identifier: Newcomb-Anjo, Sarah Elizabeth  (2020) A Person-Centered, Mixed Methods Account of Emerging Adults’ Internalizing Symptoms Before, Across, and After Graduating from University.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Many emerging adults experience elevations in internalizing symptoms (anxiety, depressive symptoms). Developmental psychopathology theories assert that the developmental transitions inherent to this life stage, such as university graduation, may alter emerging adults’ psychological functioning. The current dissertation served to explore emerging adults’ internalizing symptoms across graduation from university, in order to delineate for whom this is a period of risk for internalizing symptoms. Specifically, the present set of studies examined how emerging adults fare psychologically prior to graduating from university (Study 1), across the year following university graduation (Study 2), and the specific risk, contextual, and personality factors that relate to different internalizing symptom patterns across the graduation transition (Studies 3 and 4).
Emerging adults in their final year of university education (n = 159; Mage = 23.22) participated in a four-wave longitudinal study focused on wellbeing across the transition from university. Participants were recruited from an urban Canadian university and completed online surveys at each wave. A mixed methods design was employed to maximize insight into this under-researched yet arguably very important developmental transition. Quantitative data were collected once in the semester prior to graduating, and at three subsequent waves post-graduation. In line with developmental psychopathology perspectives, person-centered analyses were employed to account for heterogeneous patterns of internalizing symptoms, and a multitude of factors that influence such patterns were examined. Additionally, qualitative data were collected at the final wave, one year post-graduation, and a phenomenological analysis was conducted to augment and enhance the quantitative analyses.
Results from Study 1 uncovered heterogeneity in how participants felt about their upcoming graduation, with the majority feeling positive about their graduation. Positive feelings about graduation were linked to differences in dispositional attributes (optimism, neuroticism). Study 2 examined how participants’ symptoms of anxiety and depression, respectively, changed across the graduation transition. Distinct trajectories of both anxiety and depressive symptoms emerged, however anxiety levels did not change across graduation whereas depressive symptom levels did. The majority of participants showed stable, low depressive symptoms across the transition, but a small percentage decreased in depressive symptoms (11%), whereas a sizable group (32%) increased in depressive symptoms following graduation. Studies 3 and 4 served to identify factors related to the different depressive symptom trajectories across the graduation transition. Consistent across both qualitative and quantitative analyses was the finding that personality/mindset factors related to changes in depressive symptoms, and graduation contextual factors did not. This highlights the role of one’s internal capacities in coping with a novel developmental transition. Optimism, grit, and less neuroticism emerged as key dispositional assets across the transition, along with qualitative accounts of willingness to learn from setbacks, self-efficacy, and gratitude for the university experience. Together, these results highlight the complex nature of adjustment, and clarify past research showing that aspects of emerging adults’ personality and mindset are key determinants for how they emotionally navigate this pivotal transition period.


identifier: Lozano Rodriguez, Monica Enith  (2020) Discovery of Fifteen New Aging-Delaying Plant Extracts That Extend the Longevity of Budding Yeast and Make Yeast Cells More Resistant to Long-Term Oxidative and Thermal Stresses.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: In a quest for previously unknown aging-delaying (geroprotective) natural chemicals, we used a robust cell viability assay to conduct a screen of a library of commercially available plant extracts. Our screen was aimed at the identification of those plant extracts in the library that can significantly prolong the chronological lifespan of budding yeast. Many of the plant extracts in the library have been used in traditional Chinese and other herbal medicines or the Mediterranean and other customary diets. The screen allowed us to discover fifteen plant extracts that considerably extend the longevity of chronologically aging budding yeast not limited in calorie supply. We demonstrated that each of the fifteen longevity-extending plant extracts is a geroprotector that decreases both the extrinsic and the intrinsic rates of aging in budding yeast. Our findings provided evidence that each of the fifteen longevity-extending plant extracts makes yeast more resistant to chronic (long-term) oxidative and thermal stresses. We also revealed that each of the fifteen geroprotective plant extracts mimics the longevity-extending and stressprotecting effects of a caloric restriction diet in yeast cells that are not limited in calorie supply and age chronologically.


identifier: Hu, Jingjun  (2020) How Consumer Citizenship Behavior and Intrinsic Motivation Influences Consumer Brand Identification.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The concept of consumer-brand identification is fundamental to the understanding of how, when, and why brands help consumers articulate their identities. Not surprisingly then, a growing body of research has placed focus on what it means for consumers to identify with brands and the implications of such consumer brand identification for both the consumers and effective brand management. However, as pointed out in this research’s problem statement, much less is understood about the drivers of CBI—what factors cause it, when, and why. While a comprehensive sense of what promotes CBI is of considerable significance to both practitioners and marketing research, these issues have been examined from numerous diverse perspectives, which causes the understanding to be rather fragmented. This paper proposes and tests an integrative theoretical framework of the antecedents of CBI. Two drivers of CBI and a moderator are posited and tested with survey data from a sample of 200 participants from Qualtrics. The results confirm the significant influence of the two drivers on brand identification, namely intrinsic motivation and consumer citizenship behavior. Precisely, the findings show that there is a significant correlation between IM and CCB, CCB and CBI and IM and CBI. CCB is shown to have a significant moderating effect on IM and CBI.


identifier: Guan, Juan  (2020) How Organizations Respond to the Coexistence of Legitimation and Stigmatization in an Environment: The Case of Shadow Education Industry in China.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The trajectory of how organizations deal with stigma and legitimacy has been perceived as a monodirectional progression: stigma-overcoming followed by legitimacy-gaining. However, the iterative process where stigma and legitimacy could exist concurrently or take turns to influence the field, and the responses of organizations bearing such a dilemma have been insufficiently studied. To answer the question, I conducted a case study of the shadow education industry in China. Drawing on the institutional theory and following the grounded theory method, I examined two firms in this industry— New Oriental Education Group and Tomorrow Advancing Life Education Group. My findings propose a response model for organizations to handle the complexity in the environment, which includes two types of synchronous processes—legitimacy reinforcement process and stigma reduction process, and three orientations of institutional works—public-oriented alliance work, self-oriented evolution work, and future-oriented boundary work. By following this response model, organizations confronting institutional complexity can change the attitudes of different audiences, mitigate stigmatization present in the environment, make a progress, and prosper.


identifier: Kolahgar, Sam ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9846-6850 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9846-6850>  (2020) Essays on Investor Relation and Stakeholder Communication in Corporate Finance.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation examines the role of corporate communication as a governance mechanism and investigates its impact on the cost of new financing. Both corporate communications and the cost of capital have been concerns for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.
The first essay examines whether corporate communication is a stand-alone governance mechanism. Corporate communication is measured by length, dictionary, and communication index. Using content analysis techniques, we find two major properties for firms’ communication that together assert the governing power of corporate communications. The first property is the positive correlation between negative deviation from the expected transparency and negative changes in Tobin’s Q, confirming the disciplinary role of corporate communications. And second, the substitution-complementary relationship between corporate communication and other board attributes such as board size, independence, education, expertise, CEO duality, frequency of board meetings, gender diversity, institutional ownership, and product market competition. We also find that communication has a non-linear association with Tobin’s Q and firm’s risk, pointing to the existence of an optimum level for communications. The results are robust when controlling for major corporate events such as mergers and acquisitions, spin-offs, financial distress and bankruptcy, and major lawsuits.
The second essay examines whether firms’ engagement in communication activities, more specifically in investor relations and stakeholder communications (IRSC), reduces the cost of information asymmetry at the time of external financing. The measures of IRSC initiatives are frequency of press releases, frequency of events (meetings, conferences, industry gatherings, and investment bank seminars), the ratio of question and answer to the length of events, the average length of answers, and the frequency of slides used in events. We find that the frequency of press release and the portion of question and answer to the length of meetings have a significant and positive relationship with the cost of financing, which points to the noisy nature of press releases (as a one-way communication channel), the amount of uncertainty around the financing decisions, and the stakeholders’ attempt to clarifying the ambiguity. In contrast, event frequency and the average length of answers have negative associations with the cost of financing, which points to the value of meetings (as a two-way communication channel), firms’ efforts to remove the ambiguity, and market’s appreciation of transparency. Multivariate multiple regression analyses (seemingly unrelated regression models) show that these findings are more pronounced for less transparent firms that plan to issue equity compared to transparent firms who wish to finance through debts instruments.


identifier: Yuan, Weihong  (2020) OPTIMAL FLIGHT TRAJECTORY GENERATION ALGORITHMS FOR URBAN AIR MOBILITY.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The concept of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has gained significant attention recently. In this vibrant domain, the capability of generating an optimal flight trajectory is of essential importance. This study aims to provide analytical solutions to generate the optimal trajectory in the three most common UAM scenarios. The first case is the comfort-optimal trajectory for drone package delivery and air taxis carrying passengers. The cost is evaluated as a linear combination of acceleration (or specific support force) and flight time. The second case is the control-effort-optimal trajectory for hovering vehicles. Hovering vehicles are expected to be the dominant model of air taxi. The objective function is a linear combination of thrust and flight time. The third case is the Direct-Operating-Cost (DOC) optimal trajectory for electric fixed-wing aircraft, on which all major aerospace companies are working. DOC is a linear combination of energy consumption and flight time.

The trajectory optimization problems are formulated as optimal control problems and the Pontryagen’s Minimum Principle is applied to solve them. The solution is the reference position as a function of time, which is a guidance law and is fed to the downstream flight controller. The biggest advantage of an analytical solution is to reduce the computational time. It can also be integrated with other flight path planning methods. Several simulation examples will be presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.


identifier: Resendes, Tiffany ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4513-7129 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4513-7129>  (2020) What I know and what you know: The role of metacognitive strategies in preschoolers’ selective social learning.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Selective social learning has been the focus of many recent studies, however the mechanisms which guide this selectivity in young children is a source of controversy. The purpose of this study was to gather evidence in support of lower-order and higher-order mechanisms involved in learning selectivity in young children. We administered tasks measuring both lower-order (paired-associate learning) and higher-order (metacognition) potential concurrent correlates of selective learning to preschoolers (Mage= 4 years). Their accuracy scores on these tasks were analyzed in relation to their performance on a selective social learning task. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that explicit metacognitive abilities emerged as the sole statistically significant predictor of selective social learning performance after accounting for age, gender, and paired-associate learning abilities. These results provide evidence for the view that children’s development of sophisticated selective learning strategies might be dependent on their ability to explicitly reason about their own thoughts. This study provides support for a higher-order interpretation of selective social learning in preschoolers.


identifier: Penner, Lydia  (2020) Lament as a Music Therapy Process of Meaning Reconstruction in Mental Health Care: A Philosophical Inquiry.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This philosophical inquiry has considered the significance of a grief process to address the interrelation of disenfranchised grief and mental illness. Two frames, of Neimeyer’s (2001) meaning reconstruction grief model and cultural/historical examples of lament, have articulated the relevance of this process in relation to music therapy practice. These two areas illustrate making sense of loss and internal distress through building a grief narrative and re-asserting meaning in the process. This is conceptualised in music therapy practice with the use of the model of The Mythic Artery (Kenny, 1982, 2006) and the advanced methods of Guided Imagery and Music (Bonny, 2002), and Vocal Psychotherapy (Austin, 2008), illustrating systems of creativity and co-construction that guide a process of meaning reconstruction through lament. Interpretation of significant findings reveal three interconnected areas of meaning making: giving meaning to pain, relational meaning, and a world of meaning. The implications of the research relating to practice, education, research, along with limitations are discussed.


identifier: Desbrousses, Romaric Léo Esteban ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5350-6812 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5350-6812>  (2020) Enhancing Building Resistance to Differential Settlement with Canadian Seismic Design Provisions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This research project focuses on evaluating the influence of Canadian seismic design provisions on the resistance of reinforced concrete buildings against the differential settlement of their foundation. Three types of moment-resisting frame buildings located Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto are designed in accordance with the latest editions of the National Building Code of Canada and the Canadian concrete design standards. These locations are selected to represent high, moderate, and low seismic hazard regions respectively. The buildings in each location are designed for three span lengths, namely, 4m, 6m and 8m. A total of nine finite element models are developed using SAP2000 with structural element non-linearity being represented through plastic hinges at the ends of beams and columns. Both P-delta effects and the interaction between axial loads and moments are considered in the modeling. A non-linear analysis is performed on each model by gradually subjecting a center column to a settlement of 100mm. The analysis reveals that buildings with a shorter span (e.g., 4m) length are more vulnerable to settlement-
induced damage than buildings with longer spans (e.g., 8m). Failure of the settling column occurs at settlements that exceed the range of maximum allowable differential settlements prescribed in the Canadian Foundation Engineering Manual. However, all the studied buildings survive the maximum 0.75-inch settlement allowed by ACI. Failure of the buildings is only observed at excessive settlements such as 50mm for the 4m-span buildings, and 100mm for the 6m-span buildings. The performance level of the buildings suffering from settlement-induced damage is within the category of immediate occupancy stipulated in FEMA 356.


identifier: Rahimi, Sarah  (2020) Does Industry Gender Composition Influence CEO Compensation?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: A persistent ethical issue in society is the gender compensation gap—the income inequality between men and women at the same organization performing equal work. The worldwide increase of women CEOs coupled with worldwide advocacy and interest for income and gender equality makes understanding the CEO gender compensation gap vital. The tendency of men and women to select different jobs leads to industry gender composition – the distribution of men and women workers within occupations. Very few studies that examined CEO compensation considered industry gender composition. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of industry gender composition on CEO compensation. I gathered data from public United States firms between 2010 and 2018, from Compustat and Execucomp. The final sample consisted of 3,277 firm-year observations (182 women CEOs and 3,095 men CEOs). Results have implications for women interested in pursuing top-level positions as well as human resource departments, particularly with regards to succession planning.


identifier: Ebrahimnezhad, Fereshteh ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3081-8578 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3081-8578>  (2020) A Platform as a Service for IoT Application Provisioning in Hybrid Cloud/Fog Environment.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
IoT ecosystem refers to web-enabled smart devices that use embedded processors, sensors, and communication hardware to capture, send, and act on data they obtain from their environments. IoT applications range from healthcare to autonomous vehicles. These Applications are composed of interacting components. Provisioning these applications is rather challenging, especially in hybrid cloud and fog settings.
Cloud computing with its three main services (i.e., Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service) still faces some challenges. Through the PaaS, application providers can provision (i.e., develop, deploy, manage, and orchestrate) applications in the cloud. However, the wide-area network used to connect the cloud to the end-users might cause high latency which may not be acceptable. Fog computing can reduce this latency induced by distant clouds by enabling the deployment of some application components at the edge of the network while keeping others in the cloud. Existing PaaS solutions (including IoT PaaS solutions) do not enable provisioning of applications with components spanning cloud and fog.
The main contribution of this thesis is twofold. First, a novel IoT PaaS architecture for hybrid cloud and fog environments is proposed. Second, the general architecture is prototyped and measurements are made to evaluate the feasibility of the architecture. The application components are implemented as Virtual Network Function(VNF) and Cloudify, an open-source NFV orchestration framework is used.
The essential PaaS functional entities, such as deployment engine, orchestrator, migration engine, and publish and discovery engine are identified. A concrete mechanism for publication and discovery for existing cloud and fog nodes (both stationary and mobile fog nodes) has been also proposed. In addition, a set of RESTful interfaces is proposed to enable interaction with components internally and externally. For the evaluation part, we have measured the system end-to-end and migration delay for both centralized and distributed PaaS architecture as well as different placement for application components on cloud and fog nodes.


identifier: Khatun, Koyelia  (2020) Small Signal Analysis and Control of Snubberless Naturally-Clamped Soft Switching Current-Fed PWM DC/DC Converters.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Power electronic is the prominent enabling technologies for the uninterruptible power supply (UPS), renewable energy sources, fuel cells, energy storage, electric transportation, electrical appliances and industrial processes. Owing to the challenges to safety, high step-up ratio, galvanic isolation, high-frequency (HF) transformer isolated topologies are introduced. Currentfed topologies offer the merits of high voltage gain, stiff input current and reduced peak currents. The major limitations of current-fed converters is the requirement of snubber circuit to clamp the turn-off voltage spike across the semiconductor devices. Passive snubbers leads to low efficiency as the energy absorbed by the clamping capacitor is dissipated in the resistor. Active-clamping results in better efficiency and simultaneously achieves zero voltage switching (ZVS) of the semiconductor devices. However, it needs floating active device(s) and high value of HF clamp capacitor for the effective voltage clamping. In addition, it suffers from the demerits of high current peak, high circulating current at light load, and reduced voltage gain. A new modulation technique was proposed to modulate secondary side controlled devices to clamp this voltage spike across the primary side devices eliminating the requirement of external snubber circuit. Steady-state analysis, power circuit design and steady-state performance have been reported for such class of snubberless naturally clamped current-fed converters. However, small signal analysis, control design, implementation, and transient/dynamic performance have not been studied yet.   The objectives of this thesis are to present small signal analysis, closed loop control design, and demonstrate the transient performance through simulation and experimentation of the snubberless naturally clamped current-fed half-bridge and push-pull dc-dc converter topologies. Small signal model has been derived using state space averaging. Closed loop control design is done employing two-loop average current control. Simulation results using PSIM 11.1.64 are reported to verify the converter performance with the designed controller. Experimental results from a 250W proof-of-concept hardware prototype are demonstrated to show the transient performance of current-fed half-bridge and push-pull dc-dc converter topologies


identifier: Ren, Yijing  (2020) Ownership structure and IPO underpricing.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: We examine the influence of ownership structure on underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the US. While the existing literature has largely focused on either founders or venture capitalists, we show that the ownership structure of US IPOs is more complex and cannot be adequately characterized by these two types of blockholders. We find that the influence of blockholders on underpricing is not unidimensional – the positive influence of individual blockholders (venture capital backing) on underpricing is present only in the venture-backed firms (those with individual blockholders). Further, we also find that such firms experience insignificant offer price revision, suggesting that their higher underpricing is not driven by negative information revealed during the roadshow. Finally, we show that the difference in underpricing between VC-backed firms with individual blockholders and those without is no longer significant once we control for the celebrity status of individual blockholders.


identifier: Young, Christopher  (2019) Plus ça change… A Historical Survey of Western Interference in Haiti.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
What historical lessons, positive or negative, can be gleaned from past Western interventionist activities within Haiti that have application to the desired future goal of rehabilitating or moving Haiti from fragile state status, to that of a fully functioning and stable member state within the international community of nations?
This dissertation aims to determine what historical lessons, positive or negative, can be gleaned from past Western interventionist activities in Haiti that are applicable to the desired future goal of rehabilitating or moving Haiti from fragile state status to functioning and stable state within the international community of nations. At the core of that problem is the need to determine how to restrain the impulses of external nations who obstruct or divert Haiti’s chosen path forward.
The findings show that the West has conducted a deliberate campaign against Haiti composed of three destabilizing elements: criminalization of opposition to interventions; economic warfare employing NGOs and SAP policies aimed at maintaining Haiti’s attractiveness as a source of cheap, plentiful labour; and a deliberate failure to exploit opportunities for fundamental, positive change in Haitian development. The analysis of Western interference in Haiti has exposed a number of trends, including the use of force to coerce money from the Haitian government; the deliberate undermining of Haitian sovereignty through constant interference in Haitian elections, despite free and fair elections being considered the bedrock of Western democracy; a preference for stability and the status quo in Haiti over social revolutionary trends; and an historical, targeted funding of Haitian security forces, military and police, despite both being the principal instruments of repression employed against Haitian attempts at social revolutionary change.
As a metanarrative, the dissertation brings together various micro-narratives which highlight Western impact on specific areas of Haitian culture, including colour and class, militarism, land, and the predatory state. Set within a chronological framework, the dissertation provides historical insight into practices which have had a significant influence on hindering peacebuilding generally. Understanding those practices and identifying lessons from historical analysis will prove useful in future peacebuilding work in Haiti and should help inform the development of other fragile states.


identifier: Hernandez, Keven  (2020) Getting Home: Latinx/Chicano Identity Formation and the Afterlife of Migration.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Through auto-ethnographic and ethnographic methods, this thesis explores the dominant theories around identity formation and their applicability within an intersectional U.S./Mexican migrant context. It involves a case study of my grandmother’s history of moving between various parts of California and Mexico as a migrant field worker, as well as personal reflections on my own experiences of otherization as a first-generation US Citizen working in academia dealing with the afterlife of migrations. By bridging these two different experiences of othering in the US, I will challenge the ways in which we think about the migrant experience as having a definite beginning and end, the modes of resistance and negotiation migrants use to challenge the notion of assimilation, as well as the continuing legacy of migration that US-born Latinx people continue to deal with. This thesis will include an analysis of the creation of the Latinx/Chicano identity through various critical race scholars, primarily Frantz Fanon and Gloria Anzaldua, as various different discussions on the legal creation of the undocumented Mexican migrant and the specificity of the female Mexican migrant experience. I will challenge the conventional understanding of immigration as a process with an end and argue that immigrating and finding belonging is an on-going generational practice.


identifier: Aboelenien, Aya  (2020) Two Essays on Morality and Consumption.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

title: Two Essays on Morality and Consumption

abstract:
Morality in consumption practices do not necessarily follow a clear script but rather evolve as they are practiced. Individuals attain specific values and beliefs through their primary socialization, which can change through their adult lives. In addition, moral values are not essentialized but contextually relevant. Morality is of interest to academics, marketers, and policymakers, given the existence of multiple, and at times contradictory, moral ideologies shaping consumption. In addition, moral forms in consumption are negotiated among the various marketplace actors. However, the literature has rather been uninvolved with such dynamics. To put forward this nature of morality, my dissertation investigates the role of morality in shaping consumption practices and the interwoven dynamics of the social and the marketplace.

The first essay provides a meta-synthesis on the literature in marketing, sociology, and psychology on morality. The paper aims at remedying the current drawbacks in the study of morality in consumption. I offer a new reconceptualization that advocates for a dynamic, adaptable, relational, and contextual judgment on the morality of consumption objects, practices, or fields. Guided by the re-conceptualization, I put forward a typology of moralized domains composed of five types: harmonized, divided, dispersed, breached, and debated. Finally, the essay provides diverse theoretical implications and substantive areas of empirical application.

The second essay investigates the influence of acquisition of new moral value on practice(s) and the role of the social circle and the market in the performance of the new practice. Through an empirical study of vegans, I theorize the journey of moralized practice transformation. My findings show a two-phase process of transformation. The first phase involves changes in the primary practice(s) and takes place over four stages: awakening, destabilization, reconfiguration, and re-habituation. Second, the changes in the primary practice(s) extend to other connected practices, eventually leading to their transformation. The paper adds to practice theory and provides managers with recommendations for appealing to consumers during the various stages of practice transformation.


identifier: Ali, Suzan Ali Ahmad  (2020) A Large-Scale Evaluation of Privacy Practices of Public WiFi Captive Portals.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Open access WiFi hotspots are widely deployed in many public places, including restaurants, parks, coffee shops, shopping malls, trains, airports, hotels, and libraries. While these hotspots provide an attractive option to stay connected, they may pose security and privacy risks to users. Several past studies focused on privacy leakage from browsing the internet or using mobile apps in an open hotspot, due to the nature of these hotspots, and the use of HTTP, as opposed to HTTPS for connections between the user device and the web service. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) acknowledges those risks and advises public WiFi users to take reasonable measures while using such networks.
To complement previous efforts in analyzing security and privacy risks of using public WiFi hotspots, we design two comprehensive frameworks. The first framework (CPInspector) is designed to analyze the tracking behaviors and privacy leakage on public WiFi captive portals—where users typically agree to the hotspot’s terms or sometimes register before being allowed to access the internet. CPInspector performs a wide range of web tracking measurements on public WiFi captive portals for both Windows and Android; we must physically visit each hotspot and run the CPInspector on the hotspot captive portal. We also inspect the personal data collection practices of those hotspots and the security measures adopted to protect users’ information. Hotspots pose some unique risks due to their access to the users’ foot traffic, browsing habits, the device MAC address, and in certain cases, personal information such as name, email address, social media profile, location and employment history. Using CPInspector, we initially conducted a comprehensive privacy analysis of 80 public WiFi hotspot locations in Montreal, Canada. Our analysis reveals the collection of a significant amount of privacy-sensitive personal data through the use of social login (e.g., Facebook and Google) and registration forms, and many instances of tracking activities, sometimes even before the user accepts the hotspot’s privacy and terms of service policies. We also analyzed 98 hotspot locations in Montreal for ad injection, but we did not observe any content modification attempts. Next, we expanded our study to hotspots from other cities in Canada, Europe, and the US. We conducted a high-level comparative analysis of tracking behaviors of those hotspots (in total, 192 public WiFi hotspot locations; including Montreal hotspots). We conclude that some of our findings are indeed applicable to a larger geographical area, including the use of third-party trackers on captive portals and sharing the harvested data with third-party entities using third-party captive portals.
We use the second framework to analyze hotspots privacy policies and terms-of-use documentation which also discloses the service provider’s data and privacy practices. We augment our policy analysis using our collected hotspots’ datasets to validate selected privacy aspects of the public WiFi. We evaluated a sample of 16 privacy policy and TOS documents from hotspots that appear to be most risky in Montreal, Canada. Our analysis reveals many instances where the hotspot may appear to conform to privacy best practices according to its documentation but fail to implement necessary technical measures.


identifier: Kashfi Ashtiani, Behrad  (2020) Development of a Three-Dimensional Suspension Plasma Spray Coating Build-up Model.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
During the last two decades, suspension plasma spray (SPS) coating methodology has drawn attention by showing a capacity to achieve a broad range of coating characteristics. Enormous efforts have been made to find the influential parameters on the SPS coating microstructure. However, due to the high computational costs and the complexity of the process, most of the studies have an experimental foundation. Regarding the high expenses of empirical investigations and time-consuming processes involved, such as setting up, sample preparation, etc., a simulation tool giving an approximation of the final coating properties is essential more than ever. A Simulation tool can provide also complementary information that help us better understand the coating microstructures obtained experimentally.
This study aims to provide a tool to simulate SPS coatings build-up by applying both computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and an in-house developed model in MATLAB. The model can be used generally for SPS coating build-up simulations and is not limited to the studied problem. The framework was formed around a previously developed model with significant enhancements regarding the accuracy and computational cost.
Two different approaches were followed in modeling particle deposition, considering the particle flattening process or deposition as a non-deformed particle. Results from both models offer promising trends capturing various coating microstructures already reported in the literature and predicting the effects of substrate geometry on the coating evolution. However, the porosity level and deposition rate are overestimated due to the assumptions made and the lack of data regarding the deposition efficiency based on the particle characteristics, respectively.


identifier: Rezaei, Narges  (2020) A DATA-DRIVEN OPTIMIZATION METHOD FOR TAXI DISPATCHING PROBLEM.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Taxi service has become one of the most important means of transportation in the world. Optimization of the taxi service can significantly reduce transportation costs, idle driving times, waiting times, and increase service quality. However, optimization of the taxi service due to its specific characteristics is a cumbersome task. In this research, we studied the taxi dispatching problem and proposed a mathematical programming machine learning-based approach to optimize the network. We presented a data-driven optimization methodology by combining machine learning techniques, that incorporate historical time-series data to forecast future demand, and mathematical programming. Specifically, Support Vector Regression and K-Nearest Neighbor are adopted to learn the passenger demand patterns based on time-series data. Then a MIP model is built to minimize total idle driving distance concerning balancing the supply-demand ratio in different regions.  Moreover, we aimed at balancing supply according to the demand in different regions (nodes) of a city in order to increase service efficiency and to minimize the total ideal driving distance. We proposed a method that utilizes historical GPS data to build demand models and applies prediction technologies to determine optimal locations for vacant taxis considering anticipated future demand. From a system-level perspective, we compute optimal dispatch solutions for reaching a globally balanced supply-demand ratio with the least associated cruising distance under practical constraints. We implemented our approach to a real-world case study from New York City to demonstrate its efficiency and effectiveness.


identifier: Zaverdinos, Martha  (2020) Nelson-Siegel vs. Constant Spread Bond Price Prediction.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis contributes to the topic of developing methods for bond price predictions over a time horizon of one to five days. This is done by first representing yields as a term structure of spot rates by introducing an alternative Nelson-Siegel model which includes a linearized estimation procedure provided with a new approach in determining a λ-parameter. We then proceed by comparing this representation of yields to a flat spread structure across maturities. This is followed by applying the latter approaches to the U.S. Treasury, Goldman Sachs and Verizon Communications during the years 2017 and 2018. In order to assess the accuracy of bond price predictions, we compare three distinct approaches for the representation of interest rates and yields. In addition, we want to know if more complex yield curve modeling provides better price predictions than more naive approaches.


identifier: Woodstock, Patrick ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3481-8332 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3481-8332>  (2020) What Ever Happened to Babylon? Queer Aesthetics of Cinematic Decadence in Grande Dame Guignol Cinema.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Appearing amidst the decline of the Hollywood studio system in the 1960s, the Grande Dame Guignol cycle of horror films reimagine the history and aesthetics of classical Hollywood through the lens of decadence. Casting some of the most iconic stars of the studio system in roles that self-reflexively engage with their star personae to reimagine their glamor in terms of the grotesque, these works recall similar combinations of beauty, decay, and queer eroticism found throughout the canon of fin-de-siècle decadent literature.

While critical accounts of decadence tend to foreground its relation to literary modernism, this thesis instead applies this term towards cinema. Defining cinematic decadence as an aesthetic sensibility distinct from – although closely related to – its manifestation in fin-de-siècle literature, this term provides a valuable theoretical context to reconsider representations of queerness, temporality, embodiment, history, and misogyny within classical Hollywood cinema. Further, this cinematic decadence suggests a novel way to conceptualize the problematic but distinctly queer presentation of stardom and femininity offered by the monstrous women of the Grande Dame Guignol cycle, through four films: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962); Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich, 1964); Strait-Jacket (William Castle, 1964); and What’s the Matter With Helen? (Curtis Harrington, 1971).

Like the texts of literary decadence at the turn of the 20th century, these works of cinematic decadence invite queer forms of subjectivity as they undermine the exclusionary, heteronormative discourses of modernity. Ultimately, this project seeks to define the sensibility of decadence as a distinct method of queering dominant culture, and to determine its largely unexplored relationship to the medium of cinema.


identifier: Wodnicki, Philippe  (2020) Exploring the Link Between Ego Depletion and Exercise Intentions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: People are constantly subject to external demands that can lead to impairments in self-control. One theory that accounts for such impairments is ego depletion, which can be responsible for people choosing to succumb to unhealthy habits rather than engaging in health-related behaviors. In study 1, I investigated the effect of ego depletion on exercise intentions among participants who do not exercise. I also tested whether showing participants an exercise advertisement framed in terms of the desirable outcomes to be attained by exercising would attenuate the effect of ego depletion on exercise intentions. No support was found for these predictions. In study 2, I used a revised measure of exercise intentions, and I examined participants who do exercise. I also investigated whether exercise self-efficacy would mediate the effect of ego depletion on exercise intentions and whether exercise habit strength would moderate these relationships. Support was found for the interaction of ego depletion and exercise habit strength on exercise self-efficacy.


identifier: Montpetit, Chiara  (2020) Connected by a Thread: Stories of Migration and Labour in Sara Angelucci’s Piece Work.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis is a critical analysis of the multimedia project Piece Work (2017) by Toronto-based, Italian Canadian artist Sara Angelucci (b. 1962). Focusing on Coppley Apparel, a garment factory in Hamilton, Ontario, the project explores the process of making business suits through the digital collage Coppley Patterns and the photographic series Mano d’Oro. The sound installation A Sewers’ Chorus features the voices of the garment workers who recall positive and negative memories of their work experiences and personal histories, while the video installation Suit Elevator depicts the business suit in its final form. The majority of Coppley Apparel’s employees are women from non-white racialized groups. Deploying an intersectional feminist approach, this thesis argues that Piece Work reveals the complex lives of these factory workers from immigrant backgrounds in ways that speak against persisting discourses and practices of racialized and gendered labour in the garment industry. It begins by providing an overview of the history of the Coppley Apparel factory in relation to the history of migrant garment factory workers in Hamilton, and the broader history of racialized and gendered factory labour in the city. This thesis also acts as a record of the migration story of Nina Acciaroli, the artist’s mother, whose first job in Canada was at Coppley Apparel. It then examines A Sewers’ Chorus and its use of oral history, providing a discussion of the different stories shared by the interviewees, which range from happy childhood memories and nostalgic flashbacks to accounts of traumatic experiences. The thesis provides a comprehensive discussion of the process of making Piece Work, contextualizing it within Angelucci’s larger artistic practice of incorporating voices in the exploration of her family’s immigrant experience. Ultimately, Piece Work recognizes the employees of Coppley Apparel as people with singular voices and unique experiences and highlights their agency by including the complexity of their voices and identities as women, garment workers, racialized minorities, and contributing members of Canadian society.


identifier: Fortier, John-Mark  (2020) Self-nolar Planar Polytopes: When Finding the Polar is Rotating by Pi.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The impetus for our work was a preprint by Alathea Jensen, titled self-polar polytopes. In the preprint, Jensen describes an intriguing method to add vertices to a self-polar polytope while maintaining self-polarity. This method, applied exclusively to self-nolar planar polytopes, is our main focus for our work here. We expound upon the method, as well as clarify the underlining theoretical framework it was derived from. In doing so, we have built up our own set-up and framework and proved the theoretical steps independently, often differently than the original paper. In addition, we prove some noteworthy properties of self-nolar sets such as: all self-nolar sets are convex, the family of all self-nolar sets is uncountable, and the set of all self-nolar planar polytopes is dense in the set of all self-nolar planar sets. We also give proofs concerning the length of the boundary of a self-nolar set with smooth boundary, the center of mass of self-nolar polytopes and the Mahler volume product. Moreover, we prove an original theorem that can be used as a practical method to construct self-nolar polytopes.


identifier: Bahcivan, Aysegul  (2020) A Case Study of Expansive Learning in Social Movements: The Design and Implementation of a Media School Initiative.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The creation and stabilization of local collective practices are important for social movement actors who wish to effect wider societal change. However, the making of durable collective practices remains problematic for people working on the ground. Using the theoretical framework of expansive learning and activity theory, this study investigates how new practices are created in social movements and identifies enablers and obstacles to creating authentic organized practices that address local needs. An educational initiative called the Media School, implemented by an LGBT+ organization in Turkey, is used as a case study. Through narrative interviews conducted with two people involved in the design and implementation of the Media School, its historical development is traced from its inception in 2007 to the present day. The findings reveal that social movement practices may start with a general vision and default methods and strategies. Knowledge of exact strategies and methods emerge in the process to achieve the vision. The enablers identified in the study include: observing ongoing change and capturing new emerging patterns; using probability-oriented strategies to complement pattern-oriented ones when definitive decisions cannot be made; accommodating existing rules and resisting their form; using organized models of interaction with target communities to give them process support when generating policies; imposing internal ethical principles. Obstacles include: narrowing original visions by focusing on only one method for their operationalization. In addition, tacit, shared understandings between people emerged as both an obstacle and enabler to the creation of new practices.
Keywords: social movement learning, expansive learning, activity theory


identifier: Chalangari, Pouria ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4367-2945 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4367-2945>  (2020) Deep Learning and Trigonometric Adjustment in Estimation of Lower Extremity Angles.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
An Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury can cause a severe burden, especially for athletes participating in relatively risky sports. This risk raises a growing incentive for designing injury-prevention programs. For this purpose, for example, the analysis of the drop vertical jump test can provide a useful asset for recognizing those who are more likely to sustain knee injuries. Landing Error Score System (LESS) provides an excellent opportunity to predict the level of vulnerability for each individual who participates in the drop jump test process. Knee flexion angle plays a key role within these test scenarios. Multiple research efforts have been conducted on engaging existing technologies such as the Microsoft Kinect sensor and Motion Capture (MoCap) to investigate the connection between the lower limb angle ranges during jump tests and the injury risk associated with them. Even though these technologies provide sufficient capabilities to researchers and clinicians, they need certain levels of knowledge to enable them to utilize these facilities in an effective manner. Moreover, these systems demand special requirements and setup procedures, which make them limiting. Due to recent advances in the area of Deep Learning, numerous powerful pose estimation algorithms have been developed over the last few years. Having access to relatively reliable and accurate 3D body keypoint information can lead to the successful detection and prevention of injury.
The idea of combining temporal convolutions in video sequences with deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) offers a substantial opportunity to tackle the challenging task of accurate 3D human pose estimation. Utilizing a fast and accurate 2D pose estimation approach has also enabled us to develop a better and real-time solution for the problem of 3D knee flexion angle estimation. Using the Microsoft Kinect sensor as our ground truth, we analyzed the performance of CNN-based 3D human pose estimation and our proposed method based on a CNN-based 2D pose estimation method in everyday settings. The qualitative and quantitative results are convincing to give an incentive to pursue further improvements, especially in the task of lower extremity kinematics estimation. In addition to the performance comparison between Kinect and CNN, we have also verified the high-margin of consistency between two Kinect sensors.


identifier: Carboni, Massimo  (2020) Elastic Tensile Properties of Uncured Towpreg Composite Materials: Experiment and Modelling.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Modern composite manufacturing techniques using Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) technology incorporates process modeling simulations to predict the path of the towpreg. One of the limiting factors in process modeling for AFP is the reliance on using cured composite material properties while in practice, the properties of the uncured state is required. Variability exists in the material properties between both states, with the properties of the uncured towpreg being significantly lower due the viscous matrix. One of those properties is the tensile modulus. Through experimental uniaxial tensile testing of uncured towpreg samples, the mechanical behavior of the material is analyzed in order to propose a model to accurately predict the modulus at varying loads and temperatures. Along with this data, the effects of fiber waviness on the tensile behavior of uncured towpreg are analyzed at the microscopic level. To support the experimentation, a finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to demonstrate the correlation at the micro and mesoscale levels between fiber waviness and the tensile response curve of uncured towpreg. A mathematical model is proposed derived from free body diagram analysis and classical lamination theory and based on the assumed sinusoidal wavelength of the fibers to predict how the fiber geometry affects the system.


identifier: Grudin, Dmytry  (2020) A Microhotplate for Gas Sensing and Vacuum Measurements.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis is devoted to the design, analysis and characterization of the thermal sensor based on Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor, (CMOS) compatible microhotplate (MHP). The MHP contains a split electric heater and temperature sensor, has a small area of 0.02mm2 and operates at low overheating temperature. These features of the sensing element which are not typical for traditional thermal sensors have been selected to compromise restrictions imposed by the CMOS fabrication process and materials available for the building of functional elements.
The operating mode of the sensor, signal processing algorithms and the layout of the MHP were analyzed and adjusted such that to provide a stable and low noise operation even with potentially unstable poly-Si as the material used for the heater and temperature sensor. It was experimentally demonstrated that the proposed approach allows to detect extremely small variations of CO2 and O2 concentration in air. The sensor tested as a vacuum gauge demonstrated good sensitivity down to 1mTorr.
The developed MHP due to its small size and true compatibility with CMOS fabrication process has good potential for volume production and can be used in applications where miniature and inexpensive sensors are needed. Freeze drying technology widely used in the pharmaceutic industry is suggested to be one of the possible applications for the developed sensor. It was demonstrated that the network of the developed thermal sensors can be used to monitor water sublimation during primary drying stage that may have an important practical value for the improvement of the quality and efficiency of the freeze drying process.


identifier: O'Neill Sanger, Claire  (2020) A 2300-year reconstruction of environmental change from Parc national du Mont-Orford, southeastern Québec, using high-resolution pollen, charcoal and X-ray fluorescence records.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: We used a high-resolution lacustrine pollen record from Étang Fer-de-Lance (45°21'21.9"N, 72°13'35.3"W), southern Québec, Canada, together with microcharcoal, to infer forest dynamics, climate and human impacts over the past 2300 years. The lake is located in the sugar maple-basswood domain of the Northern Temperate Forest. We found that Fagus grandifolia (American beech) and Tsuga canadensis (eastern hemlock) significantly declined over the past 700 years. Over the last millennium, Picea glauca (white spruce), Picea mariana/rubens (black and red spruce), and Pinus strobus (eastern white pine) significantly increased. Using the modern analog technique (MAT), we found a warm and dry first millennium AD, a somewhat less warm and less dry Medieval Climate Anomaly, and a cold and wet Little Ice Age. The signal for human modification of the landscape first appeared at ~AD 1550-1650 as increases in Ambrosia (ragweed) and Poaceae (grasses) from Indigenous agriculture. The signal of European settler landscape modification appeared at ~AD 1770 as the beginning of a steep, “classic” Ambrosia rise. It intensified over the subsequent 250 years as further increases in non-arboreal pollen taxa and early successional Acer (maple) species. Microcharcoal analysis showed that fire is a natural part of the sugar maple-basswood domain with a mean fire return interval of 515 years.


identifier: Polinsky, Sheridan  (2020) A Chapter in the Development of Māturīdite Theology: Abū l-Yusr al-Bazdawī (d. 493/1100) on the Divine Attributes.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The problem of the divine attributes has been central to Islamic theology. In the Quran, God is ascribed various qualities and actions, but the nature of their relationship to Him is not elucidated. It has therefore been the task of theologians and other thinkers to clarify this matter in accordance with their conceptions of God’s unity (tawḥīd) and transcendence (tanzīh). This thesis examines the discourse on the divine attributes of the early Māturīdite theologian Abū l-Yusr al-Bazdawī, whose aim is to uphold two key tenets concerning this problem: 1) the nature of all attributes of essence and act as eternal entities subsistent in God’s essence, primarily against the Mu‘tazilite rejection of this; and 2) God’s incomparability and incorporeality, mainly against the Karrāmites’ spatialization of Him. His reliance on both tradition and rational argumentation to support his views demonstrates his contribution to the emergence of Māturīdism and at times produces conflict in his thought as he tries to negotiate between these two sources of religious knowledge, resulting in nuanced and unique approaches to certain aspects of the topic.


identifier: DeJong, Scott  (2020) Generational Controls: Designing and implementing a serious intergenerational escape game that analogizes data personalization, filter bubbles and echo chambers.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Digital literacy initiatives disproportionately favour school children, leaving older adults and individuals in spaces of economic precarity without access. Current initiatives to provide digital literacy skills, struggle to provide analog methods of learning creating an access gap. Escape games, collaborative puzzle solving games, offer a promising educational alternative by naturally promoting a critical evaluation of game material. The project demonstrates a method that can provide information about digital processes without the barriers of online learning through an analog escape room titled, Reactile. The game uses analogy and facilitator performed characters to represent content and guide players into discussion about the collection of data for platform personalization, filter bubbles, and echo chambers. Connecting activist facilitation practices with subversive teaching approaches, this Masters outlines the process of making and implementing a serious escape game that represents digital infrastructure. Placing players at the forefront of the learning practice, the game embeds reflection during and after play, prompting players to connect their experience and knowledge to the issues discussed. The project acts a template for intergenerational knowledge exchange through games.


identifier: Dalia, Zannatul Mawa  (2020) Local Buckling of Steel Multi-Sided Tube Sections.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Multi-sided steel tubular sections are commonly used in many structures such as road side light posts, road signposts, transmission and telecommunication towers, etc. These sections are generally subjected to axial compression, pure bending, combined bending and compression, or torsion.  From the design point of view, it is very important to make sure that these thin-walled sections do not buckle locally before reaching their capacity. Current AASHTO 2015 standard for Structural Supports for Highway Signs, Luminaires, and Traffic Signals provides width-thickness limits to check for local buckling of Octagonal (8-sides), Dodecagonal (12-sides) and Hexadecagonal (16-sides) steel tube sections when they are subjected to axial compression and bending. The new Canadian steel standard, CAN/CSA S16-19 has recently adopted the same slenderness limit for compact multi-sided tube sections as suggested in AASHTO. While AASHTO recommends the same width-thickness limit for all the three multi-sided sections when they are compact, the requirements for non-compact sections are different for different sections. ASCE/SEI 48-11 provides limits for the non-compact sections, which are very close to the non-compact limits of AASHTO. Although many structures now use these multi-sided sections, no study has been conducted to evaluate AASHTO slenderness limits of these thin-walled sections. In addition, no study is currently available on local buckling of multi-sided sections subjected to bending and axial compression. Thus, a detailed study is required to investigate the local buckling behavior of multi-sided steel tube sections and evaluate these limits.  This thesis presents a finite element (FE) analysis based study of local buckling of multi-sided steel tubular sections. A nonlinear finite element model is developed for this study and validated against experimental results from stub column tests of 8, 12, and 16-sided cross-sections. The FE model is further validated against experimental test results of 16-sided cross-sections subjected to pure bending. The validated FE model is then used to analyze a series of multi-sided steel tubular sections subjected to axial compression, pure bending, combined bending and compression, and pure torsion. Three different geometry, namely, eight, twelve, and sixteen-sided polygonal sections are considered. FE analyses show that AASHTO provided compact limit for members under flexure might need to be revised. However, AASHTO provided non-compact limits are quite relaxed for the sections subjected to pure bending. Based on FE results, revised compact and non-compact limits have been proposed for Octagonal, Dodecagonal, and Hexadecagonal sections subjected to flexure. Moreover, FE analyses indicate that the non-compact limit of the Hexadecagonal section can also be used for the other two sections under axial compression.  Furthermore, FE results are used to evaluate capacity equations provided in different standards (i.e., AASHTO, ASCE/SEI 48-11, Eurocode 3, and EN 50341-1) for multi-sided tubes subjected to different loading conditions. FE analyses show that while AASHTO provides a pretty good prediction for the Octagonal and Dodecagonal sections under combined bending and compression, it overestimates the capacities of several selected Hexadecagonal sections. It is also observed that torsional capacities for the Octagonal and Dodecagonal sections are predicted well for the compact sections in AASHTO and ASCE/SEI 48-11 and for a large number of selected Hexadecagonal compact sections, both codes are predicting higher torsional resistance.


identifier: Jebbar, Yassine  (2020) Remote Phobia Treatment as a Tactile Internet Application Case Study in Edge augmented with Mobile Ad Hoc Clouds Environment.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Tactile Internet is a next generation Internet that allows the transmission of haptic sensations in addition to audio and video content.
It is expected to enable new latency-sensitive and critical use cases, such as remote phobia treatment, tele-surgery and autonomous driving. However, the current networking infrastructure cannot ensure the strict requirements that come with Tactile Internet, namely ultra-responsiveness and ultra-reliability.
\indent Edge computing can help in solving this issue. While Cloud Computing offers powerful computing resources at distant data centers, Edge computing provides resources closer to the end user. To this end, computations can be offloaded from the cloud to the edge to obtain lower latency. In addition, as the Edge itself may prove to be insufficiently close to the end users’ devices in some cases, it can be augmented with Mobile Ad-Hoc Clouds. The Mobile Ad-hoc Clouds refer to a group of mobile devices located at the immediate vicinity of the end users, offering their available resources for computation, leading therefore to a reduced latency. Nevertheless, the design and implementation of an architecture based on edges augmented with mobile ad-hoc clouds for Tactile Internet raises several challenges. Firstly, a tactile internet-based architecture for remote phobia treatment should allow the exchange of auditory, visual and haptic information to ensure the efficiency of the therapy. Secondly, the end to end latency should be in the order of a few milliseconds to avoid “cyber-sickness”.
\indent This thesis provides a case study of edge augmented with mobile ad-hoc clouds architecture for remote phobia treatment. The contributions are threefold. First, a software architecture for remote phobia treatment is designed for an edge augmented with mobile ad hoc clouds environment. Second, a proof of concept prototype for the proposed architecture is implemented and evaluated using a set of haptic devices, which include the HTC Vive VR headset, the Leap Motion hand tracking device, as well as the Gloveone haptic glove. Third, a set of experiments consisting of placing the components in the different layers (i.e. Cloud, Edge and Mobile Ad-hoc Cloud) were conducted, which allowed an evaluation of the impact on performance. A set of high-level interfaces were introduced to allow communication with the heterogeneous devices. The design of the architecture as a set of software modules allows the reusability of the architecture.


identifier: Huang, Zhitong ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6982-4815 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6982-4815>  (2020) Identity-Preserved Face Beauty Transformation with Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Identity-preserved face beauty transformation aims to change the beauty scale of a face image while preserving the identity of the original face. In our framework of conditional Generative Adversarial Networks (cGANs), the synthesized face produced by the generator would have the same beauty scale indicated by the input condition. Unlike the discrete class labels used in most cGANs, the condition of target beauty scale in our framework is given by a continuous real-valued beauty score in the range [1 to 5], which makes the work challenging. To tackle the problem, we implement a new triple structure, in which the conditional discriminator is divided into a normal discriminator and a separate face beauty predictor. We also develop another new structure called Conditioned Instance Normalization to replace the original concatenation used in cGANs, which makes the combination of the input image and condition more effective. Furthermore, Self -Consistency Loss is introduced as a new parameter to improve the stability of training and quality of the generated image. In the end, the objectives of beauty transformation and identity preservation are evaluated by the pretrained face beauty predictor and state-of the-art face recognition network. The result shows that certain facial features could be synthesized by the generator according to the target beauty scale, while preserving the original identity.


identifier: Weber, Stephanie  (2020) An Elusive Allusivity: Paradox in the Representation of Plate Glass in Canada, 1851-1900.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis attempts to define a visual culture of plate glass in Canada during the second half of the nineteenth century. I approach this material through descriptions and depictions in Canadian periodicals of Victorian era structures that utilized large expanses of plate glass, namely, Canadian versions of the “Crystal Palace” exhibition building, and modern mass market department stores with large storefront display windows. In Canadian publications, these plate glass surfaces often take on certain metaphorical significance, coming to stand in for modernity, to signify purity by their clarity, or to promise a quintessentially modern honesty and openness, as their solid surfaces maintained visual limpidity. However, though glass is allusive in many ways, its signification also remained elusive. Any meaning that glass may encompass is always accompanied by its own opposite; glass can change in a moment from lucid to reflective, from refracting beams of bright light to darkening and dulling, and though it is a physically protective layer, it also permits unmitigated visual connection. The relationship of nineteenth-century Canadian periodicals to the material is marked by this ambiguity. I suggest that glass’s physical capacity for dualism is an apt metaphor for the way that the meanings it signified were often contradictory, even when simultaneous. I argue that in the Canadian context, the paradoxes encompassed by the developing cultural imaginaries around glass are mirrored by the paradoxes of Victorian Canadians’ ambiguous and conflicting relationships with nationalism and modernization.


identifier: Laarej, Amine  (2020) Automatic Transformation-Based Model Checking of Multi-agent Systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) are highly useful constructs in the context of real-world software applications. Built upon communication and interaction between autonomous agents, these systems are suitable to model and implement intelligent applications. Yet these desirable features are precisely what makes these systems very challenging to design, and their compliance with requirements extremely difficult to verify. This explains the need for the development of techniques and tools to model, understand, and implement interacting MASs. Among the different methods developed, the design-time verification techniques for MASs based on model checking offer the advantage of being formal and fully automated. We can distinguish between two different approaches used in model checking MASs, the direct verification approach, and the transformation-based approach. This thesis focuses on the later that  relies on formal reduction techniques to transform the problem of model checking a source logic into that of an equivalent problem of model checking a target logic.
In this thesis, we propose a new transformation framework leveraging the model checking of the computation tree logic (CTL) and its NuSMV model checker to design and implement the process of transformation-based model checking for CTL-extension logics to MASs. The approach provides an integrated system with a rich set of features, designed to support the transformation process while simplifying the most challenging and error-prone tasks. The thesis presents and  describes the tool built upon this framework and its different applications. A performance comparison with MCMAS, the model checker of MASs, is also discussed.


identifier: Zakikhani, Kimiya  (2020) Failure prediction and availability-based maintenance planning of gas transmission pipelines.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
As the most frequent failure source, external corrosion has led to more than 1700 failures in gas transmission pipelines in US since 1996, causing a property damage of approximately $189M. Such numbers highlight the importance of maintaining gas transmission pipelines in safe conditions to postpone corrosion failures. As the most widely applied method of corrosion monitoring technique, in-line inspection is expensive and time-consuming due to requiring high frequencies. On the other hand, the recent efforts directed towards developing failure prediction or maintenance planning models for oil and gas pipelines seem to have some limitations. As such, most of the failure prediction models are based on limited number of inspection or historical records or are limited in application due to their subjectivity. Furthermore, in the domain of maintenance planning, the current procedures are merely based on considering the associated costs and safety thresholds in the decision-making process. Such methodologies do not address the importance of pipeline availability and continuation of operation as a critical asset in the selection of the maintenance strategy.
This research has two main objectives. As the first objective, the proposed research aims to develop historical data-based failure prediction models for gas transmission pipelines by considering geo-environmental features. As the second objective, this research aims to propose a reliability-centered availability-based maintenance planning framework that considers the criticality of pipeline operation.
For these objectives, a detailed literature review was carried out on current methodologies to predict failures in oil and gas pipelines and maintain them. As the most important limitations, current failure prediction models do not consider geographical and environmental properties of pipelines to predict failures. On the other hand, in maintenance planning scope, none of current practices highlight importance of pipeline operation and availability in making the proper decision. In addition, these methodologies are often subjective, i.e. they are merely applicable to limited pipelines. To overcome these limitations the mentioned objectives of this research were defined and failure and maintenance data were collected from accessible historical records and reports. The failure prediction models were developed from best-subset and multiple regression analyses on the historical failure data and were then validated. On the other hand, the maintenance planning framework was developed from a coupled cost and availability-based maintenance planning procedure on different maintenance scenarios. For each scenario, a discrete event simulation was carried out through MATLAB programming. Such simulation was performed on the pipeline reliability profile obtained from a Monte Carlo simulation and consideration of improvement in availability per unit cost as the decision criteria. Monte Carlo simulation was carried out to consider wide range of design parameters for development of the reliability profile.
The developed failure prediction models were able to satisfactory predict time of corrosion failures in gas transmission pipelines for Great Plains and South East Regions of the U.S. These models were validated with mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.12 and 0.04, for Great Plains, and 0.11 and 0.07, for South East regional classifications, respectively. The proposed maintenance planning framework reveals that for a case study of a 24-inch pipeline, considering an availability-cost indicator, the second maintenance scenario, with interventions at the service life of 30.1 and 40.5 years is more effective. This order is followed by the first scenario with interventions at service life of 33.3 and 42.2 years, and finally the third scenario with intervention at service life of 24.2 years, respectively.
The developed failure prediction models can assist decision makers and pipeline operators to predict the expected time of corrosion failure in gas transmission pipelines in the selected regions by considering geo-environmental and pipeline design parameters.  In addition, for maintenance planning of oil and gas pipelines, this research proposes a novel methodology that considers oil and gas pipelines as critical assets for which continued operation is of high importance. Such consideration provides a compensation between the costs incurred and pipeline availability to avoid over/under maintenance.


identifier: Armitage, Cole  (2020) Destabilizing Animation: Structures of Agency and Uncanny Animacy in Animated Media.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis examines the destabilization of a hierarchical ordering of human vs. nonhuman agency found in digital media which present a surge of “animacy” – perceptible qualities of “agency, awareness, mobility and liveness” (Chen 2012). It examines one webtoon (The Bongcheon-Dong Ghost 2011) and two video games (Undertale 2015 and Doki Doki Literature Club 2017), which push at the boundaries of their respective media forms by channeling technical/computational forces (e.g. Javascript or memory storage) into character animation; “animation” in a doubled sense: both as the fusion of discontinuous instants afforded by the mechanical succession of images as well as the production of a social Other possessing qualities of life and agency (Silvio 2019). The result is a perception of agency (and thus animacy) that resists the categorization of both the character and the media object. Challenging dominant structures and theories of comic readership, video game play, or “database consumption” (Azuma 2009) respectively, these works argue against the control that the human operator is presumed both to have and to require as part of a framework which constitutes the works themselves as media objects. This thesis further argues that the structures critiqued and challenged by these works index a broader conceptualization of human action in the world, predicated on “animacy hierarchies” which are buttressed by binaries of human/nonhuman, animate/inanimate, moving/still, subject/object, and will/determination. By adopting an animist logic, in which images/media/characters might potentially act in unforeseen ways, these works challenge and destabilize such binaries.


identifier: Pakseresht, Bahar  (2020) Characterization and Attempted Isolation of Bacteria from the Marine Myxobacterial Clade.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Antibiotic resistant infections are caused by antibiotic resistant microorganisms. According to World Health Organization (WHO) antibiotic resistance is one of the major threats to global health,
food and development. The increasing rate of mortalities caused by antibiotic resistant infections has highlighted the need to find a way to tackle these resistant microbes. One of the ways to solve this problem is to introduce novel antibiotics, the likes of which bacteria have not encountered before. Most of the antibiotics are natural products derived from bacteria. Among these natural product producers, myxobacteria have proven themselves as one of the main sources of antibiotics.
These bacteria carry large numbers of gene clusters that can express different secondary metabolites for various purposes. Most of these gene clusters can encode secondary metabolites that not only help the bacteria to survive but also can be biologically active. Marine myxobacteria, in particular, produce biologically active natural products that are different from the ones terrestrial myxobacteria make. Therefore in this study we looked into an environment with unique conditions from terrestrial or marine, Gulf of Saint-Lawrence, to find novel strains from the marine myxobacterial clade. Sediment samples were extracted from six stations in Gulf of SaintLawrence. Based on the studies conducted on the DNA content of the sediments we learned that the primers that were previously designed to specifically target MMC were also detecting other strains of bacteria closely related to MMC. Furthermore, we isolated the RNA content of the sediment samples to get an insight into their metabolic activity. For this purpose we employed qPCR techniques to measure their abundance and ribosome content. Furthermore, in an attempt to
cultivate marine myxobacterial clade (MMC) we isolated the bacteria present in the sediment samples to use them as prey for marine myxobacterial clade. Based on qPCR studies we were able to conclude that the MMC were growing actively under estuary conditions. However, the attempt to cultivate the MMC on the bait plates led to emergence of vancomycin resistant Bacillus strains
along with other saprophytes on the plates. These findings suggest that members of the MMC are active under the Estuary condition and can be cultivated if subjected to the same condition as present in the Estuary of St-Lawrence.


identifier: Duong, Quang Huy  (2020) Nested Column Generation for Optical Network Optimization.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Defragmentation/reoptimization of Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) reallocates con- nections to achieve an improved system, e.g., reducing the total required spare ca- pacity or transmission delay. EONs comprises multiple layers which have different functionalities and management. This thesis studies two main layers of EONs that are Logical Layer and Optical Layer. Although defragmentation/reoptimization has many techniques and strategies, because of practical-application requirements, this work only discusses make-before-break (MBB) technique to reduce capacity/spectrum usage at defragmentation events predetermined by time-driven manner.
There are two directions in terms of solution strategies. In the first direction, network operator solves the original problem of finding the optimal state that MBB rerouting sequences can reach. This direction is hard to solve because MBB condition makes the problem complicated. In the second direction, it decomposes the problem into two steps. The first step computes the optimal state (target state) without MBB condition. And the second step finds a rerouting sequence to bring current state to the target state as close as possible under MBB condition. This direction is a heuristic because there is no assurance that network can reach the target state. However, this direction is easier to model and solve than the first direction.
For both directions, this work proposes several heuristic algorithms and sub- optimal algorithms using column generation for (nested) decomposition mathematical models. Our proposed models and algorithms enlarge the scalability of data sets in literature.


identifier: Jreidini, Rana  (2020) Creating a Community of Practice: Lebanese Participants’ Experiences of Moving and Adapting to Montreal expressed through Stories and Artmaking Workshops.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This research examines the experiences of three Lebanese art education graduate students at Concordia University, Lucine, Lara and myself, who moved from different cities in Lebanon to Montreal, Canada. Its aim is to demonstrate how artistic expression and artmaking practices have enabled all three of us to assimilate several multicultural aspects experienced in unfamiliar surroundings. This led us to promoting the use of art practices in exploring and representing socio-cultural integration into contemporary Canada. It additionally presents the understanding of one’s belonging to a community of practice and an informal academic learning environment. This process was developed through individual stories and artmaking workshops. Our stories are written as brief narratives, using natural tones to keep the authenticity of our voices, allowing the reader to dive into our personal experiences. The artmaking workshops then acted as an approach that bridged our stories with arts to visually represent our experiences, while investigating the importance of art as an artistic educational opportunity in promoting the visual aspect of research and representing narratives. A process of informal learning was collaboratively expressed across the participants’ chosen artmaking prompts for the workshops. The choices were based on their personal explorations of moving and adapting to Montreal, Canada. This study is an in-depth inquiry designed to encourage individuals to observe and learn about moving and adapting to a new environment, and in turn inform the public about the progression of those experiences.


identifier: Ehsani, Pooyan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0155-3593 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0155-3593>  (2020) Ridesharing Using Adaptive Waiting Time.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Ridesharing Using Adaptive Waiting Time

abstract:
The culture of sharing by the advances in communication technologies has entered a new era, and ever since, sharing instead of ownership has been sharply increasing in individuals’ behaviors. Particularly in transportation, concepts of sharing a ride in either carpooling or ridesharing have been adopting for 70 years. During the past fifteen years, the revolution in communication devices has formed the online version of ridesharing that responds to transportation needs shortly. Ridesharing is considered to be a strategy to mitigate congestion and air pollution by increasing the occupancy rate of vehicles in the road network. An online ridesharing framework is an end-to-end framework that manages the request and matches the passengers to accomplish their rides together.
In this thesis, we studied the online ridesharing problem and proposed an end-to-end framework to handle the passengers. In our end-to-end framework, we design the objective with respect to the passenger’s perspective. We assume that all the passengers tend to share their ride to reduce their transportation costs using vehicles. When two passengers get matched to accomplish their ride together, they accept a deviation from their shortest path to make sharing possible. To minimize the information provided by passengers, we define scheduling flexibility using a system-wide fixed flexibility factor ϵ, which indicates the tolerable increase in travel duration, proportional to the shortest path duration. For a trip, scheduling flexibility is the amount of time that the system has to divide between the detour from the shortest path and the waiting time to find a proper match. To split the scheduling flexibility between the detour and the waiting time, we introduce the concept of adaptive waiting time, which is the key enabler of our framework to provide a quality match for passengers. For a passenger, the optimal waiting time with respect to ϵ minimizes the expected travel cost. In this work, we use future demand to calculate the expected travel cost.
We carefully design a simulation to observe the ability of our framework to match the passengers. The trip cost and trip duration are approximated using Gradient boosting trees, and we simplify the NYC road network as a grid network. The proposed approach works for 24 hours to handle 356049 ride requests on a rectangle with an area equal to 44 km2. We analyze several metrics to indicate the quality of the matching process. The simulation results show that by using our approach, 75.2% of the passengers can share their ride by increasing the trip duration for 4.334 minutes on average, and it leads to reducing the total cost by 12% and reducing the total traveled distance by 14.29%.


identifier: Bédard, Mathieu  (2020) The "I"s of Quebec Cinema: The Paradigm of Autoethnography in the Building of National Cinema (1938-1968).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis combines the concept of autoethnography with recent research that has linked orality and the development of Quebec cinema. It focuses on the historical desire for self-representation that preoccupied Quebec filmmakers before the institutionalization of Quebec cinema as a culture industry in the 1970s, and underlines a corresponding genealogy of films centered on the filmmaker’s presence and first-person discourse. In a handful of foundational films starting with those of Albert Tessier, and moving to the work of Claude Jutra, Gilles Groulx and Anne-Claire Poirier, the thesis argues that the filmmaker’s subjectivity embodies the Quebecois community which is made “other” within the space of Canadian and global cinema. The mediation of autobiographical traces conceives film as a “living experience” of culture and identity, embodied in the filmmaker’s own body and/or voice. I argue that autoethnographic expression is closely tied to the building of Quebec’s national cinema, as a discursive practice emphasizing agency, perspective, and the right to self-representation. Yet, the genealogical approach of the thesis also observes how this mediation of individual identity complicates collective identity in the process. The nation is rendered a site of competing experiences and perspectives, in dialogue or in conflict with each other across time. Overall, the thesis invites the reader to consider first-person cinema as a paradigmatic form of political inscription in Quebec, and to question notions of “authenticity” and homogeneity in the study of Quebec cinema. Identity entails a process of negotiation that is open-ended and can always be reframed and appropriated by the “other” within.


identifier: Charlebois, Laurence  (2020) Air, Participation, and Collectivity in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Vicious Circular Breathing.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis examines the links between air and participation in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Vicious Circular Breathing. Created in 2013, Vicious Circular Breathing is a large-scale, participatory artwork that constantly recycles participants’ breath. The ever-increasing carbon dioxide levels inside the work ultimately create an unhospitable environment for participants, however. The thesis argues that this toxicity creates a unique participatory condition where participation directly impacts air quality, which in turn acts as a repellant to participants.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis is separated into two sections. The first section looks at participatory art and the underlying democratic promises attached to this artistic practice.  Looking at scholars who have contributed extensively to the field (Bishop, Kester, Manovich), the author establishes the parameters and limitations regarding participatory art. Ultimately, the air encapsulated inside Vicious Circular Breathing can be equated to the collective experience of sharing the public sphere. Participation thus has the potential to be democratic and idealistic, but it can quickly lead to a toxic social environment.

The thesis then turns to multiple readings of air as seen through the disciplines of new materialism and ecology (Irigaray, Bennett, Horn.) This scholarship implies that air is anything but static, and so it can be envisioned as a medium. By being trapped inside the same, but constantly-shifting structure, viewers and participants are reminded that air is a crucial element for life and biodiversity on Earth.


identifier: Nicholls, Shane  (2020) Corporate Governance and Fair Value Accounting: An International Perspective.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The overall objective of this dissertation is to investigate the interface between both firm- and country-level corporate governance mechanisms and fair value accounting for a sample of international financial institutions in the post-financial crisis period. In order to meet this objective, I conduct two studies investigating different aspects of the fair value hierarchy and the role of corporate governance.

	The first study investigates the impact of firm- and country-level corporate governance mechanisms on the relevance and reliability of the estimates provided by the fair value hierarchy. This is examined for a sample of publicly listed banks from Canada and the European Union and extends the scant literature on the interface between corporate governance and fair value accounting. The results show that, contrary to prior research, investors do not consider level 3 fair value estimates to be reliable enough to be incorporated into firm value and thus, are not value relevant. Further testing, however, reveals that corporate governance mechanisms act in such a manner as to increase the perceived reliability of level 3 fair value estimates such that investors do consider them to be value relevant. Moreover, the results suggest that, in the context of value relevance decisions, firm- and country-level governance mechanisms act as substitutes for one another.

	The second study investigates the potential for the fair value hierarchy to act as an alternative vehicle for earnings management in banks, and the role that firm- and country-level corporate governance plays in impacting the relationship between two competing earnings management methods. Extant earnings management literature on financial institutions focuses on the use of the loan loss provision to manage earnings. However, the recent change in accounting standards towards fair value accounting has provided an alternative vehicle for earnings management, specifically through level 2 and level 3 fair value measurements. The results show that level 2 fair values do not appear to be a viable tool to manage earnings. However, after accounting for the effect of either firm- or country-level corporate governance, the results suggest that level 3 fair values can act as an alternative earnings management tool. Managers faced with high (low) governance report lower (higher) levels of discretionary loan loss provisions as the proportion of level 3 assets increases. Moreover, additional analyses provide preliminary results suggesting that, in the context of earnings management, firm- and country-level governance mechanisms act as complements for one another.


identifier: Yarur, Francisco  (2020) Photosensitization of Inorganic Semiconducting Nanostructures for Solar Energy Conversion.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The engineering of efficient solar energy conversion devices with Earth-abundant elements is of paramount importance to meet the energy demands of a carbon-neutral society and to mitigate environmental damage. Converting solar energy into clean solar fuels and to drive industrially relevant processes is an attractive alternative to address the global energy problem. Typical molecular methods for the production of solar fuels make use of photosensitizers containing precious metals in order to harvest visible light. Carbon dots and kesterite nanocrystals have both recently and separately been considered as suitable candidates to photosensitize metal oxide structures due to their low cost and absorption across the visible portion of the solar spectrum. The physical and electronic architecture of these nanohybrids is a crucial factor that will dictate their optical and catalytic properties.

In this work, the photosensitization of zinc oxide nanowires with carbon dots to produce solar fuels is explored. In addition, due to the unknown formation pathway of carbon dots, the formation mechanism for the synthesis of kesterite Cu2ZnSnS4 nanocrystals is evaluated to achieve better control at tuning the optical and photocatalytic properties of nanomaterials. The carbon dot system is employed as a heterogeneous photocatalytic electrode surface for the α-heteroarylation of 1-phenylpyrrolidine and the generation of a high value-added benzyl amine pharmacophore. Furthermore, insight into possible mechanisms of electron transfer between the photoelectrode andorganic substrate is presented. Regarding the kesterite nanocrystals, the optimization of their synthesis to tailor the size dispersity is investigated given the strong correlation between the size and function of nanomaterials. A non-classical formation mechanism is suggested with the formation of a copper-sulfide intermediate followed by the incorporation of Sn4+ and Zn2+ through cation exchange.


identifier: Nair, Ajeesh Suresh  (2020) First-ply Failure and Reliability of Composite Tubes Subjected to Axial and Torsional Loadings.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Composite tubes are widely used in automobile and aerospace applications. In engineering practice, composite structures are often subjected to multiple loadings. In addition, the in-situ material and strength properties of composite materials possess unavoidable variations that are random in nature. Such variations affect the response and failure of components made of such composite materials. Reliability engineering has been used as an integral part of the product design and development process in modern industrial practice, to accommodate for such in-situ variations. The present thesis focuses on the study of the first-ply failure of the composite tubes, subjected to combined axial and torsional loadings. Since, in many practical applications, tapered tubes are preferred more often over uniform-diameter tubes, the mechanical behavior and failure of tapered composite tubes are studied with more emphasis in the present work. The first-ply failure envelopes of the filament-wound composite tubes are developed based on the Finite Element Modelling and Analysis. A closed-form analytical solution is developed based on the Classical Laminate Theory, which is used to validate the three-dimensional finite element models of the tapered composite tubes created in ANSYS®. Empirical equations are developed in terms of the radius-to-length and radius-to-thickness ratios, the fiber orientation, and the taper angle to calculate the first-ply failure loadings of the tapered composite tubes. The reliability of the composite tubes is quantified considering the in-situ material properties to be random variables. The reliability-based first-ply failure envelopes of the uniform-diameter and tapered composite tubes are developed based on the Monte Carlo Simulation method.


identifier: Tang, Shicheng  (2020) Executive’s Education and Performance of REITs.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Top executives with business decision-making power, including CEO, CFO and COO, are the core of a company’s business activities, their business decisions influenced by their own abilities will naturally affect the company performance. As an expected proxy of executive’s ability, this paper focuses on the executive’s education, and studies the impact of executive’s education on the performance of REITs by using the data of executive’s education and financial performance of 288 U.S. REITs companies from 2000 to 2018. As for the results of the empirical examinations, this paper finds that, first, there is no significant relationship between executive’s individual education and the performance of REITs. However, executive’s high individual education has a significantly negative impact on the performance of REITs if there is enough discretionary cash. Second, as for the executive team of CEO and CFO, there is a significantly positive impact of the education of executive team in which CEO has no high education and CFO has high education on the performance of REITs. Finally, as for the executive team of CEO, CFO and COO, there is a significantly positive impact of the education of executive team in which CEO has no high education and at least one of CFO and COO has high education on the performance of REITs, and the best executive team with greater positive impact on the performance of REITs is the one in which CEO has no high education and one of CFO and COO has high education.