Glycosidases hydrolyse the glycosidic bond in carbohydrates. Structural studies of three glycosidases with different substrate specificities are presented in this work. Dextranase catalyzes the hydrolysis of α-1,6-glycosidic linkage in dextran polymers. The structure of dextranase, Dex49A, from Penicillium minioluteum was solved in the apo-enzyme (1.8 Å resolution) and product-bound (1.65 Å resolution) forms. The main domain of the enzyme is a right-handed β-helix, which is connected to a β-sandwich domain at the N-terminus. Using NMR spectroscopy the reaction course was shown to occur with net inversion at the anomeric carbon. A new clan is suggested that links glycoside hydrolase (GH) families 28 and 49. Endo-β-1,4-D-mannanase catalyzes the depolymerization of β-1,4-mannan polymers. The structure of endo-1,4-β-mannanase Man5A from blue mussel Mytilus edulis has been determined at 1.6 Å resolution. Kinetic analysis of Man5A revealed that the enzyme requires at least 6 subsites for efficient hydrolysis. The architecture of the catalytic cleft differs significantly from other GH 5 enzyme structures. We therefore suggest that Man5A represents a new subfamily in GH 5. Both the Dex49A and the Man5A structures were determined by multiple-wavelength anomalous diffraction using the selenium K-edge with selenomethionyl enzymes expressed in the yeast Pichia pastoris. Endoglucanase Cel6A from Thermobifida fusca hydrolyzes the β-1,4 linkages in cellulose. The structure of the catalytic domain of Cel6A from T. fusca in complex with a non-hydrolysable substrate analogue has been determined to 1.5 Å resolution. The glycosyl unit in subsite –1 was sterically hindered by Tyr73 and forced into a distorted 2SO conformation. In the enzyme where Tyr73 was mutated to a serine residue the hindrance was removed and the glycosyl unit in subsite –1 had a relaxed 4C1 chair conformation.

My dissertation is a speculative analysis of the historical contexts of a social protest, based on the notion of "articulation" advanced in the field of cultural studies. Focusing on the 2008 candlelight protest against U.S. beef in South Korea, my goal is to explore the historical contexts of the protest, which formulate the identity of the protest. Since the U.S. beef deal was approved by the Korean government as a precondition for the Free Trade Agreement between Korea and the United States, the protest has been considered (notably by leftists in Korea) as a resistance against post-colonial overtones and fascist eco-political principle in the era of neoliberal globalization. Instead of understanding the protest from such an essentialist perspective, my research makes a commitment to exploring the exterior factors that drove the possibility of the protest. The notion of articulation, a mode of explanation that moves beyond any linear sort of causality, provides a framework to view the protest not as a unity, but as a linkage of multi-dimensional (political, economic, social, and cultural) elements of historical contexts. Based on my journal entries written during my participation in the protest, and the journal articles about the 2008 protest written by the scholars in Korea, I explored the main characteristics of the protest in comparison with the conventional social movements in Korea, and discovered that the 2008 candlelight protest had featured the "food safety issue," "participants with heterogeneous desires," "carnivalesque modality," and an "ambiguous goal." From these main features, I inferred four salient axes of historical vectors (and their forces) including "political democratization and depoliticization," "food industrialization and wellbeing fever," "market liberalization and job insecurity," and "advanced communication technology and carnivalesque culture." My research findings present that the 2008 candlelight protest is not a definite insurgent element calling for any deep change in the dominant political and economic paradigm, but exists as a paradoxical event at the cusp between subordination to and resistance against neoliberal globalization. The main contribution of my research project entails (1) pushing the boundaries of communication studies on social resistance by including the notion of articulation which situates the 2008 candlelight protest within its historical contexts, (2) developing speculative analysis as a critical and cultural studies method for exploring structural forces operating in deep layers of our experiences, (3) delineating the new modalities of contemporary social movements by examining the concrete textures and hues of the 2008 candlelight protest, and (4) offering new ways of (re)thinking the principles of efficiency and economic growth by interrogating a case of food industrialization and global exchange.

In view of the current situation of fluctuating high crude oil prices, it is now more important than ever for petroleum refineries to operate at an optimal level in the present dynamic global economy. Acknowledging the shortcomings of deterministic models, this work proposes a hybrid of stochastic programming formulations for an optimal midterm refinery planning that addresses three factors of uncertainties, namely price of crude oil and saleable products, product demand, and production yields. An explicit stochastic programming technique is utilized by employing compensating slack variables to account for violations of constraints in order to increase model tractability. Four approaches are considered to ensure both solution and model robustness: (1) the Markowitz???s mean???variance (MV) model to handle randomness in the objective coefficients of prices by minimizing variance of the expected value of the random coefficients; (2) the two-stage stochastic programming with fixed recourse approach via scenario analysis to model randomness in the right-hand side and left-hand side coefficients by minimizing the expected recourse penalty costs due to constraints??? violations; (3) incorporation of the MV model within the framework developed in Approach 2 to minimize both the expectation and variance of the recourse costs; and (4) reformulation of the model in Approach 3 by adopting mean-absolute deviation (MAD) as the risk metric imposed by the recourse costs for a novel application to the petroleum refining industry. A representative numerical example is illustrated with the resulting outcome of higher net profits and increased robustness in solutions proposed by the stochastic models.

This thesis is a critical examination of newspaper coverage of Canadian-born cases of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) discovered between May 2003 and December 2005. Data for the thesis has been compiled from three newspapers: the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, and the Globe & Mail. The Alberta newspapers were chosen for their proximity to the BSE discoveries, and the Globe & Mail was chosen for the national focus of its coverage. Using Fairclough’s method of ordering discourses, I examine three discourses prominently featured in the coverage: the political discourse, the science discourse, and the socio-cultural discourse. I analyse the three discourses independently, incorporating relevant theory to further explicate the discourses. The primary focus of the thesis is on the newspaper coverage of the first Canadian-born BSE case, but newspaper coverage of additional discoveries are included to examine how the BSE media package changed over time.

<div>This dissertation explores the figure of the mad scientist in Victorian literature through some of the most enduring literary examples, viewing these works not as anti-science cautionary tales but rather thought experiments for dealing with hazardous scientists and hazardous science. It makes a claim for a spectrum of hazardous scientists from the beneficial to the truly mad and argues that the primary difference between them is a matter of socialization. It argues that these novels advocate for the scientist and society to negotiate and co-construct a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.<br></div>

There is no known cure for the family of diseases known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies. These include the infamous Mad Cow disease-technically known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)--as well as its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Although BSE was initially diagnosed in Britain in 1986, the first U.S. regulation to prevent BSE was not enacted until three years later. This delayed reaction proved to be a trend amongst the regulatory agencies responsible for keeping the U.S. food supply safe and BSE-free. The focus of this study is to delineate the degree of U.S. government liability in the event of a BSE outbreak. This study takes into account the various aspects of administrative law as it relates to liability, along with the numerous medical and scientific documents from domestic as well as international authorities, to determine governmental liability. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that the U.S. regulatory agencies concerned with food safety have created legislation consistently favoring industry concerns over those of public health. The legal system of a truly civilized society should be derived from ethical principles, which are then applied to institutions like the economy. When the process is reversed, when laws are based on industrial or economic concerns, ethics becomes an after-thought. This thesis sheds light on the government's handling of the threat of BSE: its shortcomings, competence, failures and successes. - ---

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The western world has long viewed ‘mental illness’ from a biomedical perspective; treating the brain the same way it treats physical issues, through diagnosis, medication and clinical intervention. We however tend to forget that a person is interdependent on her or his environment, and resultantly we frame the person as ill or weak rather than the environment as sick, or ‘mad’. With this thesis I assess how mental health and ‘mental illness’ are being framed within secondary schools in the province of Ontario (Canada). I achieve this by analyzing mental health strategies using a theoretical lens developed from Critical Disability Theory and Mad Studies. Through use of a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) I analyzed a total of 4 mental health strategies from the federal government, the Ontario government and 2 Ontario school boards. My findings indicated that these mental health strategies generally subscribe to a medical or individualized understandings of mental health, and overlook the disabling influence that the school environment can have on the student. By minimizing the role of the social and physical environment on student mental health schools are reinforcing the dominant discourse, which is that distresses in mental health are the result of an individual deficit caused by a brain defect or personal weakness. This discourse has far reaching consequences that may contribute to many Ontario students not receiving the support they desire. I contend that social workers employed by school boards can be influential in challenging these dominant framings of mental health and carry forward the standpoint that the school environment and its social structures play a principal role in the mental health of students. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The contemporary society of the United States of America is becoming an increasingly stressful environment to live in. Our rapid advances and developments in virtual, electronic, and high-speed technology have led us to a lifestyle that operates more quickly. However, our attachment to such a face-paced lifestyle has unfortunately led us towards an increasingly stressful lifestyle. This research focuses on identifying our current society's perceptual outlook and illustrating how the practice of mindfulness can help reduce the anxieties, struggles, and mental flaws which cloud our perception. The intent of this thesis is to show how the practice of mindfulness is beneficial towards our mental health. The practice of mindfulness originated within the Buddhist tradition and has evolved into a new area of interest in the fields of mental health, psychology, philosophy, and humanities. Also, the connection between the practice of mindfulness, and the practice of authentic creativity, as demonstrated in playing the piano, is illuminated within this research. Authentic creativity thus serves as an enlightening metaphor for the elusive practice of mindfulness, and creates a more vivid understanding of the concept of mindfulness. For this thesis I have conducted a literature review in the areas of philosophy, religion, aesthetics and cognitive science. Also, I am actively participating in my research by personally practicing mindfulness and piano. Part of my methodology involves critical thinking on the personal level as I am writing journal entries about my views and thoughts concerning these processes.

This thesis examines the fissures and intersections between feminist digital media, queer theory, and Mad and disability studies. Moving across social media platforms, hashtag data, and digital gaming, this project argues for the subversive and creative potential within Mad/crip/queer digital identity performances. My theorizing of the avatar as an automedial figure in this project is attentive to the politics of the face as a site of encounter, to digital bodies and movement, to identification and community-building, and to embodiment and affects that move between on- and off-screen lives. This thesis follows the “bad avatar,” a collection of Mad digital identity practices that interrupt, disrupt, and transgress normalizing and normative digital spaces of North American settler capitalist culture. Claiming the bad avatar as a deliberate identity position is an act of claiming the label of “bad,” which here has multiple meanings: Mad queer bodies—physical and digital—are bad citizens because we break the heteronormative patriarchal rules. We’re troublemakers—we make trouble for power systems and those who embody power. We can be bad workers, unproductive and fatigued. We can be bad for capitalism and bad for nationalist morale. We also experience feelings that become pathologized and policed. As despair, panic, melancholy, and angst stick to our bodies our bodies themselves become framed as bad: sick, broken, wrong, a problem in need of fixing or eradication. Reclaiming “bad” is both a celebration of the willful subject (Ahmed 2014) and a challenge to the binary of “good/bad” that is used to oppress Mad and disabled bodies. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis theorizes the digital avatar as an automedial figure, a mode of virtual embodiment and a site of encounter. I use “avatar” to draw a connecting line between widely varied digital identity acts that occur across social media platforms and video games. This thesis examines the “bad avatar,” a collection of Mad/crip/disabled faces, bodies, and identity practices that interrupt, disrupt, and transgress the normalizing and normative digital spaces of North American settler capitalist culture. Mad/crip digital identity play offers avenues for enacting modes of resistance through the politics of representation and the processes of identity performance and community-building.