancholy was recoded as a specifically medical phenomenon—a disease rather than a fashion. This recoding made melancholy seem less a social attitude than a private ailment. However, I argue that at the Stuart universities, this recoded melancholy became a covert expression of the disillusionment, disappointment, and frustration produced by pressures there—the overcrowding and competition which left many men “disappointed” in preferment, alongside James I’s unprecedented royal involvement in the universities. My argument has implications for Jürgen Habermas’s account of the emergence of the public sphere, which he claims did not occur until the eighteenth-century. I argue that although the university was increasingly subordinated to the crown’s authority, a lingering sense of autonomy persisted there, a residue of the medieval university’s relative autonomy from the crown; politicized by the encroaching Stuart presence, an alienated community at the university formed a kind of public in private from authority within that authority’s midst. The audience for the printed book, a sphere apart from court or university, represented a forum in which the publicity at the universities could be consolidated, especially in seemingly “private” literary forms such as the treatise on melancholy. I argue that Robert Burton’s exaggerated performance of melancholy in The Anatomy of Melancholy, which gains him license to say almost anything, resembles the performed melancholy that the student-prince Hamlet uses to frustrate his uncle’s attempts to surveil him. After tracing melancholy’s evolving literary function through Hamlet, I go on to discuss James’s interventions into the universities. I conclude by considering two printed (and widely circulated) books by university men: the aforementioned The Anatomy of Melancholy by Burton, an Oxford cleric, and The Temple by George Herbert, who left a career as Cambridge’s public orator to become a country parson. I examine how each of these books uses the affective pattern of courtly-scholarly disappointment—transumed by Burton as melancholy, and by Herbert as holy affliction—to develop an empathic form of publicity among its readership which is in tacit opposition to the Stuart court.

Optical Characterization of Indium Gallium Nitride for Application in High-Efficiency Solar Photovoltaic Cells

The semiconductor alloy indium gallium nitride (InxGa1-xN) offers substantial potential in the development of high-efficiency multi-junction photovoltaic devices due to its wide range of direct band gaps, strong absorption and other optoelectronic properties. This work uses a variety of characterization techniques to examine the properties of InxGa1-xN thin films deposited in a range of compositions by a novel plasma-enhanced evaporation deposition system. Due to the high vapour pressure and low dissociation temperature of indium, the indium incorporation and, ultimately, control of the InxGa1-xN composition was found to be influenced to a greater degree by deposition temperature than variations in the In:Ga source rates in the investigated region of deposition condition space. Under specific deposition conditions, crystalline films were grown in an advantageous nano-columnar microstructure with deposition temperature influencing column size and density. The InxGa1-xN films were determined to have very strong absorption coefficients with band gaps indirectly related to indium content. However, the films also suffer from compositional inhomogeneity and In-related defect complexes with strong phonon coupling that dominates the emission mechanism. This, in addition to the presence of metal impurities, harms the alloy’s electronic properties as no significant photoresponse was observed. This research has demonstrated the material properties that make the InxGa1-xN alloy attractive for multi-junction solar cells and the benefits/drawbacks of the plasma-enhanced evaporation deposition system. Future work is needed to overcome significant challenges relating to crystalline quality, compositional homogeneity and the optoelectronic properties of In-rich InxGa1-xN films in order to develop high-performance photovoltaic devices.

Sequence and Structure Based Protein Folding Studies With Implications

As the expression of the genetic blueprint, proteins are at the heart of all biological systems. The ever increasing set of available protein structures has taught us that diversity is the hallmark of their architecture, a fundamental characteristic that enables them to perform the vast array of functionality upon which all of life depends. This diversity, however, is central to one of the most challenging problems in molecular biology: how does a folding polypeptide chain navigate its way through all of the myriad of possible conformations to find its own particular biologically active form? With few overarching structural principles to draw upon that can be applied to all protein architecture, the search for a solution to the protein folding problem has yet to produce an algorithm that can explain and duplicate this fundamental biological process. In this thesis, we take a two-pronged approach for investigating the protein folding process. Our initial statistical studies of the distributions of hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues within α-helices and β-sheets suggest (i) that hydrophobicity plays a critical role in helix and sheet formation; and (ii) that the nucleation of these motifs may result in largely unidirectional growth. Most tellingly, from an examination of the amino acids found in the smallest β-sheets, we do not find any evidence of a β-nucleating code in the primary protein sequence. Complementing these statistical analyses, we have analyzed the structural environments of several ever-widening aspects of protein topology. Our examination of the gaps between strands in the smallest β-sheets reveals a common organizational principle underlying β-formation involving strands separated by large sequential gaps: with very few exceptions, these large gaps fold into single, compact structural modules, bringing the β-strands that are otherwise far apart in the sequence close together in space. We conclude, therefore, that β-nucleation in the smallest sheets results from the co-location of two strands that are either local in sequence, or local in space following prior folding events. A second study of larger β-sheets both corroborates and extends these findings: virtually all large sequential gaps between pairs of β-strands organize themselves into an hierarchical arrangement, creating a bread-crumb model of go-and-come-back structural organization that ultimately juxtaposes two strands of a parental β-structure that are far apart in the sequence in close spatial proximity. In a final study, we have formalized this go-and-come-back notion into the concept of anti-parallel double-strandedness (DS), and measure this property across protein architecture in general. With over 90% of all residues in a large, non-redundant set of protein structures classified as DS, we conclude that DS is a unifying structural principle that underpins all globular proteins. We postulate, moreover, that this one simple principle, anti-parallel double-strandedness, unites protein structure, protein folding and protein evolution.

L'évolution des voix/voies de femmes dans leurs écrits sur l'Église aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Feminist movements have allowed many female authors to become decisive and influential figures in literary history by studying their experiences, voices and forms of resistance. This thesis, however, focuses specifically on religious women, those seeking divine comfort outside the confines of institutional laws, or those who, out of protest, are caught in the middle. Founded on historical and feminist perspectives, this study examines the heterodox resistance of six French women living within or outside of Church boundaries during the 17th and 18th centuries: two eras that are particularly significant for women’s progress and modernity. This work strives to demonstrate how these women, doubly subjected to Church discourse and that of society, managed to live out their vocation (female and Christian) and make social, cultural and religious statements that contributed to changing the place of women in society. It aims to grasp the similarities and differences between the actions and ideas of women belonging to both the religious and secular spheres. Regardless of the century, the space and their background, women resist to masculine, patriarchal, ecclesial, political and social mediation and institutions. In locating examples of how they oppose the practices, rules and constraints that are imposed upon them, as well as of their exclusion from the socio-political space, this thesis also seeks to identify epistemological changes that mark the transition from the 17th to the 18th century. This thesis firstly outlines the necessary feminist theory upon which the project is based before identifying the evolution of women’s positions within the socio-ideological and political framework in which they lived. The questions of confession and spiritual direction are of particular interest since they serve as prime examples of masculine mediation and its issues and consequences – most notably the control of the female body and mind. The illustration of bodily metamorphoses bear testament to ideological changes, cultural awareness and female subjectivity, just as the scriptural inscriptions of unorthodox ideas and writing. The female body, both object and subject of the quest for individual and collective liberties, attests, in this way, to the movement towards Enlightenment values of freedom and justice.

BIDIRECTIONAL AC-DC CONVERTERS USING ONE CYCLE CONTROL (OCC) FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES

The electric vehicle (EV) market has seen a rapid growth in the recent past. With an increase in the number of electric vehicles on road, there is an increase in the number of high capacity battery banks interfacing the grid. The battery bank of an EV, besides being the fuel tank, is also a huge energy storage unit. Presently, it is used only when the vehicle is being driven and remains idle for rest of the time, rendering it underutilized. Whereas on the other hand, there is a need of large energy storage units in the grid to filter out the fluctuations of supply and demand during a day. EVs can help bridge this gap. The EV battery bank can be used to store the excess energy from the grid to vehicle (G2V) or supply stored energy from the vehicle to grid (V2G ), when required. To let power flow happen, in both directions, a bidirectional AC-DC converter is required. This thesis concentrates on the bidirectional AC-DC converters which have a control on power flow in all four quadrants for the application of EV battery interfacing with the grid. This thesis presents a bidirectional interleaved full bridge converter topology. This helps in increasing the power processing and current handling capability of the converter which makes it suitable for the purpose of EVs. Further, the benefit of using the interleaved topology is that it increases the power density of the converter. This ensures optimization of space usage with the same power handling capacity. The proposed interleaved converter consists of two full bridges. The corresponding gate pulses of each switch, in one cell, are phase shifted by 180 degrees from those of the other cell. The proposed converter control is based on the one-cycle controller. To meet the challenge of new requirements of reactive power handling capabilities for grid connected converters, posed by the utilities, the controller is modified to make it suitable to process the reactive power. A fictitious current derived from the grid voltage is introduced in the controller, which controls the converter performance. The current references are generated using the second order generalized integrators (SOGI) and phase locked loop (PLL). A digital implementation of the proposed control ii scheme is developed and implemented using DSP hardware. The simulated and experimental results, based on the converter topology and control technique discussed here, are presented to show the performance of the proposed theory.

MNEMOSYNE: NARRATING A PAKHTUN STUDENT’S FOREIGN CURRICULAR EXPERIENCE

Studying abroad is generally viewed as an opportunity for personal and educational transformation for students. In recent years, various studies have been conducted in the area of study abroad. Most of these studies primarily involve quantitative analyses, and do not fully explore the lived experience of this opportunity. Recently, researchers have started exploring the qualitative aspects and impact of studying abroad, but from an external perspective. This study attends to the phenomenon of a foreign curricular experience from an insider’s perspective and explicates the experience through a personal narrative. Countries usually have educational curricula that serve their particular needs. The rise of the number of students studying abroad has made study abroad a lucrative industry but it has also increasingly exposed foreign students to curricula that are different than those of their countries of origin. Subjecting students to dissimilar, and sometimes competing, curricula interrupts their habitual ways of knowing and being. My study is a qualitative study that explores the foreign curricular experience of one Pakhtun student. Specifically, through an autobiography, this study aims to explore how a foreign curricular experience acts as a ‘transitional space’ for a student and how it deeply affects her learning self and identity. This study contributes to the body of literature on the effects of a foreign curriculum on study abroad students by adding narrative to explain the lived experience of studying abroad.

Ablation of Steel by Microsecond Pulse Trains

Laser micromachining is an important material processing technique used in industry and medicine to produce parts with high precision. Control of the material removal process is imperative to obtain the desired part with minimal thermal damage to the surrounding material. Longer pulsed lasers, with pulse durations of milli- and microseconds, are used primarily for laser through-cutting and welding. In this work, a two-pulse sequence using microsecond pulse durations is demonstrated to achieve consistent material removal during percussion drilling when the delay between the pulses is properly defined. The light-matter interaction moves from a regime of surface morphology changes to melt and vapour ejection. Inline coherent imaging (ICI), a broadband, spatially-coherent imaging technique, is used to monitor the ablation process. The pulse parameter space is explored and the key regimes are determined. Material removal is observed when the pulse delay is on the order of the pulse duration. ICI is also used to directly observe the ablation process. Melt dynamics are characterized by monitoring surface changes during and after laser processing at several positions in and around the interaction region. Ablation is enhanced when the melt has time to flow back into the hole before the interaction with the second pulse begins. A phenomenological model is developed to understand the relationship between material removal and pulse delay. Based on melt refilling the interaction region, described by logistic growth, and heat loss, described by exponential decay, the model is fit to several datasets. The fit parameters reflect the pulse energies and durations used in the ablation experiments. For pulse durations of 50 us with pulse energies of 7.32 mJ +/- 0.09 mJ, the logisitic growth component of the model reaches half maximum after 8.3 us +/- 1.1 us and the exponential decays with a rate of 64 us +/- 15 us. The phenomenological model offers an interpretation of the material removal process.

Characterization of the Galactic White Dwarf Population in the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey

Halo white dwarfs remain one of the least studied stellar populations in the Milky Way because of their faint luminosities. Recent work has uncovered a population of hot white dwarfs which are thought to be remnants of low-mass Population II stars. This thesis uses optical data from the Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) and ultravoilet data from the GALEX Ultraviolet Virgo Cluster Survey (GUViCS) to select candidates which may belong to this population of recently formed halo white dwarfs. A colour selection was used to separate white dwarfs from QSOs and main-sequence stars. Photometric distances are calculated using model colour-absolute magnitude relations. Proper motions are calculated by using the difference in positions between objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the NGVS. The proper motions are combined with the calculated photometric distances to calculate tangential velocities, as well as approximate Galactic space velocities. White dwarf candidates are characterized as belonging to either the disk or the halo using a variety of methods, including calculated scale heights (z> 1 kpc), tangential velocities (vt >200 km/s), and their location in (V,U) space. The 20 halo white dwarf candidates which were selected using Galactic space velocities are analyzed, and their colours and temperatures suggest that these objects represent some of the youngest white dwarfs in the Galactic halo.

The relationship of E. coli and total coliform culture to the quantitative molecular detection of various fecal indicators, sources, and pathogens in private drinking water wells

Water remains a predominant vector for human enteric pathogens not just for developing countries but also developed nations, where numerous infectious disease outbreaks, linked to the contamination of drinking water have been documented. Private drinking water wells are a source of drinking water that is largely unstudied even though a significant percentage of the population in Ontario relies on wells as their primary water source. As there exists little to no systematic surveillance for enteric infections or outbreaks related to well water sources, these individuals may be at higher risk of waterborne infectious diseases. The relationships between various fecal indicators in the water of private drinking water wells, including E. coli, Total Coliforms (TC) and Bacteroides, and enteric pathogens, including Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella spp., and Shiga toxin producing E. coli, were studied. Convenience private well water samples collected from various regions of interest during the summer of 2014 underwent membrane filtration and culture to determine quantities of E. coli and TC colony forming units. 289 E. coli positive and 230 TC-only waters were successfully analyzed by individual qPCR assays for the aforementioned enteric pathogens. Microbial source tracking methods targeted to specific Bacteroides were used to determine the source of fecal contamination as either human or bovine. The source of fecal contamination varied by geographic region and is thought to be due to such things as differences in septic tank density and underlying geology, among others. Fecal indicators, E. coli and Bacteroides, were significantly correlated. E. coli as measured by qPCR was more strongly correlated to both total and human-specific Bacteroides genetic markers than culturable E. coli. Lastly, 1.9% of samples showed molecular evidence of contamination with enteric pathogens. Although low, this finding is significant given the limited volume of water available for testing, and suggests a potential health risk to consumers. Knowing the extent of contamination, as well as the biologic source, can better inform risk assessment and the development of potential intervention strategies for private well water in specific regions of Ontario.

Irreducibility of Random Hilbert Schemes

We prove that a random Hilbert scheme that parametrizes the closed subschemes with a fixed Hilbert polynomial in some projective space is irreducible and nonsingular with probability greater than $0.5$. To consider the set of nonempty Hilbert schemes as a probability space, we transform this set into a disjoint union of infinite binary trees, reinterpreting Macaulay's classification of admissible Hilbert polynomials. Choosing discrete probability distributions with infinite support on the trees establishes our notion of random Hilbert schemes. To bound the probability that random Hilbert schemes are irreducible and nonsingular, we show that at least half of the vertices in the binary trees correspond to Hilbert schemes with unique Borel-fixed points.