identifier: Legacy, Jacqueline  (2017) Early vocabulary development in very young French-English bilinguals: A longitudinal study.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The present dissertation had three main goals: 1) To examine similarities and differences in monolingual and bilingual vocabulary acquisition during a critical period of development 2) To examine how processing speed and language exposure differentially impact vocabulary development and the acquisition of translation equivalents (TEs; words in each language that mean the same thing, such as dog in English and chien in French) in bilingual children during the second year of life, and 3) To acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the stability and continuity of early bilingual vocabulary development by using a direct measure of vocabulary comprehension and processing speed (the Computerized Comprehension Task; CCT) in conjunction with parent reported vocabulary (the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory; CDI) longitudinally. In order to address these goals, data was collected on two samples of children, one monolingual and one bilingual, at three different developmental time points. Three manuscripts were then written based on this data, and are included as part of this dissertation.
The first manuscript, published in 2016 in the Journal of Child Language, examines the receptive vocabulary development of a sample of French-English bilingual and French monolingual children at 16 months of age. This manuscript not only compares the bilingual sample’s receptive vocabulary development and word processing speed to that of their monolingual peers using data from the CCT and CDI, but it also examines the emergence of TE acquisition, and investigates within- and cross-language relations between vocabulary size and reaction time (RT). The findings from this paper suggest that bilingual receptive vocabulary development is largely on par with that of monolingual development, and that learning more than one language from birth does not hinder children’s speed of lexical access. Importantly, it also emphasizes the link between language exposure, vocabulary size, and processing speed, and shows that children with larger vocabularies tend to be faster at processing words.
The second manuscript included in this dissertation was published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition in 2016. It follows the same samples of children from 16 to 22 months of age, and focuses on growth in vocabulary comprehension and production, as well as changes in language exposure and processing speed across waves. Importantly, this study is the first to investigate vocabulary growth in a sample of French–English bilingual toddlers using a longitudinal design in conjunction with a direct measure of vocabulary development. Although both receptive and expressive vocabulary development began slowly in the bilingual sample with learning divided across languages, over time these toddlers acquired approximately as many new words as their monolingual peers in their dominant language, and exhibited a total vocabulary size that was equivalent to, or larger than, their monolingual peers. Furthermore, children’s processing speed increased across waves, and RT on the CCT at 16 months emerged as a significant predictor of receptive vocabulary size at 22 months for the bilinguals. Importantly, both within- and cross-language relations emerged between language exposure, vocabulary size, and processing speed for the bilinguals, once again emphasizing the complex interplay between these variables early on in development.
Finally, the third manuscript included in the present dissertation was published in the Journal of Child Language in 2017. It focuses on productive vocabulary development and the acquisition of TEs in our French-English bilingual sample across three developmental time points, at 16, 22, and 30 months. It also compares a direct measure of TE development with parent report in a separate sample of 24-month-old French-English bilinguals. This is the first study to longitudinally investigate the impact that changes in language exposure and vocabulary size have on TE development during the second and third years of life. It is also the first study to compare a direct measure of TE comprehension with parent report during the second year of life. This manuscript shows that the acquisition of TEs is a gradual process that begins early on in bilingual development. It also provides evidence for the relation between quantity of language exposure and TE development, but shows that the ratio of L1 (dominant) to L2 (non-dominant) vocabulary is a better predictor of TE development than L2 exposure alone in young bilinguals. Lastly, this manuscript emphasizes the importance of using both direct and indirect measures of early vocabulary comprehension and TE development, as it shows that parents of bilingual children may have a tendency to over-report their child’s receptive word knowledge when completing vocabulary checklists.


identifier: Sarghi, Diana  (2017) Can servant leaders reduce burnout in their followers through meaningfulness?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: The present study investigates whether servant leaders inspire a sense of meaningfulness in their followers, and whether deriving meaning from work will then help to reduce emotional exhaustion, the core dimension of burnout. Previous literature has found that meaningfulness will help to reduce burnout in followers, but has not documented the antecedents to this process.  Given that leaders play an important role in the wellbeing and behaviours of their teams, it is crucial to look at how they may influence this relationship. We proposed that servant leaders, because of their focus on serving their followers and their community, and for their ability to empower their teams, might be just the types of leaders to inspire a sense of meaning in their employees. Meaningfulness was also proposed as a mediator in the effects of servant leadership on emotional exhaustion at the individual and team level, a relationship that has not yet been looked at in the literature. To collect the data for this study, we administered online questionnaires to employees comprising teams at various companies. Results showed that servant leadership did reduce emotional exhaustion in followers at both levels of analysis. Meaningfulness, however, only mediated the relationship between servant leadership and emotional exhaustion at the individual level. Our findings also add to the current management literature in providing a direct relationship between servant leadership and meaningfulness at both the individual and the team level.


identifier: Mastani Joybari, Mahmood  (2017) Simultaneous Charging/Discharging of Phase Change Materials: Characterization of Natural Convection Process.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In recent decades, latent heat storage in phase change materials (PCMs) received considerable attention. This is due to their high latent heat capacity, which is essentially required for managing and overcoming the temporal mismatch between energy supply and demand. Thus, at the time of energy availability at supply side, it is stored in PCMs so as to be extracted later on when it is needed. In order to provide continuous operation, there are some periods when a thermal storage has to be simultaneously charged and discharged. Most studies focused either on charging, discharging, or consecutive charging and discharging process, while limited work has been conducted for the case of simultaneous charging and discharging (SCD). The first objective of this dissertation is to develop a numerical model to analyze the heat transfer mechanism within a horizontal PCM storage under SCD. Since the possible heat transfer mechanisms within PCMs are conduction, convection or a combination of both, two models are used to identify the mechanism under SCD; i.e. the pure conduction (PC) model and combined conduction and natural convection (CCNC) model. The PC model is a hypothetical model, which neglects the natural convection during phase change process; however, the CCNC model is the real case one. Validation of the model results by comparison with experimental data shows an acceptable agreement both under melting and solidification. Therefore, the developed model can be used to numerically study the phase change process in PCMs.
Natural convection is the result of density changes, which create buoyancy forces within melted PCM and plays a significant role during melting. Currently, the most widely used method to account for natural convection is the effective thermal conductivity method. The method considers an artificial increase in thermal conductivity values to take into consideration the effect of natural convection by comparing the results with experimental data. Two major shortcomings of this method are that first, it is tedious to obtain the proper value and second, the method does not provide information about the melting front location. In this dissertation, a novel simplified front tracking method is presented to replace the thermal conductivity method. The novel method is based on considering two separate melting fronts for the upper and lower halves of a horizontal thermal storage system. Therefore, two dimensionless correlations are developed to map the results of the simple PC model to that of the complicated CCNC model based on the presented logic. The method essentially creates a link between CCNC and PC models, which is also missing in the literature. Based on verification, the correlations can provide results within ±15% discrepancy.


identifier: Sun, Yingnan  (2017) An Ecofeminism Perspective on Economic Globalization: A Pollution Case in China.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Economic globalization is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it compels more countries to get involved in global production chains; however, on the other hand it also brings many adverse effects in still developing countries. China, as one of the biggest developing countries and an emerging economy, has experienced economic reforms in the past 35 years. As a result, China’s economy has developed quickly. One of the areas where China has paid the price for such fast-paced economic development and rapid industrialization is environmental degradation and pollution. Women largely bear the brunt of the effects of environment pollution, but their voices usually remain at the margins.
This research strives to find the role that education can play in balancing economic development and environmental conservation. However, in order to design an appropriate context bound curriculum it is necessary to examine how women workers perceive and experience economic globalization and environmental pollution. Drawing from a conceptual framework based on ecofeminism, women workers were invited to participate in a Photovoice project. They presented their concerns about environmental pollution and economic globalization through their photos. Based on the case research, some suggestions are given on how to deal with the pollution issues from an educational perspective, and how to balance economic globalization and environmental sustainability.


identifier: Trottier, Raphaël  (2017) Mettre en scène le Canada-français : Les costumes traditionnels dans les ensembles de danse folklorique au Québec.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Ce mémoire porte son attention sur l’utilisation des costumes traditionnels dans les ensembles de danse folklorique canadienne-française au Québec. À partir de la théorie de l’invention des traditions de l’historien Eric Hobsbawn, il est ici argumenté qu’en plus de celles préexistantes concernant le costume, les ensembles de danse sont responsables de la création d’autres traditions. Afin de démontrer cette hypothèse, le texte est organisé de manière chronologique pour en voir la sédimentation au fil du temps. En un premier temps, les contextes historiques du nationalisme occidental puis québécois sont présentés alors que la naissance des ensembles de danse folklorique au Québec, au milieu du vingtième siècle, est développée par la suite. Dans un second temps, il est question de la promotion du régionalisme au Québec qui a mené à la recherche sur les costumes traditionnels par l’ethnographe Madeleine Doyon dans les années 1940. C’est l’influence de ces recherches sur les ensembles de danse folklorique qui forme le reste de cette section sur le costume régional. En un troisième temps, la discussion se tourne vers l’usage des costumes historiques dans ces ensembles. Il est alors question des costumes inspirés des peuples fondateurs du Québec, des costumes de ville de la Belle Époque, puis des costumes ouvriers urbains du 2e quart du vingtième siècle.


identifier: Zhao, Yue  (2017) The Effect of Health Communication Anxiety on Healthcare Access.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
As communities worldwide become increasingly multicultural, the need to communicate in healthcare situations using one's second language (L2) has become increasingly common. This raises the question: Are there any special consequences of using—or even of anticipating having to use—one's L2 during a healthcare encounter? This dissertation addresses this issue by examining one potential barrier to healthcare access that people in a linguistic minority situation often experience, anxiety related to having to use an L2 to receive health services. The overarching goal of this thesis project is to examine the effects of second language (L2) health communication anxiety on willingness to use L2 services as well as the factors underlying this anxiety. Four empirical studies, reported in two manuscripts, have been conducted to achieve these research goals. In these studies, participants were members of Quebec's English-speaking minority.
Manuscript 1 reports on two studies looking at health communication anxieties associated with language-discordant situations, that is, where a patient has to communicate using an L2 with a health provider using a first language (L1) different from the patient's L1. Study 1 was concerned with developing a Health Communication Anxiety (HCA) scale for language-discordant situations, separately for physical and mental health contexts. Study 2 examined the relationship of L2 health communication anxiety on willingness to use health services provided in the L2. Results from Study 1 and Study 2 indicate that the HCA scales provide valid and internally reliable measures of L2-specific forms of health-communication anxiety experienced in both physical and mental health contexts and these are associated with reluctance to use healthcare services in that language.
Manuscript 2 reports two studies examining the factors underlying the L2-specific health communication anxiety affecting willingness to use L2 services. Study 1 was concerned with indirect effects of health-focused anxiety – that is, of general worry about health in the link between L2 health communication anxiety and healthcare use. The results showed that there were no significant effects of general health-focused anxiety in the L2-specific effect of L2 health communication anxiety on willingness to use L2 health services. Study 2 continued investigating the indirect effects of predictive uncertainty and predicted quality of the medical service encounter as factors underlying this link. The results of this study indicate that uncertainty and predicted quality of encounters are important components in language-discordant communication anxiety in healthcare environments.
This dissertation identified L2-specific health communication anxiety, which predict reluctance to use L2 health services in both physical and mental health settings. More importantly, it demonstrated that the association between L2-specific health communication anxiety and willingness to use L2 health services is explained by the effects that L2-specific health communication anxiety influenced medical uncertainty, which in turn had a negative impact on predicted quality of medical encounter in L2.


identifier: Cao, Hanfei  (2017) Gain scheduling control and loop interactions in dual duct HVAC system.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This research focuses on gain scheduling control of a dual duct system and its local loop interactions. To reach these objectives, experiments were conducted in a dual duct system. The test facility consists three control loops. (cold air temperature control, hot air temperature control, and mixed air temperature control).
The steady state and dynamic characteristics of the dual duct system were studied. Two control strategies were employed to improve the system performance: (i) conventional PI control, and (ii) gain scheduling control. The experimental results subject to load disturbances (set-point changes and initial condition changes) showed that the performance of the gain scheduling controller is better than the conventional PI controller. However, it was found that the gain scheduling control method caused significant oscillations and took nearly 25 minutes to reach a stable final value under low load conditions. Therefore, an adaptive gain scheduling (AGS) controller was developed to improve the disturbance rejection properties of the controller. Experimental and simulation results show that the adaptive gain scheduling controller has dramatically increased controller performance under low load conditions.
The prioritization of control loops due to loop interactions was evaluated and the gain scheduling-adaptive controller was applied to the entire system to minimize loop interactions. The experimental results showed that, compared to conventional PI controller, the dynamic responses of adaptive gain scheduling controller are better.


identifier: Alt Kecik, Nil  (2017) Discourses and Practices of Campus Food Sustainability at Concordia University.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Discourses and Practices of Campus Food Sustainability at Concordia University
Nil Alt Kecik
Most North American universities employ transnational food service corporations to cater to predominantly residence populations. Known as the Big Three within the industrial food system, these corporations— Chartwells, Sodexho and Aramark—are the largest global food retailers. After Chartwell’s 13-year contract term at Concordia University ended, the university administration granted an exclusivity contract to Aramark in 2015. The university’s choice of food service provider, and its food procurement practices are in tension with Concordia’s discursive commitment to a ‘sustainable’ campus food system. Building on the epistemological tension between profit and sustainability, this study reviews the global commodity chain (GCC) framework, and its relevance for studying food system transformation through institutional consumption. The need to conceptualize GCCs as interlinked and complex flows of not only materials, but also of power, knowledge and discourse is the central theme. Grounded in this theme, the study looks at how the transition into food sustainability is governed and operationalized at Concordia. It is concluded that building direct producer-consumer relationships is more complicated than reflected with a linear supply chain imagery. At Concordia, subscription to this imagery muddles accountability and curtails the possibilities for alternatives.


identifier: Wang, Mo  (2017) Following the Spread of Zika with Social Media: The Potential of Using Twitter to Track Epidemic Disease.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Epidemic outbreaks detection and monitoring is an important but challenging task in epidemic control strategies. In recent years social media has been seen as a promising data source to track epidemic disease. Epidemic detection approaches often rely on data mined from Twitter and Facebook. These data can be geolocated in two ways: either based on geographic coordinates of the location from where a tweet or a post has been submitted if available, or based on place names mentioned in the text posted. In this thesis I propose to further explore the potential of place names in tweets to track a specific disease outbreak: The 2016 Zika outbreak. To explore this potential I have first collected about 1 million of tweets mentioning “Zika” during a period of 15 weeks. I have then geoparsed this database using different approaches to identify Twitter activity related to Zika for 13 selected countries. I have systematically compared these results with the official number of new cases of Zika recorded by official organizations for each country, every week. The results of this first set of analysis show that the degree of correlation between the volume of tweets and the number of official new cases is overall pretty low. Throughout this analysis, I was able to identify that the volume of Zika related tweets was largely affected by events not directly related to this disease (e.g. Venezuela struggles to contain Zika outbreak amid economic crisis). In order to better understand the nature and the impact of these events, I have done an in-depth qualitative analysis focusing on one case study: Venezuela. Although for Venezuela the quantitative analysis showed a strong correlation between the number of tweets and the number of new official Zika cases per week, the qualitative content analysis confirmed that very few of these Zika related tweets talk about new cases. In fact I was not able to identify even one Twitter account that would consistently provide information about new Zika cases while the disease was spreading out throughout the country. Based on these results I was able to emphasize the inappropriateness of using Twitter alone to try to track the spread of a disease, as well as the extensive use of Zika as a keyword for a large number of individuals and organizations to push other political and economic agendas.


identifier: Mahmoud, Sherif Ahmed Ibrahim  (2017) Integrated Sustainability Assessment and Rehabilitation Framework for Existing Buildings.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Public and private sectors are concerned with controlling the undesirable environmental impact of the new construction and the renovation of buildings. The building industry accounts for 32% of global energy consumption, 19% of energy-related CO₂ emissions, 25% of global water, and 40% of global resources depletion. The operational and maintenance phase of buildings accounts for 70% to 90% of the overall impact on environment. The literature review revealed many rating systems that were developed during the last few decades to assess the sustainability of buildings based on economic, social and environmental criteria. However, they represented local industries and none of them proposed a tool to select the best economic rehabilitation alternatives to upgrade building sustainability. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to establish an integrated sustainability rating and rehabilitation selection tool for buildings to fulfil the following objectives: 1) identify and study sustainability assessment attributes, 2) develop a sustainability assessment model for buildings, 3) build a sustainability scale and 4) establish a sustainability-based rehabilitation model for existing buildings. The research utilized several modelling techniques, such as fuzzy TOPSIS technique to determine the weight of each assessment attribute, simulation to determine the energy consumption, BIM-based model to assess building sustainability and the artificial immune system (AIS) to develop the sustainability-based rehabilitation model. Several types of data were collected and used to develop the aforementioned models utilizing questionnaires, case studies and interviews with facility managers from Canada and Egypt.
The results showed the significant influence of the regional variations on both the weights of the sustainability attributes and the total sustainability assessment. By using a scale from zero to one, Canada showed the highest weights in energy, indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and building management criteria with values of 0.220, 0.167, and 0.156, respectively, whereas in Egypt, energy, site and water use criteria possessed the highest weights with values 0.2, 0.191 and 0.169, respectively. The sustainability-based rehabilitation model was implemented with a case study in Canada in which the results showed the capability of the developed optimization model to determine several optimal or near optimal alternatives to upgrade the sustainability with minimal life cycle cost (LCC). The developed tool was validated by experts through an interview and questionnaires showing the potential application of the tool to existing buildings. The assessment model was also validated through a comparative analysis between the proposed model and other well-known sustainability rating tools, which showed good potential. Sensitivity analysis was conducted showing the impact of the weight variation on the sustainability assessment. The research concluded the importance of introducing a multi-level weighting scheme in the assessment to reflect regional variations.
The main contribution of the present research is to provide decision-makers with a two-tier tool that 1) determines the current sustainability of buildings and highlights the weak areas that require more attention, and 2) proposes various rehabilitation alternatives that upgrades the sustainability of the building with minimal LCC utilizing multi-objective optimization. The research also contributes to the body of knowledge by developing an integrated sustainability assessment and rehabilitation framework as a step towards establishing a comprehensive global sustainability-assessment tool.


identifier: Smith, Kyla Rose  (2017) Sounding Modern, Sounding Moral: Censorship and Hollywood’s Transition to Sound.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis examines the relationship between Hollywood’s transition to synchronized sound and the rise of the industry’s self-censorship practices, processes which were precisely commensurate during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Through nuanced historiographical discussion, this thesis explores how the transition to sound interfaced with other mechanisms at work in the Hollywood industry of the late 1920s—namely, regulatory discourses and practices. Both of these processes represent crucial shifts in the technologies, practices, and politics of Hollywood filmmaking. This thesis proposes that this coalescence produced compelling negotiations visible in the films of that era. Synchronized sound film is defined as part of a broader web of emergent sound media which, as Steve Wurtzler (2007) argues, interfaced with pre-existing concerns surrounding technologically mediated modernity and its effects on traditional morality.  The study is illustrated by discussion of two part-talkie films of the flapper cycle, Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Modern Maidens (1929) both of which negotiate a new technological terrain and indicate Hollywood’s ongoing negotiations with contemporaneous film-morality debates.


identifier: Yue, Heng  (2017) Effects of the Short Sale Circuit Breaker on the Stock Market.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: We examine the benefits and costs of the short sale circuit breaker (Rule 201) for NYSE and Nasdaq stocks. Not only that the circuit breaker failed to reduce intraday volatility and intraday price decline in the market, evidence suggests that it worsens the event day return and price decline for the most volatile stocks. Market quality in terms of liquidity and fair pricing are unaffected. However, informational efficiency after large price movements is considerably improved by the short sale circuit breaker. Evidence also suggests that triggering the circuit breaker is not a small-cap phenomenon.


identifier: Xie, Chengrong  (2017) Risk Decomposition for Annuity Portfolios.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
A life annuity is a series of payments made at fixed intervals while the annuitant is alive. It has been a major part of actuarial science for a long time and it plays an important role in life insurance operations. In order to explore the interaction of various risks in an annuity portfolio, we decompose the liabilities by using the so called Martingale Representation Theorem (MRT) decomposition. The MRT decomposition satisfies all 6 meaningful properties proposed by Schilling et al. (2015).

      Before presenting some numerical examples to illustrate its applicability, several stochastic mortality models are compared and the Renshaw–Haberman (RH) model is chosen as our projection model. Then we compare two one-factor short rate models and estimate the parameters of CIR model to construct the stochastic interest rate setting. Finally, we allocate risk capitals to risk factors obtained from the MRT decomposition according to the Euler principle and analyze them when the age of cohort and the deferred term change.


identifier: Haskell, Clara  (2017) Changing Power Relations in Photography: The Potential of Photographic Returns Projects with Inuit Youth.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis is about two photographic returns projects, Project Naming and Views from the North, that were done with Inuit youth in their late teens. Both projects furnished colonial photographs stored at the Library and Archives Canada as catalysts for engaging these youth with their communities and elders. Project Naming, which began in 2002, sent youth from Nunavut Sivuniksavut—a post-high school graduate program for Inuit youth in Ottawa—home with photographs of unidentified Inuit from their communities. The primary goal was to engage these youth with members of their community in order to identify the people in the archival photographs. Views from the North, which was started in 2005, built on Project Naming and hired students from the same program to interview Elders in their community about photographs from the same archive.
This thesis examines the history of colonial photography in Canada focusing on three influential parties: the federal and provincial governments, the Hudson Bay Company, and the various religious missions and missionaries working in the North.  It explores the historical development of both Project Naming and Views from the North, their methodologies and overlapping objectives. Its' perspective expands these two photographic returns projects by comparative explorations of other such projects and their importance. Finally, through interviews, it investigates the impact these photographic returns projects has had upon the youth who participated. This thesis argues that these photographic returns project had a great impact on the youth who participated and that including the voices of the participants themselves is crucial to the research and development of such projects. It indicates an important new direction in research on photographic returns projects and Arctic research with Inuit in general, one that can focus on positive outcomes and understanding how histories captured in historical colonial photograph can be reframed by youth in ways that are productive and useful.


identifier: Nguyen, Thanh Thao  (2017) Underdog brand biographies and their influence on consumers’ post-message engagement.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This research examines the effect of two dimensions of an underdog biography (external disadvantage, passion and determination) on consumers’ engagement with the brand, brand preferences, and purchase intention. It also adds two potential mediators—narrative transportation and post-message behaviors—to the conceptual model investigating the underdog biography effect. The findings show that passion and determination create relate more strongly to purchase intention than external disadvantage, and underscore the importance of both mediators, especially with regard to post-message behaviors. Overall, this research provides a new theoretical mechanism underlying the effect of underdog brand biographies. Managerial implications, limitations and future research directions are included in the conclusion part.


identifier: Jeanson, Amanda  (2017) Induced neophobic predator avoidance in hatchery-reared juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Hatchery-reared fishes, especially salmonids, are routinely stocked into natural waterways as a part of population enhancement and recovery programs, and conservation efforts. These initiatives, however, are often met with limited success due to poor post-stocking survival of hatchery fish. It has been suggested that a failure to recognize predators by hatchery-reared fish leads to disproportionately low post-stocking survival rates. A commonly advocated approach to enhancing post-stocking survival is to condition hatchery fish to recognize and avoid relevant threats through ‘life skills training’. However, such approaches have yielded decidedly mixed results. Here, I tested the prediction that phenotypically plastic neophobic predator avoidance (the avoidance of novel cues) can be induced in hatchery reared Atlantic salmon. This response may lead to the enhancement of post-stocking survival among hatchery reared juvenile Atlantic salmon; making it a new approach to life skills training. Initially, I tested the prediction that hatchery reared juvenile salmon subjected to alarm cue (a known, reliable cue indicating a predation event) for a prolonged period of time would elicit a neophobic response (defined as a significant decrease in time spent on the substrate and foraging attempts) to a novel cue during testing. During the treatment phases of three or six days, juvenile hatchery Atlantic salmon were given either alarm cue (high risk) or a water control (low risk). Following the treatment phases, fish from both treatment conditions were given a stimulus of either novel odour or a water control. The test fish’s time on substrate and foraging attempts were recorded pre- and post- stimulus, allowing me to investigate changes in behaviour caused by the presence of the novel stimuli. My results suggested that juvenile Atlantic salmon pre-exposed to alarm cue for three days did not demonstrate neophobic predator avoidance behaviour, however those pre-exposed for six days did exhibit an increase in time on substrate and a reduction in foraging attempts. Secondly, I tested the prediction that a neophobic response induced in hatchery reared fish over a six-day treatment phase would be retained throughout a transportation and stocking event. Conditioned salmon were transported to Catamaran Brook (Catamaran Research Centre), and tested for their response to a novel cue vs. water control. My results suggest that juvenile Atlantic salmon pre-exposed to alarm cue for six days and transported and released into a semi-natural environment did not demonstrate neophobic behaviour towards a novel cue. This suggests that the neophobic response was not retained throughout a transportation and stocking event. Finally, I tested the prediction that neophobic predator avoidance could be induced in hatchery reared and wild juvenile Atlantic salmon in a semi-natural environment. Wild and hatchery fish were subjected to alarm cue or water (control) for six days in a semi-natural environment after which their behaviour towards a novel cue was tested (in the same fashion as in experiment one) in the semi-natural environment. My results suggested that hatchery-reared fish given alarm cue for six days in a semi-natural environment demonstrated a neophobic predator avoidance response to a novel cue during behavioural testing in the semi-natural environment; however wild fish in the same conditions did not.


identifier: Kouchakji, Kristi  (2017) Everything old is new again (and vice-versa): Documentary and transmedia activism in the analog age.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Much has been said in recent years about the role of multiple media platforms in activist documentary filmmaking, about what the filmmaker’s responsibilities in these projects are, and about what role the impact industry can or should play in activist filmmaking. While the late 20th and early 21st century proliferation of media forms, channels, and platforms does indeed present a challenge to activist filmmakers with regards to capturing public attention, questions of audience mobilization, filmmaker responsibility, and impact are as old as the genre itself.
This thesis aims to restore a historical consciousness to these contemporary debates. By examining twentieth-century documentaries as examples of transmedia activism in a pre- Facebook age, including, among others, Ravished Armenia (1919), Borinage (1934), Salt of the Earth (1954), Harlan County, USA (1976) and Punk le vote (2006), I wish to complicate the widely held notion that transmedia activism necessarily implies the use of social media. I place each project within its historical context, outlining the resultant challenges and ethical questions facing media makers while tracing a rough lineage of transmedia documentary activism. Ultimately, I argue that, while the explosion of digital and social media has made the use of multiple platforms essential to mobilizing audiences, recursive uses of and contributions to particular media ecologies through the use of multiple platforms has always been useful in this regard, and has been successfully executed many times prior to the development of an entire consulting industry based on the fetishisation of social media and data visualisation.


identifier: Wilkie, Gala  (2017) Mother-daughter storytelling: A hermeneutical study of gendered selves and identities.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis, I examine how self and identity are constructed through story. Personal, interpersonal, and cultural aspects of lived experience intertwine during naturally-occuring mother-daughter storytelling sessions, leaving traces of self in the stories told. From a hermeneutical philosophical stance, and framed by feminist and psychoanalytic theories, I explore the following questions: a) how does a preschool-aged child use shared storytelling to articulate and co-construct her identity? and b) how are themes of gender socialization represented in these narratives? Nicolopoulou and Richner’s (2007) rubric of character development in children’s narratives and McLean, Pasupathi, and Pals’ (2007) process-model of narrative identity provide the methodological scaffolds through which themes of gender expression and self-development emerge. I discuss possible meanings of symbols pertaining to gender identity in light of the dynamic co-construction of self and identity between mother and daughter.


identifier: Wu, Yanting  (2017) The Effectiveness of Listing Strategies in the Housing Market.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Abstract
This thesis examines the impact of asking price on the final sale price based on a unique dataset of more than 30,000 transactions of single-family houses in Montreal from 2011 to 2016. We construct different proxies for reference points, including predicted selling price, regional average (and median) asking price, regional average (and median) selling price, and assessment value, used by sellers in setting their asking prices. We explore the effectiveness of high-price strategy and low-price strategy based on these reference points. We find that higher asking prices are associated with higher selling pricing, suggesting buyers anchor to the asking price. Our results support the high-price strategy and reject the low-price strategy in both cold and hot markets, even controlling for unobserved quality. In addition, the anchor effect of the asking price on the final sale price does not differ between the two markets.


identifier: Xie, Tianyou  (2017) Force Modification Factors for the Seismic Design of Bridges.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The current seismic design of bridges is based on a well-known principle, i.e., capacity design, in which the superstructure should remain elastic during earthquake events while the nonlinear deformation (i.e., plastic hinges) should occur in the substructure and should be ductile in term of flexure. Given this, the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC) allows reducing the demands for the design of substructure elements (mainly columns) by a response modification factor R. Since the R-factor will affect the design forces significantly, the objective of the study is to determine its value from detailed finite element analyses, and evaluate its dependency on the ductility and bridge dominant period. For the purpose of the study, eight existing typical highway bridges in Montreal are examined including slab type bridges, slab-girder type bridges, and box-girder bridges. The substructure of the bridges consists of multiple columns from two to four. Nonlinear time-history analyses are conducted on each bridge model using IDARC. Thirty simulated accelerograms are used as input for the seismic excitations, and they are scaled to three intensity levels based on the first mode period of the bridge, namely, 1.0Sa(T1), 2.0Sa(T1), and 3.0Sa(T1). It is found in the study that the configuration of the substructure affects the R-factor, such as, number of columns in the bent, using of crush struts, type of the bearings, etc. In addition, neither the equal displacement rule nor equal energy rule is observed in this study.


identifier: Delva, John  (2017) Best of Acquaintances: An Ethnography of Radio-Canada’s newsroom.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis examines how Radio-Canada Montreal addresses the representation of visible minorities both on-air and in its news and information staffing practices. By deploying an ethnographic approach, which combines newsroom observations with semi-structured and open- ended interviews with journalists and managers, the thesis investigates the impact of federal and provincial policies aimed at the integration of new arrivals into Quebec society. Radio-Canada’s flagship newscast, Le Téléjournal 18h, lies at the core of the study and provides a means to measure the number of news stories involving visible minority communities. This baseline, grounded in content, is then examined through the lens of the news workers who craft the program for public consumption. The thesis finds that there is growing institutional awareness on matters pertaining to representation but obstacles remain to a full and genuine embrace of visible minority issues and concerns both inside the newsroom and in the Montreal community. The thesis posits that there are two distinct movements within the newsroom’s day-to-day culture. The first is a kind of “insular unfamiliarity” among traditional Québécois news workers that persists in enabling the labeling of “others” as somehow foreign. The second – predominantly comprising news workers of colour – is dedicated to pushing back when matters of prejudice, perceived and real, longstanding and recent, are expressed in the dominant culture norms of professional interaction.


identifier: Yuan, Chi  (2017) Automatic Fire Detection Using Computer Vision Techniques for UAV-based Forest Fire Surveillance.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Due to their rapid response capability and maneuverability, extended operational range, and improved personnel safety, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with vision-based systems have great potentials for forest fire surveillance and detection. Over the last decade, it has shown an increasingly strong demand for UAV-based forest fire detection systems, as they can avoid many drawbacks of other forest fire detection systems based on satellites, manned aerial vehicles, and ground equipments. Despite this, the existing UAV-based forest fire detection systems still possess numerous practical issues for their use in operational conditions. In particular, the successful forest fire detection remains difficult, given highly complicated and non-structured environments of forest, smoke blocking the fire, motion of cameras mounted on UAVs, and analogues of flame characteristics. These adverse effects can seriously cause either false alarms or alarm failures.

In order to successfully execute missions and meet their corresponding performance criteria and overcome these ever-increasing challenges, investigations on how to reduce false alarm rates, increase the probability of successful detection, and enhance adaptive capabilities to various circumstances are strongly demanded to improve the reliability and accuracy of forest fire detection system.
According to the above-mentioned requirements, this thesis concentrates on the development of reliable and accurate forest fire detection algorithms which are applicable to UAVs.
These algorithms provide a number of contributions, which include:
(1) a two-layered forest fire detection method is designed considering both color and motion features of fire; it is expected to greatly improve the forest fire detection performance, while significantly reduce the motion of background caused by the movement of UAV;
(2) a forest fire detection scheme is devised combining both visual and infrared images for increasing the accuracy and reliability of forest fire alarms; and
(3) a learning-based fire detection approach is developed for distinguishing smoke (which is widely considered as an early signal of fire) from other analogues and achieving early stage fire detection.


identifier: Chang, Xiao Min  (2017) Helpers and Halos: Examining social evaluation within the domain of prosocial behavior.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Humans are not only universally prosocial (Tomasello, 2009) but also selective when engaging in prosocial behavior (Kuhlmeier, Dunfield, & O’Neill, 2014). Despite numerous observations of selective helping, the proximate mechanisms underlying this critical social behavior remain unclear. In a series of 3 studies, two possible evaluative mechanisms, global evaluations and dispositional evaluations, was examined, regarding how individuals identify and track good social partners. To test between these two possibilities, these studies varied the type of information participants had regarding an individual’s characteristics and examined how this information influenced participants’ partner choice decisions. The stimuli to be used in the latter two studies were normed (Study 1), and the items were finalized because these various descriptions across characteristics shared similar positive or negative valence. In Study 2, adults read descriptions of two characters varying on prosocial (Helpful and Generous), social (Prestigious and Considerate), or non-social (Attractive and Intelligent) characteristics. They were then asked to indicate who they preferred to help or interact with. Adults took both valence and specificity of characteristic described into account to make decisions, suggesting a flexible use of dispositional evaluations. Study 3 extended these findings by examining how 4-year-olds used similar characteristics to determine who to help, play with, and assign food to. Children appeared to engage in global evaluations - preferring to help, to play with, and to assign the preferred food to the positive characters regardless of specific characteristic described. Taken together, these results suggest that the evaluative mechanisms supporting selective prosociality change over development.


identifier: Kaszonyi, Natalia  (2017) Influencers and Their Audiences: Why, How and When Are Relationships Cultivated and How Does This Affect Consumption of Beauty and Fashion Products?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis studies relationships between fashion, beauty and lifestyle vloggers or bloggers and their followers. I clarify what types of relationships exist between these types of influencers and followers, why people follow vlogs and blogs, the way these relationships are cultivated by the influencers, and how they affect purchasing behavior. The study is conducted through analysis of popular YouTube videos as well as in depth interviews with followers. The findings show that individuals often form what is called a best friendship by Banister and Cocker (2014) with influencers. The influencers cultivate these relationships by appearing ordinary while still showcasing expertise at the same time. The study also finds that individuals choose their favorites according to three criteria: similarity, authenticity and expertise. Furthermore, the study finds that individuals follow blogs and vlogs for three reasons: information, inspiration and entertainment and that while vlogs and blogs function as hooks for purchasing products within fashion and beauty, consumers prefer to have more sources of information when making a purchase decision.


identifier: Hefter, Abe  (2017) Who is in the Driver’s Seat when it comes to the use of Twitter by a Select Group of Montreal Sports Journalists?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis investigates how a select group of Montreal sports journalists use Twitter in their daily work lives. Specifically, it asks whether journalists who cover the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League are guided by their editors and supervisors in the way they use this form of social media. The work that journalists do is often accompanied by a series of editorial “checks and balances” before a story is published or goes to air. This thesis will answer the question: Do these same editorial checks and balances exists for these journalists on Twitter? To help answer this question, I have interviewed a cross-section of Montreal sports journalists who use Twitter in their daily routine as reporters covering the Montreal Canadiens and what they’ve been told about the use of Twitter to ascertain management directives, along with two supervisors whose job it would be to provide editorial guidance to their reporters and journalists.


identifier: Shu, Mengli  (2017) Quality Function Deployment Integration with Design Methodologies.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Under the background of the economic globalization, customer requirements play an increasingly important role today in almost every industry. Achieving customer satisfaction becomes the key way for a company to win market shares in the intensive global competitions. In this thesis, a four phase QFD-oriented product design framework is proposed by integrating Quality Function Deployment (QFD) with 3 different design methodologies (Environment-Based Design, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Axiomatic Design), to systematically guide product design from the planning phase to the detail design phase, and to build the link between design variables in different phases, so that it is known how customer requirements are met during each development phase, and till the end, customer requirements and product characteristics are clearly linked together. Apart from the theoretical side, a web application design case study is presented to illustrate how this framework is applied. In the case study, customer requirements are successfully captured and mapped down to the detail design level.


identifier: Morel, Blanche  (2017) Journalism and Collective Memory: Le Monde and the question of French torture in Algeria (1957— 2000-01).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Memory studies have long assigned journalism to the role of mere primary recorder of events, therefore denying its power to shape collective remembrance. Based on the assumption that collective memory results from the interdependent process between traditional representations of the past, memory makers and consumers, this study explores journalism as a concrete and abstract site of collective memory. As such, it contends that journalism is a material and institutional pool of knowledge built out of disparate yet collective memories, as well as an interactive and durable memorial site that lays the ground for social change. Applying a mixed methods research design, this thesis examines the impact of the French “journal of record” Le Monde in the collective remembrance of torture during the Algerian War (1954-1962). The study employs quantitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis to explore Le Monde’s 1957 and 2000-01 coverage of the use of torture in Algeria, two periods separated by official amnesty laws that crystallized the memory of the war in favour of the official narrative. The deployed discourses are compared and contrasted by opinion polls and interviews of historical, sociological and journalistic experts on State-sponsored torture. As such, this thesis goes beyond the hypothesis that journalism acts as a memory agent through the practice of commemoration by shifting the focus on institutional and narrative memory that collectively produce, disseminate and sustain memories over time.


identifier: Pain, Guillaume  (2017) Strategic Schemas and Corporate Environmental Performance: Theorizing, Testing, and Enriching an Interpretive Framework.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Environmental science draws public and scholarly attention to the disquieting deterioration of the global ecosystem and its impacts on human activities. Environment and management researchers have been looking at the role of business organizations in this phenomenon, both as contributors to degradation and as leaders in restoration, thus bringing forth the issue of corporate environmental performance (CEP). Research on the antecedents of CEP has examined a variety of internal and external predictors, but has surprisingly overlooked strategic schemas, which are often implied in this research and recognized as prompters for social and environmental actions. Management research needs further exploration of strategic schemas and lacks a framework that relates schemas to corporate environmental performance. The three papers in this doctoral thesis attempt to fill these gaps. The first paper proposes an interpretive framework on CEP that integrates literatures on schemas and sustainability. This framework offers an original view of schema interaction and evolution, where schema interaction models traditionally understood as discrete are shown to be interrelated. The framework also provides an explanation for business organizations’ limited success in addressing global environmental issues. The second paper validates part of the framework by testing a set of relationships between schemas, organizational actions, and CEP. Combining content analysis with quantification techniques, this paper finds that although firms gather information and learn about natural environmental issues, they fail to translate their knowledge into appropriate actions. Perhaps as a result, corporate environmental initiatives correlate with a deterioration of CEP. The third paper employs cognitive mapping to examine the discourse on sustainability produced by an international trade association and four member companies over a period of eleven years. This study reveals that disclosed schemas change through two fundamental mechanisms of growth and reduction which can be used to explain all schema evolution. It also unveils the existence of two distinct types of schema content: core and peripheral content. Although schemas tend to grow incrementally, peripheral content undergoes frequent growth and reduction, while core content grows and shapes the meaning attributed to newer content. Larger companies use the trade association as a vector to disseminate their schemas on sustainability and influence the schemas of smaller firms  and possibly of the industry as whole  by adopting and promoting new sustainability practices early. Together, these three papers provide an original and testable framework to understand CEP from a cognitive perspective, qualify the relationship between strategic schemas and CEP, and reveal underlying mechanisms of schema evolution.


identifier: Mamsapuram Panneerselvam, Dhilippan  (2017) Evaluation of organic perovskite photoconductors for x-ray imaging detectors.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Research over organic perovskites for light harvesting gained the momentum in past decades. Due to the convenient low temperature and uniform deposition over large area these materials are being tested for the vitality in various light harvesting devices such as in solar cells, X-ray detectors, gamma photon captures etc., On meeting the expectation, the power conversion efficiency in these devices peaked above 20% in around four years of research. But the underlying physics in these materials remains a mystery particularly that which concerns the undesirable high dark currents and photo gains when illuminated with X-ray for medical imaging.
In this thesis, the x-ray sensitivity of perovskite photoconductors under different detector operating conditions has been identified. The primary mechanism that regulates the photocurrent and dark current behavior of X-ray imagers based on organic perovskite photoconductors has been identified. Energy level misalignments between different layers of X-ray imagers leading an injective photo-gain has been investigated. The signal spreading due to trapping, k-fluorescence generation and reabsorption, pixel aperture and primary charge interaction with photoconductor has been accounted by calculating the theoretical MTF for different spatial frequency. These imaging performances are also explored by calculating the theoretical Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE) at zero spatial frequency. Proceeding further, numerical investigation of organic perovskite had also been accounted to visualize the electric field profiles along the thickness of photoconductor. All possible recombination mechanisms and traps are included in the numerical solution of continuity, trap, and Poisson's equations simultaneously. Sensitivity reduction due to repeated exposure (Ghosting) has been investigated. A variation of electric field profile under different exposure levels has been noticed. It becomes evident that significant deviations between the analytical and numerical approaches were noticed under high exposure levels. This is due to the significant variation of electric field profiles under very high exposures. The work in this thesis identifies the important factors such as the need for appropriate blocking contacts for low dark currents, improved carrier transport properties in perovskite films and proper energy level alignment between different layers of photodetector in order to make successful perovskite x-ray detectors.


identifier: Hébert, Katherine  (2017) Community assembly of island mammal metacommunities: The role of the regional species pool.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: One of community ecology’s fundamental challenges is to identify the community assembly mechanisms that shape diversity patterns. Previous studies have largely focused on the relative influence of neutral and niche-based mechanisms on community composition within a single region. However, the influence of the species pool on these mechanisms remains relatively unexplored, despite its potentially pivotal role in community assembly. The functional diversity available within the species pool is particularly relevant, as it could regulate how strongly species are sorted into local environmental niches. Here, we investigate how the species pool’s functional diversity influences the relative importance of dispersal and environmental filtering (i.e. species sorting) in structuring taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic β-diversity patterns within 9 insular non-volant mammal metacommunities, distributed across the globe. We find that dispersal limitation largely drives phylogenetic turnover patterns, suggesting that colonization is the primary obstacle during community assembly of insular metacommunities. However, we did not find a universal trend in the relative importance of dispersal and environmental filtering across metacommunities. The functional diversity available within the species pool was also not consistently related to the strength of species sorting. We conclude that the ecological model of species sorting does not adequately represent community assembly. This raises questions about how the incorporation of evolutionary processes such as speciation and adaptation into the metacommunity framework would improve our understanding of community assembly.


identifier: Dufour, Dave  (2017) Teaching Grammar Using a Parallel Concordancer: A feasibility study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Studies have illustrated several benefits of Data-driven learning (DDL), when students are researchers of the language using authentic language data (corpora), for learning grammar, including linking adverbials and phrasal verbs. However, few have examined the use of parallel concordancers, a tool that displays the same source-text in two languages side by side, although recent research points to potential benefits in helping learners notice L1/L2 differences. This study examined the feasibility of implementing a DDL approach to teaching L2 English grammar that presents a learning challenge to French L1 learners using a parallel concordancer, focusing on teachers’ and students’ perceptions on their training, the time needed, the completion of the tasks and the monitoring.
Three intact Cegep (college) ESL classes, taught by two teachers, used a French-English parallel concordancer, Tradooit, over a 6-week period. The teachers were first trained, and then created and taught three laboratory tasks emphasizing L1/L2 differences between French and English. During those labs, students completed a discovery task, a proofreading task and an investigation task to correct L1 interference errors. Student performance was measured through accuracy scores on these tasks, and student and teacher perceptions were recorded using observation notes, teacher logs, a post-study questionnaire administered to students, and semi-structured interviews. The results suggest that DDL can be successfully implemented and that students and teachers are willing to use DDL in the future. However, both students and teachers would have liked more guidance for selecting keywords and finding grammar patterns. Students were able to complete the labs within the time allotted, but with varying degrees of accuracy; some grammar features such as the tense-aspect system seemed to be more challenging. Teachers could also have received more feedback on the labs. Implications include better training on pattern hunting and wording grammar patterns, and a better use of feedback.


identifier: Negrini, Isabella  (2017) On the Computation of p-adic Theta Functions arising from the Hurwitz Quaternions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The aim of this thesis is to give an eﬃcient method to compute a certain theta function Θ(a,b;z), up to a given p-adic precision n. The function Θ(a,b;z) arises from the Hurwitz quaternions and is meromorphic on the upper-half plane. We will ﬁrst discuss a ”na¨ıve” method to compute Θ(a,b;z) and, by counting Hurwitz quaternions of a given norm, we will show that this method is not eﬃcient. We will then develop some recursive relations for the Hurwitz quaterions, which will be the fundamental tool to describe a more eﬃcient way to compute Θ(a,b;z).


identifier: Arif, Muhammad Moiz  (2017) An Empirical Study on the Discrepancy between Performance Testing Results from Virtual and Physical Environments.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Large software systems often undergo performance tests to ensure their capability to handle expected loads. These performance tests often consume large amounts of computing resources and time in order to exercise the system extensively and build confidence on results. Making it worse, the ever evolving field environments require frequent updates to the performance testing environment. In practice, virtual machines (VMs) are widely exploited to provide flexible and less costly environments for performance tests. However, the use of VMs may introduce confounding overhead (e.g., a higher than expected memory utilization with unstable I/O traffic) to the testing environment and lead to unrealistic performance testing results. Yet, little research has studied the impact on test results of using VMs in performance testing activities.

In this thesis, we evaluate the discrepancy between the performance testing results from virtual and physical environments. We perform a case study on two open source systems -- namely Dell DVD Store (DS2) and CloudStore. We conduct the same performance tests in both virtual and physical environments and compare the performance testing results based on the three aspects that are typically examined for performance testing results: 1) single performance metric (e.g. CPU usage from virtual environment vs. CPU usage from physical environment), 2) the relationship between two performance metrics (e.g. correlation between CPU usage and I/O traffic) and 3) statistical performance models that are built to predict system performance. Our results show that 1) A single metric from virtual and physical environments do not follow the same distribution, hence practitioners cannot simply use a scaling factor to compare the performance between environments,  2) correlations among performance metrics in virtual environments are different from those in physical environments and 3) statistical models built based on the performance metrics from virtual environments are different from the models built from physical environments suggesting that practitioners cannot use the performance testing results across virtual and physical environments. In order to assist the practitioners leverage performance testing results in both environments, we investigate ways to reduce the discrepancy. We find that such discrepancy may be reduced by normalizing performance metrics based on deviance. Overall, we suggest that practitioners should not use the performance testing results from virtual environment with the simple assumption of a straightforward performance overhead. Instead, practitioners and future research should investigate leveraging normalization techniques to reduce the discrepancy before examining performance testing results from virtual and physical environments.


identifier: Abbas, Zahraa  (2017) Isoperimetric-type Inequalities for g-chordal Star-shaped Sets in Rn.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This paper generalizes certain existing isoperimetric-type inequalities from R2 to higher dimensions. These inequalities provide lower bounds for the n-dimensional volume and, respectively, surface area of certain star-shaped bodies in Rn and characterize the equality cases.
More speciﬁcally, we work with g-chordal star-shaped bodies, a natural generalization of equichordal compact sets. A compact set in Rn is said to be equichordal if there exists a point in the interior of the set such that all chords passing through this point have equal
length. To justify the signiﬁcance of our results, we provide several means of constructing
g-chordal star-shaped bodies.
The method used to prove the above inequalities is further employed in ﬁnding new lower bounds for the dual quermassintegrals of g-chordal star-shaped sets in Rn and, more generally, lower bounds for the dual mixed volumes involving these star bodies. Finally, some of the previous results will be generalized to Ln-stars, star-shaped sets whose radial functions are n-th power integrable over the unit sphere Sn−1.


identifier: Botros, Alexander  (2017) Minimizing Direct Operating Cost for Turbojet and Turboprop Aircraft in Cruise.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 20% between the years 1990 and 2014, and
the aviation industry is a large contributor to this increase. The optimization of fuel consumption
is therefore of paramount importance. This thesis focuses on minimizing the direct operating cost
(DOC) for a cruising turbojet and turboprop aircraft. The DOC is a trade-off of fuel costs and time
costs that are related by the cost index CI . By determining DOC-optimal trajectories, aircraft may
balance the need to arrive at their target destination in a timely fashion with the need to keep fuel
emissions low. The main contribution of this thesis is a two-part approach to determining the DOCoptimal
trajectories of a cruising turbojet and turboprop aircraft. For a turbojet, the first part of the
proposed methodology is the derivation of an analytic expression for the optimal speed in terms of
position and optimal initial speed, while the second part derives an analytic implicit definition of
the optimal initial speed. For a turboprop, the first part of the proposed methodology is concerned
with developing a suboptimal approximation for the DOC-optimal speed presented in terms of the
weight of the aircraft and the optimal final speed. The second part presents a recursive algorithm
by which the optimal final speed may be obtained. This thesis assumes that the aircraft cruises
below its drag divergence Mach number at constant altitude. Numerical examples will illustrate the
proposed methodologies.


identifier: Nabati Yazdi Zadeh, Hamid Reza  (2017) Distributed, Private, and Derandomized Allocation of Subsidized Goods.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Efficient resource allocation is challenging when privacy of users is important. Distributed solution approaches have recently been used extensively to find a solution for such problems. In this work, we study the efficiency of distributed AIMD algorithm for allocation of subsidized goods. To this end, we assign each user a suitable utility function describing the amount of satisfaction that it has from allocated resource. We define the resource allocation as a \emph{total utilitarianism} problem that is an optimization problem of sum of users utility functions subjected to capacity constraint. Recently, a stochastic state-dependent variant of AIMD algorithm is used for allocation of common goods among users with strictly increasing and concave utility functions. We improve this algorithm to allocate subsidized goods to users with concave and nonmonotonous utility functions as well as users with quasi-concave utility functions. We also derandomize the AIMD algorithm and compare its efficiency with the stochastic version. We then model resource allocation problem as a competition game to evaluate the efficiency properties of unique equilibrium when network parameters change. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions, we present simulation results for a public renewable-energy powered charging station in which the electric vehicles (EV) compete to be recharged.


identifier: Farisello, Lucia  (2017) Beyond the Valley of the Genitals: Using eye-tracking to analyze sexual arousal and desire in women and men.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
Beyond the Valley of the Genitals: Using eye tracking to analyze sexual arousal and desire in women and men
Lucia Farisello, PhD. Concordia University, 2017
Traditional models of sexual arousal and desire in humans have focused on either physiological measures (Kaplan, 1974; Masters & Johnson), or on self-report (ex.Derogatis & Melisaratos, 1979). However, some have also proposed that cognitive processes play a key role in connecting both arousal and desire. It is unknown if a stimulus is deemed sexually salient at a low processing level (i.e., at the level of sensation), or if more higher-level cognitive processing (i.e., perception, recognition) is required to generate a sexual response to the stimuli, or a combination of both. In addition, are there gender differences to this perception of sexual stimuli. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to use cognitive measures that target low level and high level processing tasks to examine whether eye-tracking methodology could reveal patterns that constitute a more objective assessment of sexual arousal and desire. The results indicate that low level tasks, which used timed response tasks with visual sexual stimuli, created a delay effect predominantly in men, and to a lesser extent in women. When women were subjectively aroused (as assessed using the SADI; Toledano & Pfaus, 2006) the observed level of cognitive delay increased (i.e., latency to respond to stimuli). However, low level processing does not produce a sexually induced cognitive delay effect in women. This finding suggests a reflexive response in women that is not sufficient to impose a cognitive delay. In contrast, using high level processing tasks that exposed participants to viewing sexual stimuli for longer durations (specifically, viewing nude versus clothed images, viewing high versus low arousal images, and viewing an erotic movie) lead to gender distinct patterns of eye movements concordant with reported levels of subjective arousal. Interestingly, women shown specific eye movement patterns when viewing images that they rate as highly arousing (in comparison to low arousing images). Together, these data suggest that women may require longer exposure to sexual stimuli in order to engage and sustain desire, which can then produce concordant results with self-reported arousal.
Keywords: Cognition, Eye tracking, Visual Sexual Stimuli, Sexually induced cognitive delay.


identifier: Matti, Sara  (2017) Imitation as a Learning Strategy and Associations with Teachers’ Social Cognitive Skills during Sibling Teaching.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Siblings’ imitation as a learning strategy and associations with social-cognitive skills was investigated during a teaching session in 60 siblings dyads (M age older siblings = 75.9 mos; M age younger siblings = 49.4 mos). The data consisted of videotaped sibling teaching sessions collected at home or school; the older sibling teacher was taught how to construct a tractor by a research assistant and then had to teach their younger sibling. Using videotapes and transcripts, the coders identified the sequences of imitation and then coded the type of imitation (verbal, nonverbal, spontaneous, deferred), responses (i.e., correction, positive/neutral, negative, not attending, off-task), and functions (i.e., clarification, agreement, disagreement, off task) of imitation. The teaching sessions were also rated for degree of learner involvement and task completion. The coding scheme was adapted from Howe, Rosciszewska, and Persram (2017) and Howe and Leach (in preparation). To measure teachers’ social-cognitive skills (i.e., second-order false-belief, interpretive understanding), different scenarios were enacted (Astington, Pelletier, & Homer, 2002; Howe, Recchia, Della Porta, & Funamoto, 2012). Five main sets of findings were apparent. First, the findings revealed that learners employed more nonverbal imitation in comparison to verbal imitation. In contrast, teachers employed no verbal imitation and only little nonverbal imitation. Learners’ imitated spontaneously after the teacher performed an action or said a word. Second, for the teaching responses, teachers employed more positive/neutral and corrective responses than not-attending and off-task responses to learners’ imitation. Third, during the construction task, learner’s involvement during the teaching session was positively and significantly associated with their use of verbal and nonverbal imitation. Fourth, learners used more clarification and agreement than disagreement functions while imitating. However, task completion was not significantly correlated with learners’ imitation. Fifth, teachers’ social-cognitive skills were not significantly correlated with learners’ imitation, learner involvement or task completion. Findings are discussed in relation to the literature on siblings’ imitation and teaching, theories on teaching, siblings’ cognitive skills and the social functions of imitation.


identifier: Okoro, Oluchi  (2017) Electrocoagulation as Pretreatment for Fouling Reduction in Forward Osmosis Treatment of Shale Gas Produced Water.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In this study, the potential of electrocoagulation (EC) as a suitable pretreatment option for shale gas produced water (SGPW) prior to FO was investigated. Specifically, the removal of turbidity, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and three inorganic ions (Ca2+, Cl-, Fe2+), which are known to promote inorganic fouling of the FO membrane, was examined. 	Experimental work was divided into three parts. The first part focused on the optimization of EC parameters through preliminary experiments (using synthetic SGPW) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM) optimization (using industrial SGPW). The second part explored COD and ion removal efficiency upon the addition of a coagulant aid to EC while the third part analyzed fouling reduction in FO after feed pretreatment. A comparison of contaminant removal and flux in FO for chemical coagulation pretreatment of SGPW was also performed.
	In the first part, better COD removal (but lower ion removal) was observed under RSM’s optimum conditions (pH 3.2, time = 35 mins and current density = 45 A/m2) compared to the neutral pH condition from preliminary experiments (pH 7, time = 40 mins and current density = 200 A/m2). The addition of 25 ppm polyacrylic acid (PAA) under neutral pH condition improved COD and ion removal significantly due to the stretched out conformation of polymer and its lesser adsorption propensity. COD, chloride, calcium and iron removals were 69.78%, 52.49%, 36.64% and 61.33% respectively. SGPW pretreatment via EC, prior to FO, led to a 27-37% reduction in flux compared to a 70% flux decline for raw SGPW feed. Final flux at 450 minutes for acidic pH (with no PAA) and neutral pH (with 25 ppm PAA) pretreatments were 3.53 and 5.22 LMH, respectively. COD and ion removal was least when 3000 ppm of alum was employed; however, no significant gypsum fouling (thus higher flux) was observed in FO due to slow nucleation and increased gypsum solubility in the presence of high concentrations of competing ions like magnesium and sodium. Acidic pH condition (with no PAA) is recommended for EC pretreatment of SGPW if only generation of reusable water for fracking operations is required. However, if higher product water quality is needed and secondary membrane treatment can be employed, neutral pH condition (with 25 ppm PAA) is recommended.


identifier: Wan, James  (2017) Integrated United Nations Management Model - A United Nations Just-In-Time Approach.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The study was motivated by the United Nations Management Reform programme initiated in 2000 (U.N., 2000). Since then, United Nations organizations focus their spotlight on organizational changes and managerial reforms. However, in the meantime, they have also been struggling to align their management activities to the Reform programme requirements, with limited and varying levels of success. That is primarily due to the degree of complexity of the United Nations as a whole because of its institutional culture, political nature, and the global environmental pressures that the U.N. and all its agencies face today. Therefore, this study argues that United Nations Reform implies the urgency for change. However, change needs to be included as part of the strategy for it to be adequately managed. Organization’s strategic management requires continuous measurement of organizational performance to serve the purpose of reform. Hence, this reform can be reviewed as a management chain of change-strategy-performance-project which can be linked to two ways: integrated and cyclical that allows the organization to improve continuously. It is in this study that all the management components are put together, an integrated view is proposed as the theoretical model, and a Just-in-Time approach is introduced to operationalize the conceptual model in the United Nations context.
The results of this study confirm strategic management positively influences in performance management, which positively influences in strategic implementation (project management) through the integration efforts. Statistically, it is well supported by our research model. The results also confirm that the efforts put to minimize the negative influence of political and institutional pressures would lead to achieving a better programme performance in United Nations organizations. Lastly, this study applies the principles of the Just-in-Time notion to United Nations integrated management model in order to achieve optimal results in efficiency and effectiveness.


identifier: Chen, Yiling  (2017) Consumer Responses to Sales Promotion from the Perspective of Gift-giving: The Case of Unexpected Promotion.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Sales promotion is a widely-used tool in marketing, and billions of dollars are spent every year to promote both products and services. Much research has been done on the effectiveness of different types of promotions. However, there is limited research on how consumers reciprocate when they are given deep discounts or unexpected promotional rewards. Consequently, this paper explored the effectiveness of promotional offers in a retail setting through the lens of reciprocity norm, appreciation, and indebtedness borrowed from the gift-giving literature in social psychology. The findings of three studies reveal that consumer appreciation and indebtedness facilitate different reciprocal responses (additional purchase likelihood, word of mouth, loyalty, and attitude towards store) in the context of discounts and rewards. Results also showed that situational factors such as staff helpfulness, purchase expectation, social presence, and promotion depth of certain promotion format significantly influence the likelihood of consumer purchase. Additionally, there are cultural differences in how consumers react towards certain promotion format.


identifier: Han, Yeji  (2017) L2 Regulatory Focus in the Context of Korean Language Learning in Vietnam.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Motivation plays a crucial role in second language (L2) learning processes. A substantial body of recent L2 motivation research has adopted the ideal and ought-to L2 selves as a theoretical framework to understand L2 motivation. However, the learning mechanisms underlying the L2 selves have not been fully explored. This dissertation addresses the influence of promotion and prevention foci as motivational tendencies of the ideal and ought-to L2 selves and as task-induced conditions on L2 oral task performance, targeting Vietnamese learners of L2 Korean.
	Study 1 explored the linguistic signature of promotion and prevention foci, operationalized as 1) trait-based motivational tendencies measured by the promotion- and prevention-instrumentality scales (Taguchi, Magid, & Papi, 2009) and 2) decision-making tasks with approach and avoidance instructions to temporarily trigger promotion and prevention foci. The results showed that the prevention-oriented task led to more accurate and fluent speech, while no main or interaction effects were found from trait-based promotion- and prevention-instrumentality. The promotion- and prevention-instrumentality scales showed low internal consistency, possibly due to the different learning contexts from the original study (Taguchi et al., 2009).
	Therefore, Study 2 aimed to test the applicability of the promotion- and prevention-instrumentality scales, targeting Vietnamese learners of L2 Korean. Furthermore, the promotion and prevention concept was applied to develop the promotion- and prevention-motivated behaviour scales. Since promotion- and prevention-motivated behaviour was a new construct, its construct validity was tested through principal component analysis (PCA) of the questionnaire items and chi-square analysis with two groups of learners with the promotion- and prevention-motivated behavioural tendencies and their ideal and ought-to L2 selves distributions. The L2 selves were measured by open-ended questions and qualitatively coded in order to examine context-specific L2 selves among the learner population.
	Study 3 was a conceptual extension of Study 1, investigating the main and interaction effects of promotion and prevention foci as trait-based tendencies and task-induced temporary conditions on the quality of L2 speech performance. In addition, attentional focus on task performance was qualitatively explored by stimulated recall episodes. The measure for the promotion and prevention orientations was adopted from Study 2, and the oral task was collaborative reasoning interactional role-play.


identifier: Mofidi, Farhad ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6798-0419 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6798-0419>  (2017) Simulating the Integrated Optimization of Energy Costs and Occupants’ Productivity in Offices.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Environmental conditions of an indoor space have impacts on the mental and physical well-being of its occupants and subsequently influence their productivity. Occupants in a shared space may have varied thermal and visual preferences for the indoor environmental conditions. Moreover, their perceptions of the indoor environment, such as their thermal and visual sensations, depend on their positions inside the space. For energy management systems of office buildings, inability to acknowledge occupants’ preferences may cause productivity losses. Salaries of office workers are many times higher than the costs of energy consumption in providing comfort in the working space, hence, improving the productivity of occupants in office buildings can offer significant economic benefits. While optimizing energy consumption costs, the energy management system of an office building can provide occupants with preferred indoor environmental conditions by making timely energy-related decisions for the indoor environment. Several continuously changing inputs including indoor and outdoor environmental parameters, energy exchange processes across the building, energy prices, occupants’ presence, activities, and preferences, are required to make timely decisions.
The main objective of this research is to propose a method for personalized energy and comfort management in office buildings to simultaneously optimize energy consumption costs and the productivity of office workers. A simplified RC-network thermal model of a multi-zone office building, located in Montreal, Canada is developed and its annual energy performance simulation is studied. The method presents Pareto optimal solutions for the automated control of the indoor environment, by managing the level of indoor temperature, ventilation rate, natural illumination, and artificial lighting, in different zones of the office. Within a multi-objective optimization framework, several parameters are considered by the method, including (1) energy exchange processes across the zones, (2) sets of indoor and outdoor environmental parameters, (3) energy prices, (4) indoor air quality of the zones, and (5) occupants’ positions, activities, personalized thermal and visual preferences, and adaptive behavior. Under different scenarios, occupants are considered to have distinct thermal and visual preferences and behavior. The flexibility of the method to perform personalized energy and comfort management, by managing the indoor environmental conditions according to occupants’ personalized thermal and visual preferences, thermal and visual behavior, and positions are determined. Based on the provided results, the proposed method is capable of improving the productivity of occupants, by up to $1000 per year per person (assuming fixed productivity rate of 20 $/h), while simultaneously optimizing the energy consumption costs.


identifier: Zhang, Weiyang  (2017) The effect of piles and their loading on nearby retaining walls – an artificial neural network approach.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The assessment of stability of retaining walls that were constructed to prevent soil instability and collapse under the loads on nearby piles could be a sophisticated task. In urban areas, buildings or infrastructure are sometimes built relatively close to each other. Often pile foundations or groups of piles are used as the primary supporting systems and, inevitably, existing nearby retaining walls would be affected by these structures. The maximum wall deformation of these retaining walls was selected as a key factor to be determined to assess the retaining wall stability. In order to investigate the effect of loaded piles on the retaining wall, a set of parameters were selected such as the pile length, diameter and its location from the retaining wall. Considering all these parameters could lead to a large number of scenarios in order to establish the sensitivity of the system with respect to each variable. To reduce the required number of models needed to be analyzed, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was developed based on a representative dataset of base parameters. Similar to our brain, once the input (parameters) and output (maximum displacement and its location) baseline are given, the ANN is able to simulate and train by itself to provide a credible prediction of any corresponding scenario. Using the trained ANN model, for future designs engineers can predict a retaining wall maximum deformation and location under different geometrical scenarios, and as well to enhance or improve the serviceability of the entire pile-wall system.


identifier: Tan, Jennifer  (2017) Simulation of Morphing Blades for Vertical Axis WInd Turbines.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The simulation of flow through vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) is characterized by unsteady flow where the blade experiences varying angles of attack and Reynolds number as it completes a cycle. Therefore, the lift generated also varies as a function of its rotational position relative to the incoming freestream velocity. In order to improve the performance of these turbines the blade can take advantage of smart materials developed for control surface actuation. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of morphing blades on the aerodynamic performance of the turbine blades. The study uses commercial software Ansys Fluent pressure-based solver to investigate the flow past the turbine blades by solving the 2D Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations. In order to simulate the morphing blade for VAWT, a sliding mesh method is used to simulate the VAWT rotation while a user-defined function (UDF) is written for the blade morphing flexure motion. This entails the use of dynamic mesh smoothing to prevent the mesh from having negative cell volumes. Although the dynamic mesh strategy has been successful in preserving the cell quality, it has been shown that the proposed method of simulating the morphing blade on VAWT is inadequate due to unphysical solutions. Finally, the effect of morphing the blade is tested on a static airfoil case instead, where it is shown that stall is alleviated by morphing the blade trailing edge.


identifier: Di Bartolomeo, Jacqueline  (2017) Woman Traveller in the Age of Empire: Thérèse (Th.) Bentzon and The Politics of Feminist Selfhood in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Throughout the nineteenth century, women travellers influenced ideas about women’s rights in three respects: being in motion had a formative impact on their own notions of rights; they would put these ideas to paper; and these travelogues would then be published and circulated, contributing as cultural mediators to meaning-making about women elsewhere in the world. This thesis suggests that through the prism of the life and work of French writer and traveller Marie-Thérèse de Solms Blanc (1840-1907), better known under her pen name Thérèse (Th.), Bentzon, the relationship between an emerging feminist subject and travel can be apprehended. It holds that for Bentzon travel occurred along three axes: temporal, spatial, and imaginative. In considering her travelogues to North America, Les Américaines chez elles (1896) and Nouvelle-France et Nouvelle-Angleterre (1899), this study asks how this tripartite mechanism manifested itself via her travel accounts.  More specifically, this thesis examines the ways in which these travelogues serve as practical examples of how ideas about womanhood (even if not specifically operating under the umbrella of the ‘feminist’ movement) circulated in a transatlantic context; how the production of difference via travel writing along racialized, gendered, classist, and national lines fed into transnational networks of feminist ideas; and finally, how imagination itself served as an anchor for Bentzon’s project of centering women’s lives and contributions to society, her representations of people and places, space and time, and the very medium and genre she chose to work with, that of the travelogue.


identifier: Chinis, Iakovos Jake  (2017) Computing the average root number of a one-parameter family of elliptic curves defined over Q.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The root number $w$ of an elliptic curve defined over $\Q$ has an intrinsic definition as an infinite product of \textit{local root numbers} $w_p$, over all places $p$ of $\Q$, with $w_p=\pm 1$ for all $p$ and such that $w_p=1$ for all but finitely-many $p$. By considering a one-parameter family of elliptic curves defined over $\Q$, we might ask ourselves if there is any bias in the distribution (or parity) of the root numbers at each specialization.

From the work of Helfgott in his Ph.D. thesis, we know (at least conjecturally) that the average root number of an elliptic curve defined over $\Q(T)$ is zero as soon as there is a place of multiplicative reduction over $\Q(T)$ other than $-\deg$.

In this paper, we are concerned with elliptic curves defined over $\Q(T)$ with no place of multiplicative reduction over $\Q(T)$, except possibly at $-\deg$. More precisely, we use the work of Helfgott to compute the average root number of an explicit family of elliptic curves defined over $\Q$ and show that this family is "parity-biased" infinitely-often.


identifier: Ansari, Arash  (2017) Energy Optimization of a Cellular Network with QoS Guarantee.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The problem of energy optimization in a cellular network has been studied from different perspectives: sleep patterns, network interference, association of users and base stations, allocation of resources (bandwidth and power), etc. All these aspects have been discussed individually in previous works. However, none of the existing works has succeeded in proposing an accurate solution to an exact mathematical model that takes into account several of these parameters simultaneously.

In this work, we propose a modeling of several network parameters (i.e., base station transmission power and activity, user assignment, bandwidth allocation, interference, and data rate) and their interaction in order to minimize the network energy consumption. An exact solution of the proposed model, which solves the energy optimization problem in an LTE network, is presented afterward. The proposed solution guarantees to satisfy all the users with a minimum quality of service (data rate), assuming a proper call admission mechanism has been put in place.
The accurate solution allows energy savings of up to 50\% in a moderately loaded network, which leads to energy savings of up to twice than of the heuristic proposed by Piunti \textit{et al.} (2015). Moreover, a strategy to solve the model using column generation method is proposed and investigated. Various numerical results are presented on hexagonal and randomly generated cellular networks.


identifier: McNally, Erin K  (2017) Selective Polytopic Protein Degradation by Organelle Membrane Fusion.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

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abstract:
Lysosomes are dynamic organelles most notably known as the terminal compartments of the endocytic and autophagy pathways in eukaryotic cells. However, lysosome function is not simply for the elimination and catabolism of biomaterials. Rather lysosomes have emerged as critical and dynamic signaling hubs via their ability to sense and provide nutrients, and communicate this information to biosynthetic or metabolic processes. Lysosome physiology relies on membrane transporter activity, best signified by loss-of-function mutations linked to lysosomal storage disorders. These include nutrient transporter proteins that export products of catabolism to the cytoplasm for cellular reuse, as well as Ca2+ pumps and transporters important for signaling, and transporters for metal storage and homeostasis. Eukaryotic cells, and their lysosomes, undergo continuous renovation to clear damaged or unused proteins or to alter their proteome accommodating functional changes in response to the environment, physiological cues, or aging. Despite the importance of lysosomal transporters to cell physiology, little is known about their lifetimes and it remains unclear how they are degraded.
Here, I used Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its vacuolar lysosome as models to study lysosomal transporter lifetimes and discovered a new cellular protein degradation pathway, the IntraLumenal Fragment (ILF) pathway: During membrane fusion events between lysosomes, transporters are selectively labeled for recognition and sorting by the fusion protein machinery into an area of membrane spanning the apposed organelles. Upon fusion, this membrane and proteins embedded within it are internalized into the lumen as a byproduct for degradation by hydrolases. I find the ILF pathway selectively degrades lysosomal transporters when misfolded, in response to TOR signaling or changes in substrate levels. I also find that protein clients are not limited to lysosomal transporters, as this pathway degrades internalized surface membrane proteins that bypass entry into the canonical MultiVesicular Body pathway, which was previously thought to be the exclusive mechanism for selective surface protein degradation. Finally, I find the ILF pathway cooperates with a second, independent protein degradation pathway, the vReD pathway, to change the lysosomal membrane proteome. The underlying machinery and transporters studied are evolutionarily conserved, suggesting the ILF pathway contributes to lysosome physiology in all eukaryotic cells.