Trent University

This study examines the formal, informal, and non-formal learning experiences offeminist-identified counsellors and psychotherapists working within the Violence Against Women (VAW) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) sector of community- based social services in Ontario, Canada. Using critical, feminist polyethnography and intersectional and feminist theories, this study discusses the participants' and researcher's experiences in the field. The participants' narratives contribute to the understanding of intersectional feminist pedagogies in counselling and psychotherapy practices and spaces. Additionally, the study offers recommendations for post- secondary programs, wise practice approaches to intersectional clinical supervision, and a framework for community of practice models of peer supervision.

Author Keywords: adult learning, feminism, feminist theory, intersectional theory, psychotherapy, social work

Two dimension-based models have emerged that capture the high symptom heterogeneity observed in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—one grouping symptoms by their overt presentation, the other identifying core dimensions of underlying symptom motivations. This paper presents two studies that explore (1) the relationship between these two models, and (2) the stability of the models and dimensions they each represent. Study 1 found that the core dimension motives jointly predicted overall OCD symptom severity, and that each core dimension further predicted unique nonoverlapping overt symptom dimensions. Study 2 demonstrated that despite high instances of item-level symptom change, both models and their respective dimensions were longitudinally stable, with exception to overt symptoms relating to harm/injury/bad luck. Both studies support further consideration of these models as clinical resources and support the candidacy of the core dimensions as endophenotypes for OCD. Results, limitations, clinical implications, and future directions are discussed.

Author Keywords: Core Dimensions, Endophenotype, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Overt Symptoms, Stability, Symptom Models

The purpose of this thesis is to acknowledge the contributions chapbooks have made to the world of Canadian publishing and to Canadian culture. It is important to place chapbooks in Canada's publishing history as there has not been a lot of writing on chapbooks or even on Canadian publishing. What sources there are usually focus on larger, traditional presses, often based in Ontario (Lorimer); if chapbooks are mentioned at all, they are usually mentioned only in passing (MacSkimming). On rare occasions when texts focus on micropresses or small presses, they are usually out of print and not easy to access (Anstee). Due to this short list of accessible resources on chapbooks, this project was created to help record and capture the impact chapbooks have on Canadian publishing and culture using interviews.

Author Keywords: Canadian Culture, Canadian Publishing, Chapbook, Interviews, Mirocpress, Small press

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Black People in Toronto: Informing Public Health Nurses on What They Can Do: A Scoping Review by Fitzroy H. Thompson MScN, explores Black people in low-income neighbourhoods being at increased risk of COVID-19 infection and death due to longstanding health inequity. The research consisted of white and grey literature from Canada between March 2020 and November 2022 using the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) framework. Falk-Rafael's Critical Caring Theory (CCT) guides the critical review of the research collected from the systematic search (Butcher, 2022). The SDH plays a vital role in health outcomes for Black people's access to optimal health services. Community nursing practice can optimize COVID-19 research to advocate for structural interventions tailored to improve SDH access and develop solutions to address needs for policy evolution. The findings act as the foundation for a systematic review and a scholarly synthesis of the evidence on the research question, which would further contribute to the enhancement of nursing care for Black people in low-income neighbourhoods.

Author Keywords: Black people, COVID-19, public health, race, racism, social determinants of health

Stress can significantly affect neurobiological processes crucial for learning and memory. While repeated stress enhances fear memory, it impairs memory retrieval. In most studies, however, stress exposure typically preceded fear and extinction learning. Thus, the impact of previously acquired memories formed before exposure to stress is not well understood. The goal of this thesis is to examine how acute stress impacts the ability to retrieve previously acquired fear memories. The results showed that stress impaired recall of recent fear memories, but stress seven days after conditioning did not affect memory retrieval. Analysis of c-Fos expression revealed increased neuronal activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats exposed to stress. Additionally, stress exposure decreased mRNA expression of Reelin, a glycoprotein in the mPFC. Notably, administering recombinant Reelin improved fear memory recall. These findings highlight potential pathways for research and interventions on stress-induced memory impairments.

Author Keywords: c-Fos expression, Fear memory, Medial prefrontal cortex, Memory retrieval, Reelin, Stress

Maladaptive fear can develop when nonthreatening stimuli are misinterpreted as dangerous. While fear extinction has been extensively studied, organisms can also learn safety through relief learning, in which cues signalling the termination of an aversive event acquire positive value. Although the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is implicated in regulating responses to threat and safety cues, its role in relief learning remains unclear. In Experiment 1, I validated a relief conditioning paradigm in rats and demonstrated that relief-conditioned animals froze significantly less than fear-conditioned animals during retention. Experiment 2 revealed that relief learning selectively activated the prelimbic cortex (PrL). In Experiment 3, chemogenetic inhibition of the PrL reduced freezing across tones, supporting a causal role in relief expression. Experiment 4 demonstrated that extended training produced more stable and pronounced reductions in freezing than a one-day protocol. Together, these findings identify PrL circuits as key contributors to relief learning.Keywords: Maladaptive fear, relief learning, fear conditioning, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), fear extinction, rat model, behavioural freezing, Fos expression, neural circuitry, conditioned stimuli, aversive stimuli, neuroimaging.

Author Keywords: Conditioned stimuli, Fear condtioning, Maladaptive fear, Medial prefrontal cortex, Neural circuitry, Relief learning

The neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs), commonly known as Batten disease, are a family of fatal neurodegenerative disorders that primarily affect children. Several subtypes of NCLs have been reported, each being caused by a mutation in a distinct ceroid lipofuscinosis neuronal (CLN) gene; this results in aberrant lysosome function and the accumulation of lipoprotein aggregates (known as ceroid lipofuscin) within cells. Several innate cellular pathways exist to alleviate the stress caused by the buildup of aggregates. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is an essential organelle in this process because it is responsible for maintaining cellular homeostasis through protein production, quality control, and regulating several signalling pathways. The unfolded protein response (UPR) consists of several conserved pathways devoted to attenuating ER stress caused by an accumulation of misfolded proteins or aggregates; at the center of this stress response is GRP78, a molecular chaperone that binds to misfolded proteins to facilitate proper folding. The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is an excellent model system for studying NCLs as it encodes more CLN-like proteins when compared to other classical model organisms (e.g., yeast, worm, fruit fly). In this study, D. discoideum was used to elucidate the effects of ER stress and build an understanding of how cells cope with increased stress. Beyond this, ER stress in D. discoideum models for CLN3 disease and CLN5 disease were evaluated. First and foremost, during the induction of ER stress by tunicamycin, there was an increase in intracellular and extracellular amounts of Grp78 accompanied by an increase in stress-related changes to the ER. Furthermore, models of CLN3 disease and CLN5 disease displayed increased amounts of Grp78 as well as a disrupted ER morphology. Interestingly, wildtype D. discoideum, AX3 cells, treated with tunicamycin displayed a similarly disrupted ER when compared to CLN models. Finally, when subjected to tunicamycin-induced ER stress, these NCL models displayed a trend towards increased Grp78 amounts, however, these cells appear to have a reduced sensitivity to tunicamycin-induced stress compared to wild-type cells. In summary, this study highlights D. discoideum as a model for studying ER stress through the conserved role of Grp78 in the stress response and concludes that an aberrant ER stress underlies the pathology of the NCLs.

Author Keywords: Batten disease, Dictyostelium discoideum, ER stress, GRP78, neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs)

Lake Huron's food web has experienced drastic changes in response to multiple stressors including declines in offshore productivity, decreased trophic transfer efficiency and a transformation of the benthic food web. However, how these changes have affected the diets and isotopic niches of predatory fish is largely unexplored. My diet study analysed stomach contents from five predatory fish species (lake trout, lake whitefish, chinook salmon, rainbow trout, and walleye) from the Ontario waters of Lake Huron. My isotopic study focused on lake trout and lake whitefish, based on community concerns that recovering lake trout are competing with or consuming lake whitefish. By contrast, I found that lake whitefish were a minimal component of lake trout diets, and the diet and isotopic overlap between these two species was low overall, but varied regionally. Both the dietary and isotope analyses reflect the high regional diversity of energy sources used by predatory fish.

Author Keywords: Food web, Isotopic Niche, Lake Huron, Predator-prey, Regime shift, Regional Energy Sources

This thesis demonstrates how the proper application of theoretical archaeological and osteological methods to archival documents can be both illuminating and vital to create a fuller understanding of those who have been historically silenced. By performing an archival analysis informed by an archaeological background, the first four volumes of the Registers of Liberated Africans from Freetown, Sierra Leone are "excavated." In addition to demographic data, four categories of analysis are presented, including Types of Illness and Symptoms, Types of Trauma, Types of Injury and/or Illness, and Multiple Symptoms and Illness. This data was collected during participation in a much larger transcription project using a unique methodology. The following analysis was conducted using a collection of interdisciplinary theories, including theoretical osteoarchaeology, practical osteology, medical anthropology, archival and linguistic analysis and numerical presentation. Discussions include the frequency of diseases, slave ships and barracoons as disease environments, potential causes for common injuries, the difficulties and evolution of medical language, and the limitations of both archival and archaeological work for medical and trauma investigation. While both archival and archaeological methods miss key information, using them in tandem offers a more complete view of a historical person and their life experiences.

Author Keywords: Archive, Disease, Liberated Africans, Osteoarchaeology, Sierra Leone, Trauma

Animal migration is defined as the seasonal movement from one independent and non-overlapping range to another. Understanding how and why animals migrate is important not only to understand their life history processes but also for informing other important ecological processes such as the spread of wildlife disease and habitat alteration. Animal migrations have been impacted by human activity with instances of complete loss of migrations in human-altered areas. Understanding the drivers of migration can help predict responses to future environmental changes and potentially help conserve these phenomena. Seasonal movements of white-tailed deer (deer; Odocoileus virginianus; Zimmerman, 1780) have been linked to seasonal changes in environmental conditions that impact their ability to find food resources and risk of predation. The human shield hypothesis posits that prey species will select habitat close to people to use predator fear of humans to protect themselves from predation. Using global positioning system (GPS) collars, we examined the onset of deer migrations and assessed how environmental variables including snow, temperature, and plant biomass influenced migration departure dates using time-to-event models. We compared deer locations to data from GPS collared coyotes (Canis latrans; Say, 1823) within the same study area to explore daily space-use differences and examine if deer migrations were food or predation-risk driven using generalized linear mixed effects regression models. We found substantial annual and individual variation in deer migration dates. Snow depth was the strongest and most consistent predictor of deer migration, with individuals departing earlier with greater snow depth. Our regression analyses showed that deer selected for habitats closer to and with greater density of anthropogenic structures than coyotes at all times. After removing the animal locations close to areas with active supplemental feeding, these effects were diminished showing no differences in proximity or density of structures. Overall, we found more support for a food driven migration rather than a predator driven human shield. With the reduction in natural food caused by snow cover, we suggest that supplemental feeding is likely influencing the use of wintering areas by deer. The high proportion of deer migrating to human developed areas with supplemental feeders highlights the need for continued research into the impacts of human activity on animal behaviour.

Author Keywords: coyote, human shield, migration, supplemental feeding, white-tailed deer