The internal organs and surfaces of our bodies are lined with epithelial cells. Most cancers (85%) arise from these cells, and are known as carcinomas. Cancer cells eventually break free from neighboring cells, move through the body and form secondary metastatic sites. It is the formation of these sites that is the main cause of cancer deaths. In normal epithelial tissues, cells are held together by adhesive intercellular junctional complexes. The function of these complexes is mediated by proteins of the cadherin and catenin families, respectively. Plakoglobin (ƒ×-catenin) is a component of these adhesion complexes and is known to act as a tumor and metastasis suppressor. My research is focused on identifying the molecular mechanisms underlying how plakoglobin acts to suppress both tumorigenesis and metastasis.
Viktoria Reiswich-Dapp
Art & Art History
A brief synopsis of your work
My research applies an intermedial perspective to the analysis of music, reviews performance conventions, and explores strategies and the use of media to translate this perspective into an intermedial performance on stage. The goal thereby is to maintain a critical perspective in interacting with a complex layering of various independent media, and to actively involve both audience and performer in co-creating a performance and signification. In my research I put special emphasis on Erik Satie, particularly his composition Sports et Divertissements, which is a highly unique work with a very unusual structure: it combines nineteen hand-colored prints with a facsimile of nineteen short musical pieces and poetic text. The independent and medial function of each element is emphasized by the way text, image, and music critically and comically reflect on each other. This has two effects: (1) This structure creates a critical perspective not only on each element but also – since the work has popular entertainment as its theme – brings to attention the social-cultural environment. And (2) the intermediality of the piece requires new performance strategies which go beyond a conventional recital setting. I am trying to to find practical and theoretical answers and solutions to both these questions while using the intermedial approach as a tool to engage the audience and reflect todays environment in my performance of Sports et Divertissements.
Nduka Otiono
Languages & Literature: English
Tracking a Liminal Sphere: Street Stories, Popular Culture and the Postcolonial Condition in Nigeria
Hassan Moghimi
Engineering & Architecture
Innovative Applications of Steel Plate Shear Wall Systems for Canada’s Low and Moderate Seismic Regions
Synopses:
Lateral forces due to earthquake, wind and accidental explosion are of major concern in the design of buildings. With the advent of the 2005 edition of the National Building Code, design for earthquakes must be considered in all locations of the country. Moreover, accidental blast potentially can be a major issue in the design of structures related to Canada’s industries.
One of the methods that can be used to resist these forces is a system of steel plate infills installed between the building columns and beams, known as “steel plate shear walls”. Most of the previous research has focussed on structures located in zones of high seismicity. As a result, design and detailing requirements have become highly onerous, and the system is economical only in small regions of the nation with high risk of a major earthquake. However, developing applications for low and moderate seismic regions (including most of Canada), with a focus on economics and safety, have largely been neglected, despite the huge potential market and benefits to Canadians. Moreover, despite the anticipated great advantages of this systems in industrial buildings, the performance of this system under accidental blast and in the mitigation of progressive collapse have never been investigated.
This research aims to provide more economical solutions for buildings, along with convenience in design and construction, while improving safety and reliability. Consideration of this system for blast resistance and progressive collapse mitigation is an entirely new field with wide-ranging potential applications in Canada, and it will promote advanced research relating to innovation in structural system development. My research will contribute to more reliable and economical structural systems, leading to the improvement of safety and security of Canadians, and is expected also to contribute to sustainable economic growth by making the Canadian steel industry more competitive in both local and global markets.
Erika Goble
Education
Synopsis of My Doctoral Work:
More than ever before we live in a world of images: we see them on billboards, busses, television, computer screens, through the technologies that mediate our realities. We stare at them and they stare back. Yet the psychological, moral, and aesthetic impact of images raises questions. Susan Sontag wrote of the deep bite certain photographs have for us. Who does not recall the force of the September 11th images? the Twin Towers? the falling man? For Roland Barthes these images have the 'punctum' that 'pierces the viewer', while for Gaston Bachelard, these images' resonances disperse across the planes of our lives. My doctoral research asks: how is this 'punctum' and 'dispersion' experienced by the viewer? Specifically, how do images ethically disturb us, leave an effect on our children and on us as adults?
Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, my research explores the lived experience of encountering visual imagery that evokes paradoxical emotions, images that simultaneously attract and repulse us. In what ways are we reflexively addressed, called upon, or presented by our encounter? How is the image transformative in Bachelard's sense, expressing us by making us what it expresses? And how is this of pedagogical and ethical concern? Hermeneutic phenomenology is used to gather empirical data so that the lived meanings of individual and shared experience may be described. Interpretive analysis of additional sources (literature, film, images) will supplement these descriptions. Through analysis, reflection, and interpretation, an evocative text articulating the phenomenon will be created.
This research should contribute to contemporary understandings of visual imagery in media studies, art theory, philosophy, and visual culture. Further, the research should lead to a pragmatic and action sensitive understanding of the deeply personal experience of encountering images as both an ethical and pedagogical phenomenon.
