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Item type:Item, “That space is still very special to me”: Religion, space, and embodiment in Canadian Protestant girls’ groups, 1950 to 1989(University of New Brunswick, 2026-06) Martens, Shelby; MacDonald, HeidiThis dissertation explores the lived experience of Canadian women within four Protestant girls’ groups from the 1950s to the 1980s. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, four organisations—Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT), Girls’ Auxiliary, Calvinettes and Pioneer Girls—ran weekly after-school clubs for girls, teaching not only religion, but also cultural and social gendered expectations. While these organisations promoted official church-sanctioned goals, what girls experienced depended largely on the individual women who volunteered as leaders in their local clubs. Based on the oral history testimony of forty women as well as extensive personal and public archives, this dissertation explores the experiences of mainly rural girls and women who actively participated in their religious communities despite rising secularisation. Using space, embodiment and the history of emotions as my theoretical framework, I argue that these girls’ groups were prominent, religious, gendered, vulnerable and relational spaces. Girls and women did not just experience these varying and often overlapping spaces, they actively participated in shaping and reshaping them to fit their individual and collective needs. Hundreds of thousands of Canadian girls and women embodied these spaces, creating an influence that radiated beyond their immediate selves and into twentieth century Canadian girlhood.Item type:Item, Finding Dr. Jekyll & Catching Mr. Hyde: Revealing the molecular characters of Mmp11 paralogues in vivo in zebrafish using a novel molecular tool(University of New Brunswick, 2026-06) Trieu, Nhu Phuong Vo; Crawford, Bryan; Duffy, MichaelMatrix metalloproteinase 11 (Mmp11 or Stromelysin-3) plays paradoxical roles in mammalian tumours by promoting primary tumour growth but inhibiting metastasis. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) genome encodes two paralogous copies of this protease and may provide insight into the molecular mechanisms underpinning these distinctive roles. I created epitope-tagged over-expression constructs of both paralogues for use in the epitope-mediated MMP activation assay and reveal different development dysfunction and activation kinetics associated with their ectopic expression across different developmental stages. I determined that while Mmp11α appears to be more evolutionarily conserved, the maternally provisioned Mmp11β has likely evolved critical distinct functions through different protein structure, differential susceptibility to cleavage by proteases, distinctive expression, and up-regulation in regeneration. This study provides a system for the further study of the functional specialization of these paralogues and an avenue for resolving the paradoxical functions of this protein in mammalian systems.Item type:Item, Go with the flow: The subcellular compartmentalization of enzymatic interactions for Monoterpene Indole Alkaloid biosynthesis in Catharanthus roseus(University of New Brunswick, 2026-06) Tran, Hannah Caroline; Qu, YangVinblastine is an important chemotherapeutic drug classified as a monoterpene indole alkaloid (MIA). While its naturally produced by complex biosynthetic pathways in the flowering plant Catharanthus roseus, its supply for commercial pharmaceuticals is limited by low yields. Synthetic chemical synthesis is inefficient due to the structural complexity of MIAs, and natural abundance is low. Although recent advances have enabled de novo biosynthesis of vinblastine precursors in yeast, yields remain insufficient for commercial viability. A central question that remains in the field is how plants are organizing these biochemical reactions spatially. In this study, I use bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assays in Nicotiana benthamiana epidermal leaf cells to investigate protein-protein interactions between C. roseus enzymes in the vinblastine pathway and their subcellular localization. These findings deepen our understanding of the MIA biosynthesis spatial organization and provide insights into the pathway enzyme interactions; ultimately informing targeted bioengineering strategies to enhance therapeutic MIA production in heterologous systems.Item type:Item, A German worldview: Historical, philosophical and religious influences that shaped a people and a nation(University of New Brunswick, 2026-06) Sehl, Nicholas Joseph; Valk, John; Bell, JasonHow did elements of a German worldview in the 19th century influence the development of the German State? This thesis examines a historically situated and dynamic German worldview, presented as the dominant worldview of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to illuminate how intellectual, cultural, philosophical, and religious influences contributed to the formation of the German nation-state in 1871. While focusing on dominant intellectual and cultural currents, the study acknowledges the internal heterogeneity of the German population, including regional, religious, class-based, gendered, and ideological differences that shaped and at times contested the formation of a German worldview. This worldview is understood as a historically evolving construct, collectively expressed by those who identified as German and participated in the project of nation-building, with its boundaries defined and redefined by the events and intellectual currents of the period. Rather than treating worldview as a timeless essence, the thesis analyzes it as a fluid interpretive framework shaped by the specific intellectual, cultural, and political conditions of eighteenth and nineteenth century Germany. A worldview acts as a heuristic lens, offering a wider focus of analysis by identifying influences that span multiple fields of inquiry. This interdisciplinary study draws on history, philosophy, political theory, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Specifically, it identifies four components of a German worldview: German Intellectualism: German Idealism and Liberalism; A Particular Ontology – a German concept of the human expressed through a societal vision; the German Mythos of the Volk as self-identification; and Religion and Spirituality: traditional Christianity. By examining these components together, the thesis demonstrates how philosophical ideas, ontological assumptions, mythic narratives, and religious traditions converged to influence the intellectual foundations of the German State. This worldview lens provides a broader interpretive framework revealing how deeper cultural and intellectual forces shaped the development of the German nation-state and the identification of its people.Item type:Item, Detecting functional performance deterioration in activities of daily living using Conditional Preference Networks and Sequential Pattern Mining(University of New Brunswick, 2026-06) Kushigbor, Marian Enam Esi; Fleming, Michael; Buffett, ScottAging in place depends on maintaining the ability to perform Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), yet clinicians can miss early functional decline because assessments are infrequent, subjective, and rarely capture performance in natural settings. This thesis examines whether a skeleton-based sensing pipeline can detect subtle deterioration within an individual by comparing ADL execution under baseline and aging-simulated conditions. Two Orbbec Femto depth cameras recorded ADL trials and produced 3D skeletons with 32 joints. Temporal encoding converted joint trajectories into activity sequences for two evaluators: (1) Sequential Pattern Mining in the SCOUT codebase, which outputs confidence scores that quantify similarity to baseline, and (2) a Conditional Preference Network model of baseline movement preferences, which uses ordering queries to compute an ADL-fit score. Across no-, low-, medium-, and high-gear conditions and multiple ADLs, both evaluators reflected expected degradation with increasing gear while revealing participant- and activity-specific variability. However, frame loss and limited per-participant training data reduced sensitivity.
