identifier: Habel, André  (2010) Electrokinetic Management of Biosolids for the Inactivation of Helminth Ova.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The presumed risk to public health has led to a growing interest in the production of exceptional quality biosolids intended to contain undetectable levels of three classes of pathogens: bacteria, enteric viruses, and helminth eggs (parasitic intestinal worms). This study assessed the performance of an enhanced electrokinetic technology which permits the simultaneous dewatering, heavy metal removal and inactivation of the swine helminth, Ascaris suum, from wastewater sludge in one operational unit for the production of exceptional quality biosolids. The process is based on the electrokinetic (EK) phenomena, initiated by the introduction of direct electric current through the biosolids, preceded by a brief period of ohmic heating. A series of bench-scale tests were performed on combined primary and secondary sewage sludges obtained from the wastewater treatment plant in Auteuil, QC. Two additional tests were repeated at a pilot scale with success. The results demonstrated that the enhanced EK treatment is capable of delivering a product virtually free of viable Ascaris suum ova introduced to the conditioned sludge with a brief exposure at a temperature of 55°C. In addition, dewatering levels up to 23 % total solids (TS) and mean removal levels of over 54 %, 30 %, and 24 % for heavy metals such as Zn, Cd, and Pb, respectively, within a period of 3 days were reported. Consequently, the sanitized biosolids generated during the enhanced EK treatment process can be transformed into a high quality soil amendment that could be safely applied to agricultural lands.


identifier: Dorelli, Jeanne  (2010) Radios communautaires de Dakar: communication pour le développement et extraversion.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract:
Au lendemain de la libération des ondes au Sénégal à la fin des années 1990, les radios communautaires, issues de mouvements sociaux et associatifs, émergent. Simultanément, les politiques de développement se redéfinissent autour du « développer local », devenant de façon circonstancielle le point d’ancrage des nouvelles radios à travers des « partenariats de développement ». S’inscrivant dans la continuité de l’histoire de la radio en Afrique, une histoire commencée sous l’égide coloniale, ces radios communautaires réarticulent des pratiques culturelles teintées d’extraversion et d’ambivalence. Ayant comme source principale des entretiens effectués au cours de
l’automne 2009, ce mémoire s’attelle à explorer la réalité des radios communautaires de Dakar, la capitale du Sénégal. Plus particulièrement, il s’agit d’interroger les relations
qu’elles entretiennent avec leurs « partenaires d’appuis » afin de dévoiler les codes et pratiques du milieu. En interrogeant les rapports de pouvoir, de collaboration et
d’affirmation, ce mémoire se penchera sur les problématiques de « glocalisation » et d’ « extraversion ». Ces phénomènes propres à un local entrepris par un international seront appréhendés afin de mettre en avant les attitudes de négociations et d’appropriation des radios communautaires face au milieu du développement. Les travaux de Jean-François Bayart et Achille Mbembe appuieront notre propos pour une compréhension du milieu valorisant les acteurs et leurs modes d’action. Les réflexions méthodologiques et théoriques s’efforceront de retranscrire la complexité du milieu représenté.


identifier: Hou, Ru Cheng  (2010) An architecture for the integration of Wireless Actuation Capabilities with IP Multimedia Subsystem.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an architecture that aims at seamlessly delivering multimedia services. It enables IP multimedia services for end-user using standard Internet based protocols such as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Examples of multimedia services include presence, instant messaging, enhanced voice and video, pervasive gaming and emergency services.
Wireless actuators are small scale devices that can receive/accept instructions and act on their surrounding environment. They are broadly used in automation industry and intelligent control systems. With the rapid development of Internet and mobile telecommunication technologies, more and more actuators are being deployed in applications such as environment monitoring, home automation and health care to improve human beings’ living conditions.
Combining actuators’ actuation capabilities with IMS will certainly enable novel value added services. However, the actuator networks are application specific and provide proprietary interfaces to the external world. Integrating wireless Actuator Networks (AN) with IMS to enable actuation service to IMS end users through standard protocols and interfaces is the objective of this thesis.
There are several challenges related to this integration: First, there is no ready-to-use architecture for the integration. New functional entities and suitable protocols for actuation triggering are needed. Second, there are no actuators in the market with open interfaces to the external world, we need to find alternative solutions for the realization of the integrated architecture. Third, there is no information model for abstracting actuation command semantics and this has to be defined.
In this thesis we derive a set of requirements for the integration of AN actuation capabilities with IMS, we review and evaluate related work, and then propose a novel architecture. This architecture includes two new functional entities for IMS: The Actuation Control Function (ACF) and the Wireless Actuator Gateway (WAG). The ACF handles high level actuation requests from other applications. It acts as an intermediate component and hides the low level actuation commands from the applications. The WAG transforms high level actuation commands to low level, proprietary and actual actuation commands that can be understood and executed by actuators.
A detailed survey and evaluation of existing protocols for actuation command carrying is also provided. We define an actuation command information model to abstract the actuation triggering instructions. We implement the key components of the proposed architecture. A proof of concept prototype has been implemented using simulated robots equipped with actuators. The average end-to-end actuation delay of our architecture is evaluated through experiments with the prototype.


identifier: Hare, Amanda J.  (2010) Incidental Phrasal Verb Acquisition through Second Language Reading.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT

Incidental Phrasal Verb Acquisition through Second Language Reading

Amanda Hare

	Phrasal verbs are given focused attention by students, teachers and textbooks alike as being difficult to acquire but important for language learners to have some mastery over. This study examined the effectiveness of incidentally acquiring phrasal verbs and one-word verbs through second language reading with post-reading discussion activities. To my knowledge, except Bishop (2004), no other study has compared the acquisition of formulaic sequences with one-word items. The treatment involved reading eight one-page mystery stories with the targets built in for eight incidental written encounters; each story was followed by a discussion period to solve the mystery. During discussion students were able to ask for word meanings or generatively use the targets (both labeled as ‘negotiation’). All discussions were recorded and later analyzed. Measures administered after treatment found eight unique textual exposures plus discussion lead to gains that were significant for phrasal verbs and one-word verbs alike. Differences in mean learning gains for the two types of verb were not statistically significant. Negotiation was able to predict both accurate and inaccurate learning; the inaccurate learning may have represented false confidence gained through negotiation; hence teachers need to be sure the correct meaning of target words are acquired through discussion. Recommendations for future research and pedagogical implications are also included. Overall, phrasal verbs may not be as difficult to learn as previously thought; in this study, they were learned as effectively as one-word verbs through eight or more incidental exposures through reading with negotiation.


identifier: Adhikari, Samir N.  (1975) Performance evaluation of multiprogrammed systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Mate-Ross, Phyllis  (1973) Differential interfering effects of observational learning in boys and girls.  Masters thesis, Sir George Williams University.


identifier: Werden, Gary  (1974) Papers in the Department of English.  Masters thesis, Sir George Williams University.

title: Papers in the Department of English


identifier: Oladimeji, Adebayo Amusa  (1973) Effects of dietary methoxychlor on brook trout fed at different rates.  Masters thesis, Sir George Williams University.


identifier: Bourget, Virginia  (1990) Social skill and self-competence in overweight and normal-weight adolescents.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Gareau, Jean-Mathieu  (2010) PREDICTING ACQUIRING FIRMS: A NEW DISCOVERY FROM THE GROWTH-RESOURCE IMBALANCE HYPOTHESIS.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The growth-resources hypothesis has been widely used empirically to develop models to predict takeover targets. This hypothesis states that firms with low (high) growth and high (low) resources make good potential targets. In this thesis I test this hypothesis in the context of predicting future acquirers. Using binary, multinomial and two-step logit models, I document that a firm’s growth is actually the main factor leading to acquisitions, contrary to the generally accepted view that a firm’s cash position is one of the primary factors associated with future acquisition activity. As such, the growth-resources imbalance hypothesis is partly validated: high growth-low resources firms are the most likely to make a bid while low growth-high resource firms which were expected to be the most likely to acquire, are, in fact, the least likely to take over other firms. These results are robust to different measures of the imbalance variables and are consistent with the market timing theory. In a hold out sample, I find that the binary logit models show higher prediction accuracy than the multinomial logit models.


identifier: Kakoli, Sarah Tahsin Noor  (2011) Negative skin friction induced on piles in collapsible soils due to inundation.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Collapsible soils experience significant volume decrease due to the increase of soil moisture content, with or without an increase in the in-situ stress level. These soils form large parts of North and South America, Eastern Europe, China, Central Asia, Northern and Southern Africa, Russia, Egyptian western dessert, and the continuous deposit from North China to South-East England. As human activities continue to increase in these regions, geotechnical engineers must learn how to deal with these problematic soils. Foundations on collapsible soils suffer from sudden settlement, which may contribute to serious damage or catastrophic failure due to inundation. For relatively light structures, the use of shallow foundations combined with soil replacement or treatment may constitute economical designs. For heavy structures, pile is perhaps the best of alternative available types of foundation.

This subject of significant practical interest has received little attention from the researchers mainly due to the complexity in conducting experimental study. Furthermore, numerical modeling is difficult at best due to the complexity associated in describing the behavior of collapsible soil during inundation. Analytical modeling is not suitable in this respect, as soil grains in collapsible soil undergo radical rearrangements during inundation. In the literature, no design theory can be found to predict the negative skin friction on pile foundation due to inundation of collapsible soil.

Present study presents a numerical model, which is capable to incorporate the effect of inundation of collapsible soil on an axially loaded vertical pile. It employs the theories of unsaturated soil mechanics; including the Soil-Water Characteristic Curve (SWCC) to include the effect of soil suction reduction resulted from the progressive inundation, from two different aspects: change in soil properties, and irrecoverable soil volume change. The proposed numerical model is used to predict negative skin friction exerted on the pile during inundation of collapsible soil surrounding the pile. The numerical model is validated by comparing the numerical results and the experimental data from the literature. Moreover, another numerical modeling procedure is also proposed to design the pile (i.e., length and diameter) in collapsible soil, provided that the indirect load due to negative skin friction is known. An extensive numerical investigation is carried out to identify the parameters (e.g., collapse potential, radius of wetting, pile roughness, etc.) influencing the negative skin friction acting on a pile during inundation. Based on the numerical results, analytical models that can be directly used to predict the indirect load due to negative skin friction are established for both directions (i.e., from bottom and top) of inundation.

Design procedures that can provide adequate positive skin friction and pile capacity in accommodating indirect load due to negative skin friction, are proposed to design the length and diameter of a single pile in collapsible soil subjected to inundation. Present study is useful in reductions in the costs of construction, litigation and remediation in geotechnical engineering practice.


identifier: Jackson, Christopher  (2010) Differences in antipredator behaviour between wild and hatchery-reared juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Captive rearing may elicit environmental or genetically-based changes to salmonid antipredator behaviour, which may reduce its survival when released into the wild. While this subject has received considerable attention, there has been little research using fish reared for a short period of time (2 generations or less of captive breeding).  In addition, few studies have tested wild-caught and hatchery-reared fish originating from the same population and none have done so under natural conditions.  Hence, I conducted a semi-natural field study comparing the antipredator behaviour of wild-caught, F1 (offspring of wild-caught adults) with that of F2 (second generation) hatchery-reared juvenile Atlantic salmon (from the same source population) to standardized predation cues.  Wild-caught salmon exhibited strong antipredator responses to the predation threat, while F1 and F2 salmon showed weaker responses.  Interestingly, F1 salmon showed stronger responses than F2 salmon. The observation that wild-caught and F2 salmon were consistently different supports the hypothesis that even one full generation of hatchery rearing may be sufficient to select for maladaptive responses to predators under natural conditions.  The observation that F1 salmon were intermediate to wild-caught and F2 salmon suggests that individual experience may also play a significant role on the observed reduced antipredator response.  Given the current decline of many salmonid populations across North America and the controversy regarding the effectiveness of hatchery programs for conservation use, the results of this study suggest that minimizing hatchery time may reduce the behavioural differences between wild and hatchery-reared fishes.


identifier: Mishra, Anik  (2011) Automated AMF Configuration Difference Generation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Many domains require computer clusters to meet clients’ service level expectations. As cluster size increases, component failure becomes more likely. Rapid failure recovery is required to maintain high availability. The SA Forum has created specifications enabling management of multi-vendor solutions. These long-lived systems require tailored upgrade campaigns to keep their configuration up-to-date.
Passed works on SA Forum’s Availability Management Framework (AMF) have created an automated AMF configuration generator and upgrade campaign generator. However, to generate an upgrade campaign for an already configured cluster based on a new target configuration, a configuration difference generator is needed. Furthermore, while Distinguished Names (DNs) usually uniquely identify object in a configuration, configuration generators do not guarantee that DNs in the new configuration will match. DN modification is not possible in a system without object replacement, causing service loss. Non-DN based inter-configuration object association is needed to restore old DNs.
Our objective is to devise a technique to perform difference generation with limited knowledge of DNs and to find what data is needed to achieve this. To accomplish this, we analyse the AMF configuration model, then propose assumptions in a top down approach based on maintaining service availability during upgrade.
We propose a two phase technique that first associates objects in-between configurations and then outputs the differences. We have implemented a tool that implements this technique on the Eclipse Platform and integrates with MAGIC’s Automated Upgrade Campaign Generator. We then present a case study based on the PHASE example.


identifier: Dunn, Brian J.  (2010) Human hedonic experience during thermal alliesthesia: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The primary aim of the present experiment was to distinguish and map the hemodynamic
correlates of hedonic experience using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
To accomplish this, we exploited a functional distinction between thermosensory
perception and hedonic valuation. We used a water-perfused suit, both to deviate core
temperature and to deliver thermal stimulation to the skin. We acquired two fMRI scans
of each participant, under opposite core temperature deviations, in a single experimental
session. During each scan we alternated the temperature of the circulating water in the
suit from hot to cold every 2.25 minutes, for 18 minutes. Participants rated their thermal
comfort and the suit temperature on 11-point Likert scales during alternating nine-second
epochs. The critical feature of our design is that the hedonic sequence was the same in the
two scans whereas the sequence of peripheral thermal stimuli and the core temperature
deviations were opposite. We present behavioral evidence that the opposite sequences of
thermal stimuli induced a common pattern of hedonic experience. Concurrent hedonic
ratings tracked the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal recorded from
spatially conjoint volume elements in pairs of scans from the same individuals. In cross
subject mixed effects analyses, we grouped the functional scans acquired under each core
temperature deviation. We then used a conjunction analysis of the group statistical maps to
identify common hemodynamic correlates of the pattern of hedonic experience in bothscans.
Spatially conjoint (i.e., co-localized) BOLD signal correlates of the hedonic ratings were
observed in bilateral subregions of the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex (OMPFC). A second
analysis, based on a normative model of hedonic response, yielded spatially conjoint BOLD
signal correlates in a more broadly distributed area of the OMPFC,including the subgenual
cingulate and bilateral temporal poles.


identifier: Mirzaei Ahranjani, Parham  (2010) Systematic Simulation Method to Quantify and Control Pedestrian Comfort and Exposure during Urban Heat Island.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
An urban heat island (UHI) originates with the increase of energy consumption and deforestation within urban areas. In addition to heat related illness and energy consumption increase, the UHI also has a mutual effect on pollution dispersion, mostly emitted from vehicular and industrial sources.
Many cities recently started to apply mitigation protocols by increasing tree planting and vegetation inside urban areas. A few cities also promoted higher-albedo materials for urban surfaces. Moreover, guidelines are developed to design an appropriate street canyon and building layout to naturally ventilate urban areas. However, the UHI intensity varies in different street canyons and climates. Thus, the aforementioned mitigation technologies are not always practical or economical to reduce energy consumption and keep pedestrian comfort and exposure (PCE) in the desired range.
The main goal of this research is to propose a systematic approach, PCE-algorithm, to quantify the level of PCE inside a street canyon before and after its construction. This approach is also capable of evaluating the possible advantages of passive mitigation strategies using a frequency of occurrence concept. This concept assesses the probability
iv
of having acceptable comfort indices within the street canyon. For this purpose, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is defined around the investigated street canyon. This model simulates the significant contributing parameters on UHI formation, including solar radiation, storage heat, latent heat, and sensible heat.
Moreover, an adaptive novel strategy, pedestrian ventilation system (PVS), is proposed in this research to control PCE of the target street canyon. Similar to the function of a building mechanical ventilation system, the PVS interactively controls PCE in outdoor spaces. The PVS employs exhausting and/or supplying fans installed in adjacent buildings of the street canyon in order to achieve an acceptable PCE, especially when passive strategies fail to have a considerable effect.
A case study of a street canyon, located in Montreal, is also considered to investigate the performance of the proposed algorithm. After an evaluation of PCE, the effect of the passive mitigation strategies is investigated. Furthermore, it is shown that the PVS can control and improve PCE, especially where severe UHI occurs.


identifier: Huang, Kuo Cheng  (2011) Traffic Simulation Model for Urban Networks: CTM-URBAN.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

format: text text

abstract: Congestion on urban transportation networks around the world is frequently encountered and its economic and environmental footprint cannot be ignored. One of the solutions used to alleviate this problem is deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The effectiveness of ITS solutions to manage traffic demand more efficiently relies heavily on accurate travel time prediction, which is a difficult task to achieve using currently available simulation methods. This study proposes an urban network simulation model named CTM-URBAN, a modified version of the Cell Transmission Method (CTM) which was originally developed to simulate highway traffic. CTM-URBAN is a simple and versatile simulation framework designed to simulate more realistically traffic flows in an urban network with various traffic control devices.  CTM-URBAN allows building, calibrating, and maintaining a large simulation network with a minimum of effort. A case study is presented to demonstrate that CTM-URBAN is able to predict travel time through signal-controlled intersections more accurately than the original CTM based on comparison with results from a microscopic simulator.


identifier: Habibian, Maryam  (2011) Oxygen- and Nitrogen-Group Transfers in Aryl-Nitroso Iron Complexes.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Transition metal complexes containing imido ligands (M=NR) are an important class of coordination compounds implicated in nitrogen-group-transfer reactions such as aziridination. The present thesis investigates the formation of iron-imido complexes via deoxygenation of iron-nitroso complexes that have a nitroso (RN=O) functionality tethered to their main ligand framework. This process is at the heart of important oxygen-atom- transfer (OAT) reactions such as the epoxidation of alkenes or the hydroxylation of organic substrates.
For this purpose, the new pentadentate monoanionic ligand BPAEBNHOH was synthesized and disproportionated by Fe(II) salts to yield N-bonded monomeric iron-nitroso complexes [Fe(II)BPAEBNO(OAc)] (1) and [Fe(II)BPAEBNO(MeCN)](OTf) (2) as well as the iron-amine complex [Fe(II)BPAEBNH2(OAc)]. These complexes were characterized by X-ray crystallography and spectroscopic techniques. Complexes (1) and (2) were found to be able to perform OAT to phosphine reagents (PR3) in moderate to high yields. Although not isolated, iron-iminophosphorane (M−N=PR3) compounds were identified as the main products of the reaction. Detailed kinetic and mechanistic studies of this reaction suggest that the mechanism does not involve a simple rate law. Control
experiments and comparisons with the literature suggest that the mechanism involves the replacement of acetate and acetonitrile ligands with a phosphine ligand, before the nitroso group is deoxygenated. These results suggest the formation of an iron-imido intermediate, prior to its trapping by phosphine reagents.


identifier: Latulippe, Lyne  (2011) Ideas and the OECD: Creating synergy and organizing diffusion of bilateral tax treaty.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The intensive spread of bilateral tax treaty (“BTT”) based on a standard form developed for OECD member countries in non-OECD member countries (“non-members”) in the 1990s leads to the overarching questions “What are the conditions allowing an idea to influence policy adoption in diverse national settings, how are these conditions created and by whom?”  The main theoretical argument is that an approach which gives ideas a fundamental role but considers also actors and mechanisms of idea diffusion appropriately explains policy adoption. The empirical analysis strongly demonstrates that the OECD has been central in creating the necessary conditions for the idea of BTT to influence non-members in the 1990s.

	The theoretical framework is mostly informed by constructivist arguments. However, in order to provide a complete explanation, the dissertation recognizes the complementarity of findings from a wider range of approaches dealing with ideas and from diffusion literature. The framework offers an innovative and comprehensive way of addressing the necessary conditions for ideas to be influential. First, the harmonious combination or compatibility (“synergy”) existing or created between a policy, a paradigm, a problem and a public sentiment can explain why an idea is more influential than another.  Second, the proactive and purposeful promotion of an idea and its synergy through direct and indirect means (“strategic diffusion”) is essential to explain a policy adoption.

	To enhance the comprehension of the phenomenon, the dissertation provides an exclusive descriptive analysis of BTT focusing on what is spreading, to which non-member countries, how and when. In addition, it is demonstrated that interests alone do not explain the puzzle and that the OECD is likely to have played an important role to explain the puzzle.

	The dissertation uses mixed method to provide strong evidence verifying the hypothesis formulated based on the theoretical framework. First, to determine if and how the OECD was involved in the process of synergy and strategic diffusion, a case study addresses the activities of the OECD with regards to BTT and its promotion to non-members and confirms the hypothesis.  Second, a quantitative analysis is done to further the evidence that the OECD’s involvement is related to this spread of BTTs. A correlation analysis establishes that the expansion of BTT networks in non-members in the 1990s is associated to contacts these countries had with the OECD. Furthermore, the results of an event-history analysis confirm that prior contacts with the organization increase the likelihood of signing a first BTT in subsequent years.


identifier: Rajinia, Elmira  (2011) Estimation of the Scope of Change Propagation in Object- Oriented Programs.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
When minor modifications need to be made in an object-oriented computer program, they often incur further more changes due to presence of dependency in the codes and the
program structure. Yet, to accommodate the required change, there can also be more than one option to carry out the initial modifications. To select the modification option in this context, this thesis proposes a systematic approach to estimate the scope of change propagation of an object-oriented program given some initial modifications.
The present Master’s thesis seeks to develop an approach to predict the scope of propagated change through the entities of object-oriented software due to a modification in the software. Despite the previous works that just studied the change propagation in object oriented programs from the aspect of high level entities like classes or from the
aspect of UML diagrams, we have studied the finer entities of the object oriented program and the relationships among them. In this regard, this thesis has focused on the
calculation of probability of change propagation between each two specific types of entities through the analysis of dependency types among the fundamental entities of
object-oriented program and categorization of existing dependencies between each couple of entities. Then, we have defined the priority number concept as a representative scale for the scope of change propagation in software based on the probability rules.
The strategy is to first capture the dependency relationships of the entities, pertaining to an object-oriented program via the matrix representation. In this work, we have used Design Structure Matrix to capture and trace dependency among software’s entities.
Based on this matrix-based model, the priority number method is proposed and applied to estimate the scope of change propagation by assuming some initial modifications. The core of this method is to estimate the chance of affecting other program entities due to some modified entities and the matrix structure.
Finally, the obtained results from a case study have been tested to validate the effectiveness of the change propagation probability numbers and priority number
concept.


identifier: Salamati Mashhad, Negin  (2010) Investigation of Activated Sludge Properties under Different Electrical Field and in the Presence of Calcium.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the impact of direct current (DC) application on activated sludge (AS) properties. A control reactor without an electrical field and a series of 1.5L batch reactors were filled with activated sludge at two levels of mixed liquor suspended solid concentrations (LR MLSS: 5000-7000 mg/L and HR MLSS: 10000-12000 mg/L) and were subjected to four electrical modes (continuous, 5ON:5OFF, 5ON:10OFF and 5ON:15OFF) for 48 hours. Experiments were performed for both AS alone and AS mixed with different concentrations of calcium salt (250 and 750 mg/L). The sludge volume index (SVI), time to filtration (TTF), particle sizes, specific oxygen consumption rate, soluble microbial products (SMP) and phosphate concentrations were measured before and after the experiments. Designed reactors’ parameters permitted the microorganisms to preserve their bioactivity. Results showed that the continuous electrical mode achieved the highest reduction in SVI. At all electrical modes, over 75% reduction in phosphate concentration was achieved. For most of the AS properties, the impact of EC at LR MLSS was higher than that at HR MLSS. A longer exposure time to DC resulted in smaller particle sizes. As the exposure time to DC decreased, the amount of SMP deposited on the anode surface increased. More calcium was deposited on the cathode surface at a longer exposure time. Furthermore, the addition of 250 mg Ca2+/L to AS, in the absence of an electrical field, resulted in 33% and 63 % higher SMP and phosphate removal efficiency. The results can be applied to better control electrocoagulation processes within various wastewater treatment system including MBR and SMEBR.


identifier: Déry-Obin, Tanya  (2011) Résistances et adhésions à la « nation » : Une analyse discursive de la tétralogie Le Sang des promesses de Wajdi Mouawad.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
RÉSUMÉ

Résistances et adhésions à la « nation » : Une analyse discursive de la tétralogie Le Sang des promesses de Wajdi Mouawad

Tanya Déry-Obin

Ce mémoire de maîtrise analyse les inscriptions discursives des relations transnationales des pièces de théâtre de la tétralogie Le sang des promesses du dramaturge Wajdi Mouawad, composée de Littoral (1997), Incendies (2003), Forêts (2006) et Ciels (2009). Cette analyse est effectuée dans l’objectif de poser un regard critique sur les manières dont les représentations culturelles réfléchissent aux relations qui sont construites entre les populations à travers le concept de « nation ». Elle expose comment les pièces de théâtre, bien qu’étant les œuvres singulières d’un individu particulier, posent un regard, et imposent un discours, sur le monde qu’elles représentent.
Ce mémoire met en lumière le fonctionnement rhétorique des pièces à l’étude tout en identifiant la scène d’énonciation qui rend légitime le propos de l’auteur. Wajdi Mouawad, actif dans un désir d’intervention sur la scène publique, articule un discours sur l’engagement artistique tout en mettant en scène des pièces qui, par leur appel à des émotions tragiques, provoquent de fortes réactions chez le spectateur. De plus, le créateur adopte un positionnement d’apatride qui échappe à la doxa des littératures nationales. Il s’adresse à des Québécois tout en présentant des actions et des personnages migrants, libanais, québécois, français, complexifiant par ce fait même la relation d’altérité que les spectateurs éprouvent face à l’action scénique. L’étude de ces divers positionnements  permet de déterminer comment le discours de cet auteur qui semble échapper à toutes les inscriptions nationales participe néanmoins à la construction de l’objet discursif qu’est la « nation ».

ABSTRACT

Resistance and adhesion to the ‘nation’: An analysis of discourse in the tetralogy
Le Sang des promesses by Wajdi Mouawad

Tanya Déry-Obin

This master’s thesis analyses the discursive constructions of the transnational relationships which are developed in the plays of the tetralogy Le sang des promesses by playwright Wajdi Mouawad, which includes Littoral (1997), Incendies (2003), Forêts (2006), and Ciels (2009). This analysis is conducted with the objective of casting a critical eye on the ways in which cultural representations reflect upon relationships built between populations through the concept of ‘nation’. It exposes how plays, in so far as they are singular works of a particular individual, are the result of a singular gaze and impose a discourse on the world they represent.
This thesis examines the rhetorical functions of discourse in the four plays from the scene of enunciation legitimizing the author’s positions. Wajdi Mouawad, active in his desire to intervene in the public arena, promotes a discourse of artistic advocacy while setting to stage plays which, through their evocation of tragic emotions, provoke catharsis in the spectator. Furthermore, the creator adopts the stance of the nation-less, thereby escaping regulating conventions of nation. The author addresses Québécois audiences with his presentation of actions and characters of Lebanese, Québécois, and French migrants to various countries, thereby problematizing the spectators’ relationship with otherness. The study of these different discursive tropes enables us to understand how this author’s discourse, which seems to escape all national combinations, nevertheless contributes to the construction of the discursive object which is the ‘nation’.


identifier: Liu, Tingting  (2010) Institutional Investor Protection and Political Uncertainty: Evidence from Cycles of Investment and Elections.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Previous literature shows that political uncertainty surrounding elections affects corporate investment decisions. Considering the impact of legal institutions that protect investors, we conjecture that well-functioning institutional investor protection would help smooth the negative impact of political uncertainty on corporate investments. In doing so, we collected a sample in 40 countries from 1981 to 2009. We find that firms reduce investment expenditures in election years, but increase investment expenditures in the following years controlling for firm characteristics and economic conditions. This finding suggests that political uncertainty generates cycles in investment expenditures in election years, which is consistent with previous studies. Moreover, we find that there is a positive relationship between legal investor protection and investment expenditures. In addition, the interaction of legal investor protection and the election dummy is significantly positively related to firms’ investments, suggesting that legal investor protection helps smooth the negative effect of political uncertainty on corporate investments during election years. Our results are robust to alternative measures. We also find that corporate investments positively related to cash flows, profitability, growth opportunities, and the overall economic development of a country.


identifier: Rayburn, Geoffrey  (2011) This is Whose Story? A Re-evaluation of John Millington Synge's Primitivism in The Aran Islands.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis considers how the Anglo-Irish writer John Millington Synge idealizes primitive life in his seminal work and travelogue, The Aran Islands.  I discuss how Synge's representation of the Aran Islands – three islands off the west coast of Ireland, widely considered a repository of  ancient Irish culture – finds its model in both a pastoral conception of primitive cultures found in classical and Revivalist literature, and in the evolutionist thinking of late nineteenth century anthropology.  The result is a hybrid cultural representation of a specific Irish culture area that at once idealizes the primitive, and at the same time raises alarms to its inconsistency.  Chapter one discusses Aran primitivism – or, the idealization of the primitive life Synge envisioned on the islands – as a genre of literature as well as a practice of anthropology, in a summation of the historical, literary, scientific and political influences behind Synge's propensity to empathize with the Aran community's pre-modern sociocultural values.  I also show how Synge's primitivism has influenced other representations of Aran written by islanders themselves.  In chapter two, my analysis of The Aran Islands illustrates how weather and gender determine Synge's representation of Aran as either a pastoral culture area of community and environmental congeniality, or as what I call a prototypical culture area where the savage elements of Aran life are depicted.  In chapter three, I argue that Synge's primitivism ultimately begins to unravel when he transcribes the islanders' stories and letters into The Aran Islands, thereby giving the islanders opportunities to negotiate the production of their own culture with the Revivalist author.


identifier: Landry, Wendy  (2011) How Crafts Matter: Mapping the Terrain of Crafts Study.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Crafts in Canada have persisted and grown over the past century, despite being marginalised by industrialism and globalism.  Crafts practice and the education of craftspeople has matured into a broad, expressive, cultural phenomenon.  This has been accompanied by the blossoming of scholarship directed at illuminating the essential and distinctive character of crafts practices and objects.  This growth has been supported in part by the relationship of crafts to creative visual arts production in the realms of fine arts and design.  However, assimilation into the category of visual arts has distorted how crafts activity is understood, valued, and taught.  In crafts degree programmes in Canada’s four independent visual arts schools, the legitimate interests of craftspeople in the particular character, challenges, and import of their practices has been undermined by a dominant visual arts paradigm that has imposed ill-fitting curricula structures based on flawed underlying assumptions about crafts as a contemporary art form.
This thesis examines the literature pertaining to crafts and its scholarship. It also provides a valuable portrayal of the historical and current situation of post-secondary professional crafts education at the degree level in the four Canadian art schools offering Bachelor degree in crafts education—Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Alberta College of Art and Design, Ontario College of Art and Design University, and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University.  It then offers a practitioner’s perspective of the crafts world and the nature of crafting activity and creation.  Finally it makes an impassioned plea for more concerted efforts to develop crafts scholars and scholarship, and for a well-grounded theoretical basis on which to base an appropriate craft education system tailored to the concerns of the contemporary crafts world.  To further this goal, it proposes a framework based on material culture approaches to foster discussion and guide future developments and improvements in crafts education.


identifier: Islam, Mohiul  (2011) Modeling the Evolution of Mimicry.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Modeling the Evolution of Mimicry

abstract: A novel agent based, artificial life model, for the evolution of mimicry is presented. This model is a predator-prey co-evolution scenario where pattern representation phenotype is simulated with Cellular Automata, while behaviors of pattern recognition is configured with Hopfield Network. A visual three dimensional toroidal cube is used to construct a universe in which agents have complete freedom of mobility, genetic representation of behavior and reproduction capability to evolve new behaviors in successive generations. These agents are classified into categories of predator and prey species. Genome of prey species control their mobility and palatability, while 2D Cellular Automata (CA) is used to represent a pattern, where the rule to generate the CA is also genetically represented. Through evolution, successive generations of prey species develop new patterns to represent them both visually and to the predators. Predators are agents with the primary purpose of providing selection pressure for the evolution of mimicry. They are equipped with Hopfield Network memory to recognize new CA pattern and make intelligent decisions to consume the prey based on their level of palatability. Using the above construction of ideas, successful emulation of the natural process of mimicry is achieved. Also complex behavior pattern of Batesian and Mullerian mimicry is simulated and studied.


identifier: Mohammad, Mubarak Sami  (2009) A Formal Component-Based Software Engineering Approach For Developing Trustworty Systems.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Software systems are increasingly becoming ubiquitous, affecting the way we experience the world. Embedded software systems, especially those used in smart devices, have become
an essential constituent of the technological infrastructure of modern societies. Such systems, in order to be trusted in society, must be proved to be trustworthy. Trustworthiness
is a composite non-functional property that implies safety, timeliness, security, availability, and reliability. This thesis is a contribution to a rigorous development of systems in which trustworthiness property can be specified and formally verified.

Developing trustworthy software systems that are complex and used by a large heterogeneous population of users is a challenging task. The component-based software engineering
(CBSE) paradigm can provide an effective solution to address these challenges. However, none of the current component-based approaches can be used as is, because all of
them lack the essential requirements for constructing trustworthy systems. The three contributions made in this thesis are intended to add to the expressive power needed to raise CBSE practices to a rigorous level for constructing formally verifiable trustworthy systems.

The first contribution of the thesis is a formal definition of the trustworthy component model. The trustworthiness quality attributes are introduced as first class structural
elements. The behavior of a component is automatically generated as an extended timed automata. A model checking technique is used to verify the properties of trustworthiness. A composition theory that preserves the properties of trustworthiness in a composition is presented.

Conventional software engineering development processes are not suitable either for developing component-based systems or for developing trustworthy systems. In order to
develop a component-based trustworthy system, the development process must be reuseoriented,component-oriented, and must integrate formal languages and rigorous methods in all phases of system life-cycle. The second contribution of the thesis is a software engineering
process model that consists of several parallel tracks of activities including component development, component assessment, component reuse, and component-based system
development. The central concern in all activities of this process is ensuring trustworthiness.

The third and final contribution of the thesis is a development framework with a comprehensive set of tools supporting the spectrum of formal development activity from modeling to deployment.

The proposed approach has been applied to several case studies in the domains of component-based development and safety-critical systems. The experience from the case
studies confirms that the approach is suitable for developing large and complex trustworthy systems.


identifier: Jordan, Randolph  (2010) The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation examines a set of films that deal with narrative issues of ecology using innovative formal approaches to sound/image relationships. The guiding concept for these analyses is "schizophonia": a term coined by R. Murray Schafer to refer to the split between sound and source by electroacoustical transmission, an aspect of modern soundscapes that Schafer ties to increasing alienation of the people that live within schizophonic environments. Although problematic in its implied anti-technological bias, I argue that the term schizophonia can be used as an analytical tool for addressing how sound in film can evoke ecological issues pertaining to alienation. I re-cast the “split” between sound and source to the technical division between sound and image inherent to sound cinema. This technical split, although conventionally obscured, informs the ideologies that govern approaches to synchronization. Thus I address sound/image relationships in film by way of acknowledging their separation, a strategy that I refer to as audiovisual ecology.

I argue that schizophonia is best understood as the subjective experience of mediation, and I develop the idea of environmental engagement as the awareness of mediation that allows for the synchronization between interior psychological experience and the external world. My chosen films present characters in various stages of achieving this environmental synchronization, developing themes of alienation and engagement through reflexive approaches to audiovisual synchronization that foreground the mediation at work between sound and image. The films under discussion are: Jacques Tati’s PLAY TIME (1967); Andrei Tarkovsky’s STALKER (1979); Peter Mettler’s PICTURE OF LIGHT (1994); Gus Van Sant’s ELEPHANT (2003) and LAST DAYS (2005); and the films of Sogo Ishii (1976-2005). In my analyses I bring the field of soundscape research to bear on film sound theory, exposing productive points of intersection through which established terms in film studies are enriched through comparison with relevant concepts from acoustic ecology. I argue that these films eschew conventions of synchronicity in order to emphasize the schizophonic nature of sound cinema, engendering a form of audience engagement that I call reflective audioviewing in which schizophonic experience becomes a model for understanding sound/image relationships in the cinema anew.


identifier: Parsekhian, Vasken  (2010) Investigating the role of ligand binding residues in the Escherichia coli phosphopantetheinyl transferase EntD.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Kabir, Abu Syed Humaun  (2011) Nd:YAG Laser Welding of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Nd:YAG Laser Welding of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy

abstract: Butt joints of Ti-6Al-4V alloy sheets with two thicknesses (3.175 and 5.08 mm) are laser welded using a high power continuous wave Nd:YAG laser welding machine with or without the use of filler wires. Laser processing parameters investigated include laser power (2 – 4 kW), welding speed (0.75 – 7.5 m/min), joint gap (0 – 0.6 mm) and defocusing distance (-1 mm and -2 mm). Two post-weld heat treatments (i.e. stress relief annealing, solution treatment and aging) are investigated and compared with the as-welded condition. Although some welding defects such as underfill and porosity have been observed, high quality welds can be obtained using a high power Nd:YAG laser. Underfill defect is found to increase but the porosity area decreases with increasing welding speed. The use of the filler wire decreases the underfill defect. However, the porosity area increases with increasing joint gap. The hardness is maximum in the fusion zone (FZ) followed by a sharp decrease in the heat affected zone (HAZ) to the base metal (BM). The low temperature annealing process increases the hardness of the fusion zone but the combination of the high temperature solution treatment followed by aging decreases the fusion zone hardness almost to the base metal values. Tensile testing shows that the joint efficiency varies between 95 and 105 %. The porosity and underfill are the two main defects for failure in the FZ and HAZ, respectively. The local mechanical properties determined by digital image correlation (DIC) technique show that the elastic modulus and yield stress are maximum in the FZ and minimum in the HAZ. The lowest plastic strain at fracture is obtained in the FZ.


identifier: Colon, Brianne  (2011) ‘Put up de Cloaks!’: The Embodied Experience of Female Spectatorship in Seventeenth-Century Theatre.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis delves into the social and material experience of female spectatorship in seventeenth-century theatre.  Throughout the seventeenth-century, a woman compromised her sexuality each time she attended a performance through her alignment with the prostitutes operating in the audience and the bawdy representations of herself onstage.  By positioning herself alongside other female spectators in the audience and making them privy to her physical and emotional needs, she was able to minimize the threat the theatre posed to her sexual modesty and obtain a degree of privacy within the multiple and intersecting lines of sight in the playhouse.  With the help of masks, fabric, disguises and female-female discourse, women established private codes of communication within the theatre and were able to shape themselves accordingly before the theatrical gaze.  As the century progressed and female sexuality became increasingly mediated through the spectacle of the actress onstage, women grew all the more dependent on each other’s company within the theatre and learned to exploit this vulnerability to their own ends.  Using meta-theatrical episodes from Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, James Shirley, Margaret Cavendish, William D’Avenant, Thomas Shadwell and John Dennis, this thesis charts the trajectory of female sociability in the theatre, focusing on Renaissance, Caroline and Restoration drama.  It shows that the contemporary theatre may position women alongside one another in the restroom queue but women’s alliances with each other’s bodies at the playhouse have deep roots in seventeenth-century theatre.


identifier: Phillips, Morgan  (2010) Understanding Resilience Through Revitalizing Traditional Ways of Healing in a Kanienkehaka Community.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Despite colonization attempts at assimilation, the Kanien’kehá:ka at Kahnawake have been able to keep an extraordinary amount of culture and its teachings relatively intact. Recent discourse on Aboriginal resilience research has clearly shown that despite challenges and adversity, traditional methods of healing have persevered. Revitalization efforts of language, culture and traditional teachings are growing stronger and are contributing to the betterment of Indigenous communities. Contemporary research involving Indigenous mental health largely includes resilience, resurgence and the renewal of Indigenous traditional healing practices that combine both Indigenous healing methods with mainstream society’s psychological approaches offering more treatment choices amongst Canada’s Indigenous populations. There are challenges though. My thesis focuses on understandings of resilience through the revitalization of traditional ways of healing within Kahnawake’s public health and social services organizations. This qualitative research offers an insider’s anthropological view on Indigenous perspectives of healing and wellness practices around existing public health services, and that of traditional healers themselves. As an Indigenous researcher, I offer my own perspectives of healing through the sharing of my healing journey. While it has been suggested that integrating traditional ways of healing with mainstream Western approaches creates better choice, it must be said that the two systems can be most effective if they are recognized as parallel systems complementing each other.


identifier: Conklin, James  (2009) Meaning-making dynamics within and across workgroups : an inquiry into the creation and movement of usable knowledge in a long-term care facility in Ontario.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This dissertation reports the results of a qualitative investigation of the meaning-making patterns that occur in a group of caregivers in a long-term care home. The research design included an ethnographic component to reveal the overall meaning-making dynamic in the site, and a case study focusing on a specific improvement initiative. Data was gathered over a three month period through observation, interviews, and documents. Data analysis included the creation of analytic memos, categorizing and theming, and the development of a meaning-making map to depict systematic interactions. The findings suggest that research participants have developed systemic patterns of meaning making that allow them to create experiences of coherence, purpose, identity, and competence. Eight meaning-making themes emerge from the analysis to reveal a workplace where emphasis is placed on immediate concerns and priorities, and where long-term planning and change are problematic. Caregivers begin each day by creating a coherent picture of their workplace, and they engage in brief, pragmatic interactions throughout the day to maintain their shared understanding of the unfolding context around them. Reflection upon the themes allows for the construction of a meaning-making map, which shows how knowledge of the floor (the residents who live on the floor, the staff who work there, the procedures for carrying out the work, and the physical layout and location of key resources) allows staff to accomplish tasks, and how it simultaneously limits their ability to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the work and the quality of life of residents. This study confirms previous research and policy reports that describe Canada's long-term care workplaces as highly stressed. The study also supports the contention that strategies to implement a one-way transfer of external knowledge into frontline practices will confront stubborn barriers, and that knowledge moves through processes of exchange--through relationships and interactions--rather than transfer. This inquiry extends the work of organizational researchers and theorists who have attempted to reveal the dynamics of collective learning and sensemaking in workgroups. The practical implications of this study include the importance of using existing interaction patterns as a vehicle for introducing new ideas and practices into long-term care homes, and the advisability of considering whether current long-term care staffing levels are adequate.


identifier: Fadel, Waseem  (2010) Techniques for the Abstraction of System Call Traces to Facilitate the Understanding of the Behavioural Aspects of the Linux Kernel.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Understanding the dynamic aspects of the Linux kernel can help in a number of software engineering activities including maintenance and program comprehension, performance analysis, and most recently security.
Dynamic analysis of the Linux kernel is accomplished by instrumenting the kernel and studying the generated traces. However, the major concerns that developers face when using dynamic analysis tools are the large size of the generated traces, and the low-level nature of their events.
In this thesis, we apply pattern detection and utility removal techniques on low-level system call traces generated from the Linux kernel. As a result, we obtain high-level abstracted traces that are more compact and readable, while still preserving the system main behaviour.
We apply our techniques to five different systems running on the Linux kernel and assess the effectiveness of our approach in terms of quantity where we measure the compression ratio and in terms of quality where we study how the high-level abstractions can convey more meaningful information about the program being traced than low-level system call traces.


identifier: Péron, Marie  (2010) Culture Warriors: Education and Awareness at the Inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial, organized by National Gallery of Australia, 2007-2009.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis discusses the inaugural National Indigenous Art Triennial: Culture Warriors organized and hosted by the National Gallery of Australia and provides a critical analysis of the National Indigenous Art Triennial: Educational Resource that accompanied the exhibition.
        The aim of this discussion and analysis is to identify elements from the educational program at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) that effectively increase knowledge and appreciation of Indigenous art at the Gallery. The premise behind my analysis consists of the possibility and feasibility of using similar educational programs in a Canadian context.
        Using an exploratory approach, this thesis brings attention to elements that could potentially be of benefit to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in the development of future educational programs associated with Indigenous Art exhibitions.
	It is well-known that, in the past, the NGC has been criticized for its exhibition, collecting, and dissemination practices with regards to Indigenous art. Having undergone considerable changes since the 1990’s, the NGC is beginning to look like a different institution especially with the establishment of an Indigenous Art Department in August 2007. One particular area criticized in the past about the NGC has been public access to and information about Indigenous art at the Gallery. As stated by Alfred Young Man, Department Head of Indian Fine Arts, at the First Nations University of Canada, in 2008; “There needs to be a better way for people who are looking for Aboriginal art at the National Gallery to find it, and learn about it.”
        Today, the NGC’s mandate seeks to “increase the knowledge, awareness and appreciation of Indigenous art in Canada and internationally.”  With its Indigenous Art Department currently in a relative stage of infancy, it is a logical time to be looking at the educational tools being developed and implemented at similar institutions, such as the NGA, for ideas as to how the NGC can fulfill its present-day mandate.


identifier: Iqbal, Farkhund  (2011) Messaging Forensic Framework for Cybercrime Investigation.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Online predators, botmasters, and terrorists abuse the Internet and associated web technologies by conducting illegitimate activities such as bullying, phishing, and threatening. These activities often involve online messages between a criminal and a victim, or between criminals themselves. The forensic analysis of online messages to collect empirical evidence that can be used to prosecute cybercriminals in a court of law is one way to minimize most cybercrimes. The challenge is to develop innovative tools and techniques to precisely analyze large volumes of suspicious online messages. We develop a forensic analysis framework to help an investigator analyze the textual content of online messages with two main objectives. First, we apply our novel authorship analysis techniques for collecting patterns of authorial attributes to address the problem of anonymity in online communication. Second, we apply the proposed knowledge discovery and semantic anal ysis techniques for identifying criminal networks and their illegal activities. The focus of the framework is to collect creditable, intuitive, and interpretable evidence for both technical and non-technical professional experts including law enforcement personnel and jury members. To evaluate our proposed methods, we share our collaborative work with a local law enforcement agency. The experimental result on real-life data suggests that the presented forensic analysis framework is effective for cybercrime investigation.


identifier: Aurup, Golam Mohammad Moshiuddin  (2011) User Preference Extraction from Bio-Signals: An Experimental Study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Abstract
User Preference Extraction from Bio-Signals: An Experimental Study

Golam Mohammad Moshiuddin Aurup

The purpose of this study is to extract user preferences about a product from emotional responses. Literature on psychology reveals that human preferences are related to their emotions. In addition, literature on emotion recognition reveals that emotion can be extracted from physiological signals like the heart rate, skin conductance, brain signal etc. In this study, these two streams were brought together and a new approach was proposed to extract preference of users through the analysis of emotional responses from physiological signals. Brain signal (electroencephalography or EEG) was chosen in this regard for its relevance in emotion recognition literature. For the experimental study, Thought Technology’s biofeedback system was used in order to capture and process the users’ EEG signals while users are exposed to various images where each image represents a possible feature of a product. Experiments were performed in two phases. In the first phase, proposed method, hardware setting, and the hypothesis relating user preference and EEG values were tested on an image library. In the second phase, images relating to a product (automobile in our case) design or features were used to get preferences between competing products.

In the first phase, International Affective Picture System (IAPS) library images were used to develop experiments. This library provides a large database for emotion affecting images and is widely accepted in the emotion detection literature. Three participants and three two-image sets were used in this study. The relationship between preference and extracted values were established through graph plot and trend line analysis and effects of repetition of experiments or images were identified. Results supported that analysis of EEG signals can distinguish pleasant and unpleasant feeling about images. A maximum of 80% accuracy was obtained in establishing relationship between preference and signal values. Left frontal side of the brain provided with the best results and was utilized in the rest of the study. Possibility to use different frequency bands of EEG signal was also studied in this phase.

In the second phase of experiments, 8 image-sets relating to automobile design and features were used for a group of 11 participants. 60% of the participants responded with 70% or more accuracy. It was found that the cognitive preference of a participant was stronger than the aesthetic preference whenever there was a conflict between the two. Accuracy rate showed by participants varied with the quality of the tests; i.e. with the factors like image resolution, clarity, composition, subject, and background of images; and with the capability of the participant to identify the images properly.

Literature on brain activity reports that, for some people, the left side of the brain is more active than the right one. The opposite is true for others. The hypothesis relating preference and extracted values was corrected in this regard. The corrected hypothesis was termed the reverse hypothesis. At the beginning of phase 2 experiments, 4 experiments were developed with IAPS images to identify if the participant followed the preliminary hypothesis or the reversed one. The results showed that most participants performed better in the experiments with product images than the experiments with standard IAPS images.


identifier: Sinha, Prosenjit  (2011) Botnet Reverse Engineering and Call Sequence Recovery.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The focus on computer security has increased due to the ubiquitous use of Internet. Criminals mistreat the anonymous and insidious traits of Internet to commit monetary online fraud, theft and extortion. Botnets are the prominent vehicle for committing online crimes. They provide platform for a botmaster to control a large group of infected Internetconnected computers. Botmaster exploits this large group of connected computers to send spam, commit click fraud, install adware/spyware, flood specific network from distributed locations, host phishing sites and steal personal credentials. All these activities pose serious threat for individuals and organizations. Furthermore, the situation demands more attention since the research and the development of underground criminal industry is faster than security research industry. To cope up against the ever growing botnet threats, security
researchers as well as Internet-users need cognizance on the recent trends and techniques of botnets. In this thesis, we analyze in-depth by reverse engineering two prominent botnets namely, Mariposa and Zeus. The findings of the analysis may foster the knowledge of security researchers in multiple dimensions to deal with the botnet issue.To enhance the abstraction and visualization techniques of reverse engineering, we develop a tool which is used for detailed outlook of call sequences.


identifier: Bellenguez-Lavin, Maude  (2011) Do we all believe in Christmas? How our beliefs affect the relationship between music and retail environment.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Nourivand, Afshin  (2010) Yield-Aware Leakage Power Reduction of On-Chip SRAMs.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Leakage power dissipation of on-chip static random access memories (SRAMs) constitutes a significant fraction of the total chip power consumption in state-of-the-art microprocessors and system-on-chips (SoCs). Scaling the supply voltage of SRAMs during idle periods is a simple yet effective technique to reduce their leakage power consumption. However, supply voltage scaling also results in the degradation of the cells’ robustness, and thus reduces their capability to retain data reliably. This is
particularly resulting in the failure of an increasing number of cells that are already weakened by excessive process parameters variations and/or manufacturing imperfections in nano-meter technologies. Thus, with technology scaling, it is becoming increasingly challenging to maintain the yield while attempting to reduce the leakage
power of SRAMs. This research focuses on characterizing the yield-leakage tradeoffs and developing novel techniques for a yield-aware leakage power reduction of SRAMs.

We first demonstrate that new fault behaviors emerge with the introduction of a low-leakage standby mode to SRAMs. In particular, it is shown that there are some
types of defects in SRAM cells that start to cause failures only when the drowsy mode is activated. These defects are not sensitized in the active operating mode, and thus escape the traditional March tests. Fault models for these newly observed fault behaviors are developed and described in this thesis. Then, a new low-complexity test algorithm, called March RAD, is proposed that is capable of detecting all the drowsy faults as well as the simple traditional faults.

Extreme process parameters variations can also result in SRAM cells with very weak data-retention capability. The probability of such cells may be very rare in small memory arrays, however, in large arrays, their probability is magnified by the huge number of bit-cells integrated on a single chip. Hence, it is critical also to account for such extremal events while attempting to scale the supply voltage of SRAMs. To estimate the statistics of such rare events within a reasonable computational time, we have employed concepts from extreme value theory (EVT). This has enabled us to accurately model the tail of the cell failure probability distribution versus the supply voltage. Analytical models are then developed to characterize the yield-leakage tradeoffs in large modern SRAMs. It is shown that even a moderate scaling of the supply voltage of large SRAMs can potentially result in significant yield losses, especially in processes with highly fluctuating parameters. Thus, we have investigated the application of fault-tolerance techniques for a more efficient leakage reduction of SRAMs. These techniques allow for a more aggressive voltage scaling by providing tolerance to the failures that might occur during the sleep mode. The results show that in a 45-nm technology, assuming 10% variation in transistors threshold voltage, repairing a 64KB memory using only 8 redundant rows or incorporating single error correcting codes (ECCs) allows for ~90% leakage reduction while incurring only ~1% yield loss. The combination of redundancy and ECC, however, allows to reach the practical limits of leakage reduction in the analyzed benchmark, i.e., ~95%.

Applying an identical standby voltage to all dies, regardless of their specific process parameters variations, can result in too many cell failures in some dies with heavily skewed process parameters, so that they may no longer be salvageable by the employed fault-tolerance techniques. To compensate for the inter-die variations, we
have proposed to tune the standby voltage of each individual die to its corresponding minimum level, after manufacturing. A test algorithm is presented that can be used to identify the minimum applicable standby voltage to each individual memory die. A possible implementation of the proposed tuning technique is also demonstrated. Simulation results in a 45-nm predictive technology show that tuning standby voltage of SRAMs can enhance data-retention yield by an additional 10%−50%, depending on
the severity of the variations.


identifier: Brayley, Katharine R  (2010) A Regional Agency: Maritime Art Association Programming from 1935 to 1945.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In the history of Canadian visual culture, art societies, associations and organizations have played a significant role. At various points throughout Canada’s art history, these organizations have responded to the needs of a specific artistic community. Founded in 1935 the Maritime Art Association was the country’s first regional artists association, responding to the need for an active regional infrastructure in the arts; representing groups from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The MAA’s cultural and educational programming had a significant affect on the development of a united regional community in the arts. This thesis provides an analysis of Maritime Art Association programming from 1935 to 1945. Through their program of traveling exhibitions, lecture series, radio broadcasts on the arts, and various other activities, the MAA positioned the arts to become an arena for regional discussion, appreciation and solidarity. Throughout this investigation, the MAA is positioned as an active agent in the fostering of a critical arts community adept at aesthetic appreciation in the Maritime Provinces.


identifier: Stathopoulos, George  (2011) Application of Recognition Input Squinting and Error-Correcting Output Coding to Convolutional Neural Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is a type of artificial neural network that is successful in addressing many computer vision classification problems. This thesis considers problems related to optical character recognition by CNN when few training samples are available. Two techniques are proposed that can be used to improve the application of CNNs to such problems and these benefits are demonstrated experimentally on subsets of two labelled databases: MNIST (handwritten digits) and CENPARMI-MPC (machineprinted
characters).

The first technique is novel and is called “Recognition Input Squinting”. It involves taking the input image to be recognized and applying a set of geometric transformations on it to produce a set of squinted images. The trained CNN classifier then recognizes each of these generated input images and computes an overall recognition confidence score. It is shown that this technique yields superior recognition precision as compared to the case
where a single input image is recognized without squinting.

The second technique is an application of the Error-Correcting Output Coding technique to the CNN. Each class to be recognized is assigned a codeword from an appropriately chosen error-correcting code’s codebook and the CNN is trained using these codeword labels. At recognition time, the output class is selected according to a minimum code distance criterion. It is shown that this technique provides better recognition precision than when the classic place output coding is used.


identifier: Zeffiro, Andrea  (2011) Locations of Practice: The Social Production of Locative Media.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Locative media is a descriptive term that designates the artistic deployment of an assemblage of mobile and location aware technologies in the production of site-specific experiences or installations for public spaces. It has been described as a ‘test-category’ or ‘mobile media movement’ through which a wide gamut of individuals and collectives explore the possibilities of emerging mobile and location-based technologies. Underlying theoretical concerns have focused, for instance, on: reconfigurations of understandings and experiences of space; associations with psychogeography; potential for grass roots activist applications; and, the dependency on technological infrastructures associated with power and control.
	A fundamental tension exists between the tools employed in production, those being commercial technologies, and the rhetoric of locative media practice, which posits these technologies as deployable beyond command and control infrastructures. Concealed within this tension is the manner in which locative media production abuts the commercial uptake of mobile and location-based technologies, and the specific practices that support the appropriation of commercial channels for non-commercial means. This thesis engages with circumstances that enable (or not) locative media production. Locative media is framed as a consequence of social relations, and, as a field of cultural production set within contextual and contingent conditions that circumscribe practice.
	In focusing on the conditions of production, that is, the processes through which locative media experiences are constructed, I provide site-specific interpretations through two case studies. The analysis elucidates what is not readily apparent in a final aesthetic experience and reveals the conditions and constraints of production, including the manner in which certain practices are legitimized, disavowed and contradicted. The practices to ensue from these particular sites of production are not representative of the entire field of locative media. These engagements articulate specific locations of practice; the physical and symbolic spaces that support the production of locative media, and it is within these spaces of production that practices emerge.


identifier: Grunzeweig, Naomi  (2011) Developing Autonomy and Social Competence from Preschool to Middle Childhood in a High-Risk Sample of Children: Links to Mutuality and Maternal Childhood Histories of Risk.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Learning to be autonomous while maintaining close relationships with others is a fundamental task toward developing social competence. This challenge is particularly noteworthy during middle childhood, when parents begin to gradually relinquish control over their children, and children’s social networks expand to include the school environment. Preceding factors (e.g., mothers’ childhood histories, mother-child interactions at preschool) shed light on the processes underlying developing autonomy and social competence in mother-child interactions at middle-childhood. Investigating these processes is particularly relevant in high-risk families, where the likelihood of psychosocial problems is increased.
The present prospective, intergenerational study was designed to examine developing autonomy and social competence in a high-risk sample of mother-child dyads at middle childhood, as well as links to mother-child mutuality, mothers’ childhood histories of risk, and mother-child interactions and behaviour problems during preschool. Women from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Project, whose levels of aggression and social withdrawal were assessed during childhood, participated with their children in a series of naturalistic interactions at two time points; observational coding measures were employed in order to investigate autonomy and mutuality in middle childhood (children aged 10-13), and maternal requests and child noncompliance in preschool (children aged 2-6). Questionnaires were administered to mothers, children, and teachers to assess children’s social competence and problems.
In line with the study’s hypotheses, results indicated that mutuality behaviours predicted autonomy behaviours. Mothers’ behaviours predicted children’s behaviours, for both autonomy and mutuality, suggesting an atmosphere of reciprocity within the dyad. Children’s behaviours at middle childhood predicted concurrent measures of social competence and problems, underscoring the relationship between autonomy, mutuality, and social competence. Children’s behaviour problems were stable across the two time points, and mothers’ request strategies at preschool predicted mothers’ autonomy support at middle childhood. Furthermore, effects of maternal risk (education, childhood aggression and withdrawal) and child sex were also revealed.
This study was the first to longitudinally investigate autonomy from preschool to middle childhood. Results highlight how autonomy behaviours in mother-child interactions relate to developing social competence at middle childhood in families at risk. Findings underscore the significance of middle childhood in determining children’s developmental trajectories, and have important implications for developing policies and programs that promote positive outcomes in vulnerable families.


identifier: Khayat, Valerie  (2010) LIVE 8: A Study on the Performance of Citizenship and Propaganda.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In western society, large-scale campaigns have been widely used to address social and environmental crises. In recent years, mass media and media convergence have produced within the realm of this phenomenon, a new interactive space in which publics are invited to participate and called upon as citizens. A significant corpus of academic research has studied these occasions through the themes of media rituals, celebrity diplomacy, global policy and “compassion fatigue”. This research uses the 2005 Live 8 campaign as a case study combining perspectives on media events, Jacques Ellul’s writings on propaganda and a rhetorical analysis in order to understand the techniques, which made Live 8 successful at mobilizing masses all around the world.  The present study speaks to thought and action in relation to mobilization within a mediated environment for a global humanitarian crisis. Ultimately this research bridges the aspect of performance with citizenship and propaganda, into the question of whether contemporary media events, through their means of mobilization and civic participation, give way to a performance of citizenship.


identifier: Shakeeb, Marwa  (2011) Circularly Polarized Microstrip Antenna.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Circularly Polarized Microstrip Antenna


identifier: Hsieh, Chen-Yu  (2011) Wide Frequency Range Superheterodyne Receiver Design and Simulation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The receiver is the backbone of modern communication devices. The primary purpose of a reliable receiver is to recover the desired signal from a wide spectrum of transmitted sources. A general radio receiver usually consists of two parts, the radio frequency (RF) front-end and the demodulator. RF front-end receiver is roughly defined as the entire segment until the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) placed before digital demodulation. Theoretically, a radio receiver must be able to accommodate several tradeoffs such as spectral efficiency, low noise figure (NF), low power consumption, and high power gain. The superheterodyne receiver consisting of double downconversion can well balance the tradeoffs required for the receiver design.
In this thesis, the RF front-end superheterodyne receiver design and implementation is presented. Instead of fixed radio frequency of system-on-chip (SOC) design which has been a popular research topic, a radio receiver operating in the wide frequency range of roughly 2.53 GHz to 2.83 GHz located in IEEE S-band is considered. The wide frequency range receiver is suitable for applications like Direct-to-Home satellite television systems, which allocates from 2.5 GHz to 2.7 GHz. This thesis is focusing on the off-chip receiver design for the objectives of processing a wider frequency band while providing high linearity and power gain. The important active devices in a receiver which are low noise amplifiers (LNA), power amplifiers (PA), and mixers are designed and implemented. In this work, the two-stage LNA designed provides low NF and good input standing wave ratio (VSWR). The class-A PA is designed utilizing the load-pull method for maximum power transfer and highest possible power added efficiency (PAE). The mixer design adopts the double balance fully differentially (Gilbert) topology which is ideal for low port feedthrough, intermodulation distortion, and moderate conversion gain.
The self-built active devices (e.g. amplifiers and mixers) and band-pass filters (BPF) provided by Agilent EEsof Advance System Design (ADS) are combined into a double downconversion RF front-end receiver. The receiver sensitivity and selectivity is assessed and tabulated. Also, the operation in the wide frequency range of roughly 2.53 GHz to 2.83 GHz with the last intermediate frequency (IF) of 20 MHz is verified.


identifier: Mahood, Gail  (2010) The Art of Colonialism: Inventing Canadian Identity Through Inuit Soapstone Carving.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Doiron, Matthew Anthony  (2011) Whole-Building Energy Analysis and Lessons Learned for a Near Net-Zero Energy Solar House.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis presents a comprehensive, whole-system energy analysis of ÉcoTerra using measured data. ÉcoTerra is a low-energy, near net-zero energy, solar house. It was constructed as part of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's EQuilibrium™ Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative, and incorporates a building-integrated photovoltaic/thermal roof coupled with a ventilated concrete slab. The roof collects thermal energy and generates electrical energy simultaneously. The thermal energy is collection is achieved by passing air under the surface of the roof and ducting this air into the house. This thermal energy is used to preheat domestic hot water, actively heat the ventilated concrete slab, and for drying clothes. The energy stored in the slab is released passively into the space. The overall energy use and end-use breakdown of the house are analyzed and discussed. The house's control system is documented, as are the changes that were made to the controls since construction. The main contributions of this work include a comprehensive energy analysis of the house and the identification of important conclusions and lessons learned. Recommendations are also made as to how ÉcoTerra, and future low-energy homes, could reach net-zero energy consumption. Large amounts of high quality data have been collected since the construction of the house, and significant effort was made, as part of this work, to structure and organize the data into usable forms for future research.


identifier: Kousaie, Shanna  (2011) A behavioural and electrophysiological investigation of the “bilingual advantage”.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis presents research that addresses several questions with respect to findings demonstrating superior performance in bilinguals relative to monolinguals on cognitive control tasks, which has been termed the “bilingual advantage”. Chapter 2 reports a study investigating the presence of a bilingual advantage in a homogeneous sample of young and older adults using a Stroop task. The results demonstrated that, in young adults there was a general speed advantage for the bilinguals, but this did not translate to a decrease in Stroop interference as would be expected if there was an advantage for the bilinguals. There was no difference in performance between the monolingual and bilingual older adults.
	Chapter 3 reports research further investigating the possibility of a bilingual advantage in young adults using an array of tasks (i.e., Stroop, Simon, and Eriksen flanker). In addition to behavioural measures, electrophysiological measures that I reasoned would be more sensitive to detecting language group differences were included. Behaviourally no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals were found, replicating the results from chapter 2. However, I found differences in electrical brain activity between the two groups suggesting differences in conflict processing. Specifically, differences were observed in N2 amplitude, which is thought to reflect conflict monitoring; P3 latency and amplitude, which is thought to reflect stimulus categorization time and resource allocation; and the amplitude of the error-related negativity, which is thought to reflect conflict on error trials. These findings were not consistent across the three tasks, and given the lack of behavioural differences between the groups the observed electrophysiological differences do not necessarily represent an advantage for the bilinguals.
	The research presented in my thesis further examines and characterizes the previously observed advantage for bilinguals relative to monolinguals on tasks of cognitive control using improved methodology. I included a homogenous sample of monolingual and bilingual participants, used multiple tasks in the same participants, and included electrophysiological methodology capable of measuring brain activity during task performance. It is concluded that under certain conditions differences between monolinguals and bilinguals do emerge, but these differences do not necessarily represent an advantage.


identifier: Chen, Ruiru  (2011) Dynamical Congestion Control Strategies for a Network of Multi-Agent Systems Subject to Differentiated Services Traffic.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Ji, Yi  (2011) Scalability Evaluation of the GIPSY Runtime System.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Intensional programming is a declarative programming paradigm that is suitable for scientific programming since it allows natural expression of equations regarding multidimensional objects or concepts evolving in a multidimensional context so that the simplicity of these equations are kept.

The General Intensional Programming System (GIPSY) project aims at providing a software platform for the long-term investigation of intensional programming. The GIPSY consists of a flexible compiler and a scalable runtime system, where the compiler translates any flavor of intensional program into source-language independent runtime resources, and the runtime system uses the runtime resources to execute the program in a demand-driven and distributed manner, i.e. computation requirements are wrapped into demands and are distributed among networked computers, so that the computations can be executed distributively and concurrently to shorten their overall computation time.

The multi-tier architecture adopted for the GIPSY runtime system is for research goals such as scalability. It consists of the Demand Generator Tier that generates demands, the Demand Store Tier that stores and dispatches demands, as well as the Demand Worker Tier that computes demands. All the tiers are allocated in registered computers called the GIPSY nodes, and all the GIPSY nodes and tiers are under the management of the General Manager Tier, with which new nodes can be registered and new tiers can be allocated at runtime to deal with increasing workload. This thesis covers the development of the scalable GIPSY runtime system using the multi-tier architecture, and presents the assessment of the scalability of the developed GIPSY runtime system.


identifier: Sfeir, Ghada  (2011) Critical Media Literacy: A Vehicle For Transformative Learning Towards Social And Emotional Competence.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The implementation of critical media literacy in the curriculum has been advocated mainly to construct and deconstruct knowledge, to empower students to counter the threat of pleasurable but insidious hegemonic messages, ideological misrepresentation of reality, racist portrayals of minorities, and so forth.  The purpose of this study is to promote a new approach to critical media literacy in adult education.  It examines the proposition that critical media literacy, particularly through the use of films, can be a vehicle for transformative learning towards social and emotional competence in everyday relationships, in the workplace, in the family and in the communities where we live.  Therefore, the thesis explores the theory of Transformative Learning, the construct of social and emotional intelligence and the literature on critical media literacy to set the theoretical and practical background for this study.  Based on the review of the literature, intersections among these three educational domains are delineated.  The study ends with a discussion of scenes from the movies Crash (Haggis, 2005) and Revolutionary Road (Mendes, 2008) as exemplars for the implementation of the proposed approach to critical media literacy in adult learning contexts, including classrooms.


identifier: Rozhdestvenskiy, Dmitry  (2010) Product Tracking and Direct Parts Marking System Optimization.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Mazaheri, Ebrahim  (2011) Emotions and Customers’ Perception of Website Atmospheric Cues.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The primary purpose of this study was to develop a more comprehensive model of online consumer behaviour and test it in different industries to increase the generalizability of the results. This study used Zajonc (1980) theory of emotions and Mehrabian and Russell (1974) Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) paradigm to examine the relationships between customers’ emotions, perception of site atmospheric and other behavioural and intentional variables. Based on Zajonc (1980) theory of emotions, it is proposed that customers’ emotions arise upon the initial exposure to the website, which in turn, influences their perception of site atmospheric cues such as site informativeness, site effectiveness, and site entertainment. Then, based on SOR paradigm, it is proposed that customers’ perceptions influence their intentional and behavioural variables such as site attitudes, site involvement, product attitudes, and purchase intention. To increase the generalizability of the findings, the proposed model was tested in three studies. In addition, the path coefficients of all the relationships in the model were compared in those studies.
First study tested and compared the path coefficients of all the relationships in the model between physical goods and services websites. The results of multi-group analysis in EQS supported the overall model and demonstrated several non-invariant paths between the two groups. Particularly, the results suggested that the influences of pleasure and arousal on customers’ perception of site atmospheric cues are stronger for physical goods customers and influences of site effectiveness on site attitudes and informativeness are stronger for services customers.
Second study tested the model and compared the path invariance among three types of services: search-, experience-, and credence-based. The results, again, supported the overall model and revealed several non-invariant structural paths. The results suggested that the influences of “dominance” are the greatest for search-based services while “pleasure” impacts are greater for experience- and credence-based services.
Third study tested the model and compared it between Canadian and Chinese cultures. The results supported the proposed model and demonstrated that half of the structural paths are non-invariant between the two groups. Particularly, the impacts of pleasure on perception of atmospheric cues are stronger for Canadian customers; whereas, dominance has greater influence on Chinese customers’ perception. Moreover, the impact of site entertainment on site attitudes and involvement are stronger for Chinese, while, site informativeness and effectiveness have greater impacts on Canadian customers.
The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it develops a more comprehensive model of online consumer behaviour and suggests that customers’ emotions at the initial exposure to the website are a driver of their site atmospheric perception. Second, it empirically tests the model in different industries and cultures and reports the differences across groups. Results of all the three studies supported the overall model and revealed many non-invariant structural paths across groups. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed in each study.


identifier: Bowden, Robert Constantinos  (2010) Experiments and Modeling of the Onset of Gas Entrainment into Small Branches from a Co-Currently Flowing Stratified Gas-Liquid Regime.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The discharge of two-phase flow from a co-currently flowing gas-liquid region through single or multiple branches is an important process in many industrial applications including oil-gas production and nuclear power plants. Accurate physical descriptions of the flow phenomena involved, along with the quality and mass flow rate of the discharging streams, is necessary to adequately predict the different phenomena associated with the process.

A test facility was developed, consisting of a horizontal pipe with an inlet diameter of 50.8 mm and three 6.35 mm diameter branches located at a distance of 1.8 m from the pipe inlet. The branches were machined perpendicularly into the test section wall, and oriented at 0, 45, and 90 degrees down from horizontal. Air and water, operating at 206 kPa, were used to provide a two-phase flow regime. Both fluids flowed co-currently within the inlet, and mainly in the stratified regime, but transitions to wavy and slug regimes were observed.

Extensive experimental data are reported for the three branch orientations. The relation between the air-water interface height, the inlet superficial gas and liquid velocities, and the branch two-phase quality and mass flow rate are presented for each branch orientation. The critical inlet conditions leading to beginning of two-phase flow in the branch, the onsets of gas and liquid entrainment, respectively, were reported in both single and dual branch cases. Effects of inlet measurement location, the secondary branch Froude number, and branch fluid phase on the critical conditions were investigated. A novel map relating the dual discharge branch Froude numbers, the inlet superficial liquid velocity, and the related dual branch phenomena was developed. The map presented the three observed modes of gas entrainment during dual discharge.

A two-fluid separated theoretical model was developed in order to predict the critical height at the onset of gas entrainment in a bottom branch. Potential flow theory leads to the branch being simulated by a point-sink, while the flowing liquid upstream of the branch was simulated by a uniform constant crossflow velocity. Two analytical criteria were used to predict the dip position (height and offset distance) relative to the branch. Inaccuracies with experiments lead to the inclusion of empirical terms to satisfy the local crossflow velocities within the inlet. A digital imaging technique was also developed in order to record local interface profiles at the onset of gas entrainment, and was used to satisfy the relationship between the dip height and offset distance. The semi-empirical approach provided a significant improvement over the purely analytical model, and demonstrated that the critical height to be predicted within a reasonable error.