identifier: Ramanan, Arvind Vyas  (2013) Energy Harvesting and Modeling of Photosynthetic Power Cell.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The need for energy is inevitable for mankind. Climate change, depletion of natural resources, pollution and other factors have created the necessity to look for energy from renewable sources. Furthermore, there are challenges aplenty in the field of renewable energy as renewable energy sources are unpredictable, non-dependable and limited such as wind, solar photo voltaic and tidal power. Apart from these there are few unconventional renewable energy sources that have not been explored thoroughly or exploited. The photosynthetic power cell is one among them.
The photosynthetic power cell (PSC) harvests the energy produced at the lowest level of the food cycle which is “photosynthesis” in plants. The photosynthetic power cell extracts the energy produced during photosynthesis and respiration in form of electrical energy. The developed device differs from other published works in terms of improved performance, fabrication technique and material of structure. The two main types of sources used in the photosynthetic power cell are aerobic unicellular organisms (e.g. algae and cyanobacteria) and sub-cellular thylakoid photosystems / chloroplasts isolated from plant cells (e.g. spinach plant’s sub-cellular thylakoid photosystems isolated from the plant cells). The photosynthetic power cell produces energy under both dark and light conditions. The developed PSC is a polymer based structure instead of silicon, integrating the conventional MEMS processes with polymers. The principle of the operation of the device is based on ‘photosynthesis’. Photosynthesis and respiration both involve electron transfer chains. The electrons are extracted with the help of electrodes and a redox agent, and a power electronic converter is designed to harvest the energy. The developed device is capable of producing an open circuit voltage of 0.9 volts and about 200 μW of peak power. The μPSC has an active area of 4.84 cm2 which approximately translates to a power density of 400 mW/m2. This makes it as one of the best performing μPSC. The other top performing μPSC devices report power densities between 100 to 250 mW/m2.
In order to harvest energy from μPSC, power electronic converters are a necessity. Three different power electronic topologies are investigated to find the feasibility of energy harvesting using μPSC. Also, the cell should be operated at the maximum power point in order to get the best results. Common maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques as well as a novel MPPT technique is devised and tested for the energy harvesting application using μPSC.
In this thesis work, the device’s working principle, fabrication of the device and testing of the developed prototype along with the design and development of the power electronic converters with MPPT algorithm for energy harvesting application with μPSC are presented. A short introduction, basic photosynthesis process, background and history of μPSC are discussed in first chapter. The cell design, construction, working and fabrication of the cell are discussed in the second chapter. The third chapter deals with the experimental set up, characterization and testing of the cell. In the fourth chapter, modeling, analysis, simulation of PSC is executed. Analysis, identification and simulation of suitable power electronic converters with MPPT are investigated in the fifth chapter. Conclusions, future work form the epilogue.


identifier: Tousignant, Isa  (2013) Plush Love: Animal Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Art.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract:
Abstract

Plush Love: Animal Anthropomorphism in Contemporary Art
Isa Tousignant

In The Open: Man and Animal, Giorgio Agamben writes: “the relation between man and animal marks the boundary of an essential domain, in which historical inquiry must necessarily confront that fringe of ultrahistory which cannot be reached without making recourse to first philosophy.” (1) With this thesis I suggest an investigation of the historical and philosophical contexts of the human/nonhuman animal relationship through the lens of fursuiting and a body of contemporary visual art production that finds inspiration within that subject.

Fursuiting is a practice undertaken by members of a subculture called the “furry fandom,” which centres on the appreciation of anthropomorphized animal characters that find their origins in the traditions of comics and animation. In addition to engaging in their own visual culture production featuring hybrid “humanimal” creatures, members of the furry fandom who don fursuits choose to dress up in full-body artificial fur costumes and perform in characters they feel express alternate identities.

This thesis aims at uncovering that phenomenon, but focuses mainly on the identification and analysis of a secondary body of visual production that has resulted from the existence of fursuiting: the work produced by contemporary Canadian and American visual artists that uses fursuiting as a theme. This body of work has never been examined as a whole.

(1) Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003), 21.


identifier: Pastorino Campos, Carla A  (2013) Producción oral en una lengua extranjera: influencia de factores de afiliación de grupo y de inclinación a comunicarse.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This study intends to explore the relationship between the degree of foreign accent (DFA) of a group of non-native speakers of English and their levels of ethnic group affiliation (EGA) and willingness to communicate (WTC), in a context where the languages do not regularly coexist and where the learnt language has a foreign language status.
We analyzed the oral production and the reported levels of EGA and WTC of a group of 28 Argentinian English language students, who were native speakers of Spanish and lived in Argentina at the time of the study. The group had a mean age of 23.5 and was mostly constituted by females. None of the participants had an advanced command of any other language besides Spanish and English or had lived abroad for purposes other than tourism. All of them were studying English at university, either to become English teachers of English translators.
The results showed that the participants scored highly both on reported EGA and WTC, thus indicating that the sample is not only highly affiliated with their cultural group, but also highly motivated to speak in English. Also, their DFA as perceived by the judges, who were proven to be reliable (Cronbach’s Alpha = .77), were likewise high (mean = 4.43 / 7). However, it was found that there were no correlations between the DFA and the levels of EGA and WTC. Considering the characteristics of Argentina and the findings of other studies, the lack of correlations between DFA and EGA and WTC could be attributed to contextual factors that were not originally included in this research, such as L2 use, an influence that was briefly explored in an additional experiment carried out on a fraction of the original participants.
The findings of this study have helped broaden our understanding of the underlying causes of foreign accent in a context where the mother tongue and the learnt language of the speaker do not coexist. Furthermore, it has put into perspective the actual influences of certain psychological factors, such as identification and motivation, in the prediction of the DFA. In fact, it seems that in this case, the effect of contextual influences may outweigh the effect of personal ones, and should most certainly be considered on future works on this topic.


identifier: Ebrahim nataj jelodar, Hamzeh  (2013) Viscous Stability Analysis of Trailing Line Vortex.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This piece of work deals with the viscous stability of trailing line vortex. The perturbations are three dimensional and the viscous effects were encountered. The eigenvalue problem was solved by implementing a pseudo-spectral approach in MATLAB environment. The code was confirmed through comparing the results with those available in the literature, produced with Bachelor’s vortex model as base flow.
The code was afterwards used to investigate the stability of trailing line vortex where the azimuthal component of the base flow was the one of Vatistas’ vortex model. The stability of the linear modes (Kelvin’s waves) was investigated for axisymmetric and asymmetric disturbances.  Results for the temporal viscous unstable modes were provided.  The influence of swirl parameter and Reynolds number on the growth rate, phase speed and amplitude, of the perturbations were studied.


identifier: Wyatt, Rachael A.  (2013) A Contribution to the Anatomy of Ginkgo Biloba.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This manuscript of poetry uses the ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) as a thresh-hold from which to open up a discourse between the biological sciences and poetry. The ginkgo tree is an important outlier to tree taxonomy, one that complicates and provides elusive clues towards the origins of flowering plants out of gymnosperms. It is a motif in Japanese and Chinese art forms of painting, gardens and bonsai, and its extract is a popular folk remedy for poor memory and low cognitive function. The poems take on many forms (found poetry, erasure, sonnet, and cento among them) to express different cross-sections of the relationships between science, poetry, society and the arts. The poems show how scientific language can be beautiful, and conversely how it can intrude upon the lyrical. They attempt to communicate how evocative the conceptual backdrop for the biological sciences can be, and they juxtapose the lyrical to the scientific eye, arguing that these two stances are far from diametrically opposed. The figures used as organic section markers pace the thesis and signal changes between modes of writing or thinking—allowing different experiments with language to coexist in close proximity but remain in different timbres—while providing, themselves, a commentary on visual forms of scientific communication. This thesis draws techniques from poets such as Christopher Dewdney, Mari-Lou Rowley and Adam Dickinson.


identifier: Mehrizi, Hamidreza  (2013) Iterative Combinatorial Auction for Carrier Collaboration in Logistic Services.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In collaborative logistics, multiple carriers form a network to share their transportation capacities. Collaboration among carriers results in improved resource utilization and, therefore, reduced costs. In this thesis, we propose an auction-based model for carrier collaboration in transportation services. The model achieves carrier collaboration through facilitating the negotiation among carriers over a group of shipping orders required by one or a group of shippers. The negotiation is conducted through a combinatorial iterative auction mechanism with the objective of minimizing the carriers’ overall costs.
We first present a centralized carrier collaboration problem model in which a central entity has all required information to compute an optimal solution. We then consider a more realistic game theoretic setting where auction-based mechanism is applied to deal with self-interests of carriers. Compared with one-shot auctions, the proposed iterative bidding framework has the properties of reducing carriers’ information revelation and accommodating dynamic changes during the bidding process. Experimental results show that the procurement cost performance and the quality of solutions computed using the proposed iterative auction model is close to that of the optimal solutions.


identifier: Al-Khatib, Zaid A. M.  (2013) Operand Value Based Modeling and Estimation of Dynamic Energy Consumption of Soft Processors in FPGA.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis presents a novel method for estimating the dynamic energy consumption of soft processors in FPGA, using an operand-value-based model. The processor energy model is created at the instruction-level, which enables fast, early and accurate energy estimation. The modeling heuristic is based on the observation that the energy required to execute instructions on an FPGA implementation of a soft processor has a strong dependence on the operand values. Our energy model contains three components: the instruction base energy, the maximum variation in the instruction energy due to input data, and the impact of one’s density of the operand values during software execution. The one’s density refers to the number of operand bits that are set to one. We use post-place and route processor simulations as a reference to evaluate the accuracy of our model, and that of other existing instruction-level energy models, for several benchmarks. We demonstrate that our model has only 4.7% average error and 12% worst case error compared to the reference, and is more than twice as accurate as existing instruction-level models.
Key Words: Energy modeling, Soft processors, system-level design, Power estimation.


identifier: MacKie, Craig  (2013) Orienting Affection: The Political Economy of Affect and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This dissertation seeks to develop a model of affectivity based on the Hegelian dialectics of identity and uses this model to analyze the historical, economic and political history of North Korea. Drawing on propaganda materials, children’s cartoons and by examining the dynamics of leadership transition over the course of the republic’s history, a synthesis of Butlerian theories of performativity, Marxist political economy and the sociology of emotion allows for a description of nationalist affects levied against the anomic affectivity of commodification. Whereby the dynamics of capitalism, the historical forces of modernization, and the very ontic structure of individual/group identity inculcate an emotional dualism which operates simultaneously at the global, social and individual level.


identifier: El Boubakri, Abderrahmane  (2013) Analysis of the Performance of Droop Controlled Inverters in Mini-Grids.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
DC-AC Converters (inverters) are frequently employed as interfaces of distributed power sources and energy storage units to ac distribution grids. The approach of operating them as a voltage source with droop based control loops and using locally measured quantities offers an effective way to control the amount of active and reactive power they provide/absorb. In this way, fluctuating renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic (PV) and wind, can help with power balancing, while grid forming units can better share load variations without dedicated communication channels. Besides, it can allow a smooth transition of a micro-grid from the grid-tie to the autonomous mode in case of a grid fault. However, the dynamic response and steady state operation of a system with droop controlled inverters depends quite a bit on systems parameters, such as feeder impedances, as well as on the droop characteristics of the other units, what is not usually known.
This work focuses on the analysis of the performance of droop controlled inverters operating in various conditions. First, a 10 kVA three-phase inverter with a dq (vector) voltage control loop and active power (P) vs. frequency (f) and reactive power (Q) vs. grid voltage magnitude (V) droop characteristics is designed. Then, its behavior when operating connected to a stiff grid is investigated. Time domain simulations with SIMULINK and the technique of root locus, for which a small signal model is derived, are used to observe how the droop factors, frequency of the low pass filters used in the power measurements and feeder impedance affect the dynamic response. Next, the operation of two grid forming inverters in an autonomous micro-grid is considered. Again, the performance of the system is investigated with time domain simulations and root locus. The need for a virtual impedance loop as a means for allowing large droop factors to be used along with feeders with small inductances is observed and the effectiveness of this technique is demonstrated. The adverse impact of the conventional virtual impedance loop on the load voltage regulation is observed and an alternative implementation that minimizes this problem is proposed and its effectiveness is demonstrated. Finally, an autonomous micro-grid consisting of an inverter and a diesel engine generator set (genset) is studied. Time domain simulations are used to show that when the speed of response, in terms of power, of two grid forming units is very different, the smallest one can be overloaded. An approach for slowing down the fastest unit is proposed to minimize this issue.


identifier: Nurujjaman, Mohammad  (2013) Optimal Design Strategies for Survivable Carrier Ethernet Networks.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Ethernet technologies have evolved through enormous standardization efforts over the past two decades to achieve carrier-grade functionalities, leading to carrier Ethernet. Carrier Ethernet is expected to dominate next generation backbone networks due to its low-cost and simplicity. Ethernet's ability to provide carrier-grade Layer-2 protection switching with SONET/SDH-like fast restoration time is achieved by a new protection switching protocol, Ethernet Ring Protection (ERP). In this thesis, we address two important design aspects of carrier Ethernet networks, namely, survivable design of ERP-based Ethernet transport networks together with energy efficient network design. For the former, we address the problem of optimal resource allocation while designing logical ERP for deployment and model the combinatorially complex problem of joint Ring Protection Link (RPL) placements and ring hierarchies selection as an optimization problem. We develop several Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to solve the problem optimally considering both single link failure and concurrent dual link failure scenarios. We also present a traffic engineering based ERP design approach and develop corresponding MILP design models for configuring either single or multiple logical ERP instances over one underlying physical ring. For the latter, we propose two novel architectures of energy efficient Ethernet switches using passive optical correlators for optical bypassing as well as using energy efficient Ethernet (EEE) ports for traffic aggregation and forwarding. We develop an optimal frame scheduling model for EEE ports to ensure minimal energy consumption by using packet coalescing and efficient scheduling.


identifier: Tutino, Maria  (2013) Experimenting With Discursive and Non-Discursive Styles of Teaching Absolute Value Inequalities to Mature Students.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This research is a follow-up of Sierpinska, Bobos, and Pruncut’s 2011 study, which experimented with three teaching approaches to teaching absolute value inequalities (AVI), visual, procedural, and theoretical, presented over an audio lecture with slides. The study demonstrated that participants treated with the visual approach were more likely to engage in theoretical thinking than those treated with the other two approaches. In the present experiment, two groups of participants enrolled in prerequisite mathematics courses at a large, urban North American University were taught AVI with the visual approach using two different teaching styles: discursive (permitting and actively encouraging teacher-student interactions during the lecture) and non-discursive (not allowing teacher-student interactions during the lecture). In Sierpinska et al.’s study, the non-discursive style was used in all three approaches (the lectures were recorded and the teacher was not present in person). In the present study, a live teacher was lecturing in both treatments. Another difference was that in Sierpinska et al.’s study, lectures were delivered individually to each participant, while in the present study, all participants in a group were treated simultaneously. Therefore, in the discursive approach, not only teacher-student but also student-student interactions during the lecture were possible.
The aim of this research was to explore the conjecture that the discursive approach is more likely to promote theoretical thinking in students. The group exposed to the discursive approach was, therefore, my experimental group and the other played the role of the control group. The conjecture was not confirmed, but the two approaches seem to have provoked different aspects of theoretical thinking. The experimental group was found to be more reflective, while the control group tended to be more systemic in their thinking. Some striking results, not predicted by Sierpinska et al.’s study, were also found with respect to reflective thinking, definitional thinking, proving behavior, and analytic thinking.


identifier: Mahmoud, Alaa yahya  (2013) Effect of Gold Nanorods on the Performance of Polymer:Fullerene Organic Solar Cells.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This research is an experimental investigation on the effect of inserting gold nanorods in various locations of conjugated polymer solar cells that comprise poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) as the electron donor, and [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric-acid-methyl-ester as the electron acceptor, on the cells performance. Since gold nanorods support at least two major plasmonic modes associated with metallic nanoparticles, incorporating such nanoparticles into thin films of polymer solar cells is supposed to trap light inside the cells in a broad wavelength range, leading to increasing absorptivity as well as power conversion efficiency.
First, several experiments were performed to manufacture devices with a good and reproducible efficiency by optimizing the fabrication conditions, particularly the lithium fluoride thickness as well as the annealing process. This optimization succeeded in producing reproducible devices with an enhanced power conversion efficiency from 0.36% to 1.67%.
Secondly, various approaches were used to introduce gold nanorods in our devices. Rods were deposited in contact with either the cells’ front electrode, or the rear one. They were also blended with the solution of the anodic buffer layer, or the one of the photoactive layer. We compared the photovoltaic parameters extracted from completed devices made with/without gold nanorods, as well as their spectroscopic and structure properties. We found that for each location of rods in our devices there was an optimal concentration of the rods to produce enhancement in the devices’ performance.  Based on theoretical considerations, devices enhancement was related to either the far field or near field effect induced by the presence of rods. It was found that increasing or decreasing the rods density from the optimal one reduced the overall efficiency of resulting devices. We experimentally verified that there was a relationship between the enhancement in the devices efficiency and the multi-mode excitations associated with gold nanorods. We also found that the influence of plasmonics on absorption of the devices depended on the thickness of the devices’ photoactive layers. Using the rod shape of gold nanoparticles to increase the device performance is indeed a promising approach since a fairly low density of the rods in the layer succeeded in increasing remarkably the devices efficiency by up to 21.3 %.


identifier: Zhang, Jing  (2013) Conflict-Induced Forced CEO Turnover and Firm Performance.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: We examine firm performance changes around forced CEO turnovers which are caused by conflicts between corporate boards and CEOs. We investigate firm performance using two measures: operating performance and abnormal stock returns. Many previous studies analyze firm performance changes around forced top management turnovers, but to date no one has examined conflict-induced CEO turnover events. Our results show that a firm’s operating performance declines preceding turnovers and improves following turnovers. However, unlike most previous studies, we find negative abnormal stock returns following CEO turnovers, suggesting that investors do not perceive CEO turnover announcements as good news when CEOs are dismissed for conflicts. We employ a unique hand-collected dataset on forced CEO turnovers as well as board and CEO characteristics and use multivariate regression analyses to test whether board and successor CEO characteristics influence a firm’s post-turnover firm performance. The results show no significant relationship between these variables and firm performance.


identifier: Fan, Yan Feng  (2013) Experimental Investigations of Flow Boiling Heat Transfer and Flow Instability in a Horizontal Microtube with an Inlet Orifice.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Flow boiling heat transfer mechanism has been shown to be an attractive method for satisfying the expected cooling loads of microelectronic devices. One of the main challenges associated with flow boiling is the flow instability created by the two-phase flow process. The design of orifice placed at the entrance of microchannels has been proven to be an effective way of reducing or eliminating these flow instabilities in multichannel systems.
The present thesis experimentally investigated the effect of inlet orifice in a single microtube on flow boiling heat transfer and associated flow instabilities using FC-72 as working fluid. The hydraulic diameter and length of microtube were fixed at 889 µm and 150 mm, respectively. The area ratios of inlet orifice to main microtube were selected as 50%, 35%, and 20%. The results showed that the ratio of pressure drop by inlet orifice to the total pressure drop reduced as mass flux and vapor quality increased. Inlet orifice did not have significant effects on the forced convective boiling heat transfer and normal critical heat flux, but increased the nucleate boiling heat transfer and premature critical heat flux. A novel flow stability map was developed and two critical boundaries were identified, which divide the flow into stable and unstable regimes. The microtube with 20% inlet orifice had a best performance on flow stabilization since a large upstream pressure was created. A methodology was also developed in order to predict the onset of flow instability in single microtubes with different sizes of inlet orifices. The predicted heat flux at the onset of flow instability was compared with the experiment and showed a reasonable agreement within ± 30%.
Overall, the performance of inlet orifices on flow boiling heat transfer and flow instability has been investigated in a single microtube. The present fundamental work is expected to lead to creation and development of a number of miniaturized devices, which are associated with flow boiling.


identifier: Ravishankar, Parthasarathy  (2013) An Observable Data Cache Model for FPGA Prototyping.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This work presents design of a configurable and observable model of L1 data cache memory and a novel method for integrating the model into an FPGA prototype. Embedded system software designers use in-circuit emulation on FPGA platforms to validate the functionality and performance of embedded software. Data cache, particularly L1, has a major impact of system performance, yet remains unobservable during software debugging and analysis. Our solution is to model the data cache as an on-chip hardware peripheral that can be integrated into the processor system and can display the state of the data cache at any given time. The model is synthesized on Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA and validated using several benchmarks. The experimental results show that the model can accurately track cache hits and misses and can estimate the run time of an embedded software application with an average error of only 5.4%, and a worst case error of only 13.7%.


identifier: Spitsina, Svetlana  (2013) Growth, Doping, and Characterization of ZnO Nanowires: Application in a Miniaturized Gas Ionization Sensor.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
Growth, Doping, and Characterization of ZnO Nanowires: Application in a Miniaturized Gas Ionization Sensor

Svetlana Spitsina, Ph. D.
Concordia University, 2013

          Semiconductor ZnO has been the subject of research for many applications for the past several years, because the material is nontoxic, biosafe, chemically stable, and biocompatible. In this work we report studies on ZnO nanowires (NWs), its fabrication and applications. Techniques are developed to control the morphology and distribution of ZnO Nanowires (NWs). We have also investigated the conductivity of nanowires and its manipulation using various doping materials and their concentrations. Fabricated nanowires have potential applications such as integration in nano optoelectronics, solar cells, gas or humidity sensors, and many other devices. In this thesis we have explored its application to develop a gas sensor based on the ionization of gases, so-called Gas Ionization Sensor (GIS).
          A GIS based on metallic nanowires (NWs) had been previously designed and developed in the Micro/Nano Laboratories in the ECE Department at Concordia University. However, the reported device suffered from very low durability. The high voltages induced at the NWs tips damage the apexes (due to their thin structure) and device loses its sensitivity after several episodes of usage.
          High performance GIS sensors demand specific morphology of NWs, uniform distribution, low density, and demand that NWs be made of highly conductive and chemically stable materials. In this work we have introduced ZnO nanowires to replace the metallic nanowires in the GIS. It is the core of thesis to fabricate ZnO NWs having the characteristics to improve the functioning of the GIS.
          In these investigations we have focused on the electrochemical synthesis of nanowires. We used this technique due to its advantages such as low cost, high throughput, repeatability, uniform and large area synthesis of NWs, strong adhesion of NWs to the substrate, ability to grow them with desired morphologies, as well as the possibility of effective doping during the growth. Effects of various growth parameters on the nanowire structures are investigated. Studies on doping the nanowires, p-type and n-type, were carried out. ZnO NWs with desired structures and conductivity were used to design and fabricate a GIS. The device was tested for various gases. Significantly improved performance of the GIS was demonstrated. GISs with p-type ZnO NWs illustrated high field enhancement factors because of the morphology, distribution, and conductivity of nanostructures. Also, the novel gas detectors illustrated superior sensitivity, reliability, and repeatability.


identifier: Harding, Dagan  (2013) Environmental Rhetoric: A Framing Analysis of Stakeholder Claims Surrounding the Northern Gateway Pipeline.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Disputes about large-scale energy projects are as much a cultural issue as they are a technical and political one. With increased emphasis on trade in Canada, resource
extraction and pipelines have become subject to scrutiny from competing networks. This study shows how, and on what points, stakeholders talk past each other regarding the
framing of the Northern Gateway pipeline. The proposed paper involves an analysis of rhetoric in the media, and the framing of specific issues throughout the proceedings of the Federal Review Panel. How effectively competing developer and environmental networks frame the debate on their terms affects the public consultations, public perceptions of the pipeline, and the policy leverage of each group. This analysis shows that stakeholders talk past each other, and that the public’s view of the pipeline is highly reliant on these diverging points. Furthermore, the framing strategies are integral to the successful marketing of actors’ claims inside and outside of the institutional context. This paper also highlights that different perceptions of ‘risk,’ costs and benefits, and how stakeholders weigh these concerns on different terms, influences the way they promote themselves and discredit
each other.


identifier: Menchawi Fawal, Obeida  (2013) The Representations of Islam and Muslims in popular media: Educational Strategies and to develop critical media literacy.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT

The way Islam is understood today, and for much of the Western world, is based on the perception that was established by Orientalist scholars of the 18th to 20th century. Many studies have demonstrated that the negative images of the Muslim world, in American Western mass media, particularly Hollywood movies, are inherited attitudes from the old ‘guild tradition’ school of Orientalism. As the matter of fact, these biased attitudes, which still in some ways dominate the Western way of thinking, are deeply rooted in the history of colonialism and orientalist scholarship. Today, American mass media and particularly Hollywood is taking these inherited misconceptions of the Muslim World and representing it to the world in a new format.
This study examines the representations and portrayal of Islam and Muslims in American Popular Culture, especially Hollywood movie productions. The findings indicate that Islam and Muslims received negative coverage. A consistent stereotyped association with violence, terrorism, fundamentalism and extremism marks the representations of Islam and Muslims in Hollywood movies. These representations encapsulate the perception of Islam and Muslims by mass media to the point it becomes very difficult to perceive Islam and Muslims differently.
The study also attempts to examine the role of education in demystifying the negative representations of Islam and Arab Muslims in Popular Culture. Moreover, it demonstrates that the critical study of these misrepresentations in the American popular culture may contribute towards establishing a more democratic, peaceful, and just world.


identifier: Affan, Samah  (2013) Ethical Gestures: Articulations of Black Life in Montreal's 1960s.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Ethical Gestures: Articulations of Black Life in Montreal’s 1960s By Samah Affan
	This thesis traces articulations of black diasporic politics and practices in Montreal’s 1960s as they revolve around two particular events that took place in the city, the Congress of Black Writers in 1968 and the Sir George Williams Affair in 1969. Though it has relevance for studies in black Canadian history, black left and grassroots activism and diaspora studies broadly, this project is above all a theoretical exploration into the overlapping realms of ethics and politics. This interdisciplinary project draws on a variety of oral and written sources to trace the political, social, and performative tenors of memory-work that underwrite collective and individual narratives unfolding before this historical backdrop. Chapter one looks at the promise of democracy as a single problem-space that attracted the attention of black activists of various stripes, the university administration and federal police; the contested political arena in which they made their respective claims is also a moral arena in which ethical modes of being and dissenting were reproduced and countered. Using oral history interviews with six female Black Canadian and Caribbean women, chapters two and three highlight the politics of moral memories. The emphasis on politics as intimately bound to everyday practices and lived experiences points to ways of reading this history that might be overlooked otherwise. Ultimately, this research aims not to champion any one vision of black liberation but to offer a periscope into the ways black narrators made and make life livable.


identifier: Fulga, Angelica  (2013) The Impact of L1 Background and Visual Information on the Effectiveness of Low-Variability Input.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This study investigated whether L1 background and visual information impact the effectiveness of skewed and balanced input at promoting pattern detection. Participants (N= 84) were exposed to Esperanto sentence with the transitive construction under skewed (one noun with high token frequency) or balanced input (equal token frequency) conditions while viewing either colour or black and white visuals. Their ability to detect the relevant morphological and syntactic features of the transitive construction was tested through a forced judgement task using novel nouns. The results indicated no significant main effect for  visual information or input type. There was, however, a significant main effect for L1 on learners’ capacity to notice the accusative inflection in Esperanto. The implications are discussed in terms of the effect of L1- specific transitive encodings on speakers’ ability to abstract a novel transitive construction.


identifier: Farhadi, Mohammad Reza  (2013) Assembly Code Clone Detection for Malware Binaries.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Malware, such as a virus or trojan horse, refers to software designed specifically to gain unauthorized access to a computer system and perform malicious activities. To analyze a piece of malware, one may employ a reverse engineering approach to perform an in-depth analysis on the assembly code of a malware. Yet, the reverse engineering process is tedious and time consuming. One way to speed up the analysis process is to compare the disassembled malware with some previously analyzed malware, identify the similar functions in the assembly code, and transfer the comments from the previously analyzed software to the new malware. The challenge is how to efficiently identify the similar code fragments (i.e., clones) from a large repository of assembly code.

In this thesis, an assembly code clone detection system is presented. Its performance is evaluated in terms of accuracy, efficiency, scalability, and feasibility of finding clones on assembly code decompiled from both Microsoft Windows 7 DLL files and real-life malware binary files. Experimental results suggest that the proposed clone detection algorithm is effective. This system can be used as the basis of future development of assembly code clone detection.


identifier: HOSSAIN, ASHRAFEE TANVIR  (2013) ESSAYS ON THE IMPACT OF REGULATORY CHANGES.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In the first essay, we study the information content of Form 4 filings under the stricter disclosure regulations introduced by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, by examining the abnormal returns around the filing date. Our results show that for both the purchase and sale samples, the information content of the filings has improved significantly between the pre- and post- SOX periods.  We also find that progressive regulatory changes and the increased uncertainty in the market in recent years as a result of the credit crunch in 2008 have made insider transactions more informative.  Our results also show that the rank of the insider (CEO, CFO, etc.) has the most influence in explaining the abnormal returns.  Finally, in cross-sectional tests, we find that the information content of the filings is stronger for firms with more information asymmetry.  Overall, we report that the more timely filing requirement introduced by SOX has been beneficial for investors, particularly for firms with higher levels of information asymmetry.
	In the second essay, we examine the effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 on the short and long-run performance of corporate acquisitions.  Using a large sample of tender offers between 1996 and 2009, we find that the proportion of value maximizing acquisitions increased after the passage of SOX. The price run-up and the intensity of insider trading prior to the announcement in the target firms have substantially decreased after the Act. Using industry and matched firm portfolios, we also find that both the operating performance and buy-and-hold abnormal returns over the three and five year post-acquisition period improved significantly after SOX.
	In the final essay, we examine the effects of Ontario Bill-198 (CSOX-2003), the strictest corporate law in Canada. Despite some drawbacks, we find the Act has added significant value contrary to many practitioners’ beliefs. Using a large sample of Canadian tender offers between 1996 and 2009, we find that both target and acquirer shareholders experience higher abnormal returns closer to announcement dates in the post CSOX period. Using industry adjusted portfolio, we also find that the long term post-acquisition operating performances for the acquiring firms have significantly improved in the post-Act period. Overall, our results suggest that CSOX has an incremental positive impact on Canadian acquisition activity.


identifier: Banton, Rachel A.  (2013) Wise in One’s Own Conceit: The Effect of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) on Consumer’s Perceived Medical Knowledge.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The pharmaceutical industry uses various marketing tactics directed to both health care professionals and consumers alike. Advertising directly to consumers has proven controversial. Critics argue that direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) promotes overmedicalization and unwarranted demand for prescription drugs. This study investigated (1) whether consumers’ level of knowledge about a disease or perceived knowledge causes them to seek information from a physician and (2) whether DTCA increases consumers’ perceptions of their level of disease knowledge. Results suggest that DTCA has no meaningful impact on perceived knowledge and intention to communicate with the physician. However, consumers’ perceived level of knowledge predicted intention to communicate with the physician. These findings have numerous implications for the pharmaceutical industry, regulators and patients alike.


identifier: Khokhar, Rashid Hussain  (2013) Quantifying the Costs and Benefits of Privacy-Preserving Health Data Publishing.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Cost-benefit analysis is required for making good business decision. This analysis is crucial in the field of privacy-preserving data publishing. In the economic trade of data privacy and utility, organization has the obligation to respect privacy of individuals. They intend to maximize the utility in order to earn revenue and also aim to achieve the acceptable level of privacy. In this thesis, we study the privacy and utility trade-offs and propose an analytical cost model which can help organization in better decision making subject to sharing customer data with another party. We examine the relevant cost factors associated with earning the revenue and the potential damage cost. Our proposed model is suitable for health information custodians (HICs) who share raw patient electronic health records (EHRs) with another health center or health insurer for research and commercial purposes. Health data in its raw form contain significant volume of sensitive data and sharing this data raises issues of privacy breach. Our analytical cost model could be utilized for nonperturbative and perturbative anonymization techniques for relational data. We show that our approach can achieve optimal value as per selection of each privacy model, namely, K-anonymity, LKC-privacy, and ϵ-differential privacy and their anonymization algorithm and level, through extensive experiments on a real-life dataset.


identifier: Al Muslmani, Majed  (2013) Rotordynamic Analysis of Tapered Composite Driveshaft Using Conventional and Hierarchical Finite Element Formulations.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In the aerospace and automotive applications driveshafts are manufactured using fiber reinforced composite materials. Compared to a conventional metallic driveshaft, a composite driveshaft gives higher natural frequencies and critical speeds, and lower vibration. The design of the driveshaft is dependent on its fundamental natural frequency and its first critical speed, and tapering the driveshaft can substantially improve the values of the natural frequency and first critical speed. In this thesis, the rotordynamic analysis of the tapered composite driveshaft is carried out using three finite element formulations: the conventional-Hermitian finite element formulation, the Lagrangian finite element formulation, and the hierarchical finite element formulation. These finite element models of the tapered composite shaft are based on Timoshenko beam theory, so transverse shear deformation is considered. In addition, the effects of rotary inertia, gyroscopic force, axial load, coupling due to the lamination of composite layers, and taper angle are incorporated in the conventional-Hermitian, the Lagrangian, and the hierarchical finite element models. The strain energy and the kinetic energy of the tapered composite shaft are obtained, and then the equations of motion are developed using Lagrange’s equations. Explicit expressions for the mass matrix, the gyroscopic matrix and the stiffness matrix of the tapered composite shaft are derived to perform rotordynamic analysis. The Lagrangian beam finite element formulation has three nodes and four degrees of freedom per each node while the conventional-Hermitian beam and the hierarchical beam finite element formulations have two nodes. The three finite element models are validated using the approximate solution based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method. A comprehensive parametric study is conducted based on the finite element models, which shows that tapering the composite driveshaft can increase considerably the natural frequency and first critical speed, and that they have nonlinear variation with the taper angle.


identifier: Neumark, Devora  (2013) Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis examines the relationship between forced dislocation and home beautification practices. It is the result of an interdisciplinary approach and an arts-based methodology. At the heart of this work lies a double-interrogation: how is the daily appreciation and manipulation of one’s belongings crucial to the experience of creating home anew following forced dislocation and in what ways do these home beautification practices and the repetition of stylized narratives—and other personal and cultural stories of home and its loss—contribute to the perpetuation of violence in places where home is contested?

Home’s properties, associations, and manifestations (or lack-there-of) in the political, cultural, emotional, and embodied realms are investigated using a wide array of materials, including the presentation and analysis of a series of live art events that I convened within the tenure of this cycle of research-creation, historical community pageants, personal stories of home and its loss, as well as salient aspects of housing theory and trauma studies.

This research-creation process leads towards the realisation that deliberate attention paid to the material and immaterial cultures of home may either help transform the traumas of displacement or create new ones. And that furthermore, the beautification of one’s home interior and surroundings is heavily involved in the sense-making process of the (un)making of home.


identifier: Pistilli, Elisa  (2013) Espousing Nuptial Theology in Christian Tradition: A Study of Marriage in Augustine, Calvin and Keller.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: For centuries Augustine’s thought has been influential in the development and understanding of Christian Doctrine. His treatise On the Good of Marriage (De Bono Coniugali) is one of the most authoritative treatises on marriage in Christianity. This study examines how Augustine’s view is manifested in John Calvin and Timothy Keller’s exegesis of the household code (haustafeln) in Ephesians 5:18-33. Therefore, the contents of Augustine’s treatise, Calvin’s sermons and commentaries on Ephesians as well as Keller’s book about marriage based on his exegesis of Ephesians are reviewed. I conclude that despite Augustine’s “goods” influence upon these two Protestant churchmen, their reading of Ephesians leads them to somewhat different conclusions about the chief purpose of marriage in Christian life.  While Augustine upholds the goodness of marriage for its role in keeping the couple faithful and legitimate childbearing, Calvin’s view is informed by his preoccupation with maintenance of social order; whereas Keller purports marriage as a journey on which spouses embark as mutual, self-sacrificing helpers, becoming their God-intended-self along the way.


identifier: Smith, Robert  (2013) Same-Sex Marriage and the Transcendental Engagement: A Method Centered Exploration of Contemporary Debate.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The following study offers a method-centered investigation of contemporary same-sex marriage discourse in the United States, with a view of identifying and addressing foundational conflicts. The research draws from the “transcendental method” proposed by theologian Bernard Lonergan, as well as discourse analyses and process tracing methodologies, in order to conduct a systematic evaluation of competing perspectives. While the study examines rhetorical argumentation, it is also concerned with elucidating the underlying heuristic approaches that support moral and political positioning. In doing so, the research reveals the intricate relationship between theological understandings, morality and political behavior.

In spite of a United States Supreme Court decision on the matter, it is argued that conflict is likely to persist until foundational dialectic is addressed—particularly with problems involving (1) religious discrimination, (2) moral relativity and falsifiability of claims, and (3) the assertion of religious liberty in justifying political behavior. In order to curtail ongoing conflict without settling doctrinal disputes, it is argued that distinctions need to be made between claims based on empirical-scientific reason, and claims based on belief rationale. Rather than a secular separation of reason and faith, the conflict underscores an evolving relationship between religion and politics, which is represented by a creative, postmodern movement away from exclusivist separatisms and unfalsifiable “belief” ideologies. This is resulting in changing “church-state” relationships and the creation of novel “faith” paradigms that increasingly call for openness to revision and the substantiation of both moral and political claims using empirical-scientific reasoning.


identifier: Sallam, Sara  (2013) 16-QAM Hierarchical Modulation Optimization in Relay Cooperative Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
16-QAM Hierarchical Modulation Optimization in Relay Cooperative Networks
Sara Sallam
Recently, the concept of cooperative networks has attracted special attention in the field of wireless communications. This is due to their ability in achieving diversity with no extra hardware cost. The main drawback that characterizes cooperative networks is that they require extra transmission time slots compared to the traditional non-cooperative networks. Several strategies have been proposed in order to mitigate this disadvantage. One of the most recently adopted techniques is the use of hierarchical modulation. Hierarchical modulation was originally used in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) applications. Lately, it has been applied in cooperative networks for its ability to transmit relative high data rate with acceptable performance.
In this thesis, the application of a 4/16 QAM hierarchical modulation in cooperative networks is examined. This study focuses on a downlink cellular network scenario, composed of a Base Station, a Relay and two destinations. The Base Station intends to transmit two different streams of data to these two destinations by concatenating the two streams and broadcasting the resulting sequence using a non-uniform 4/16 QAM hierarchical modulation. Unlike previous work, the main contribution in this thesis is the optimization of the 16QAM constellation’s parameters according to each user’s channel condition. In other words, this method gives each user’s data the priority it needs in order to be detected as correctly as possible at the destination. Explicit closed form expressions of Hierarchical modulation Bit Error Rate
in relay cooperative networks are derived. These BER expressions are used in order to select the constellation’s parameters that will achieve total minimum BER in coded and un-coded schemes. Results prove that the proposed method achieve noticeable improvement in both users performance compared to the use of uniform 16QAM constellation.


identifier: Liu, Huili  (2013) Some support properties for a class of Lambda-Fleming-Viot processes.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Using Donnelly and Kurtz's lookdown construction, we prove  that the  Lambda-Fleming-Viot process with underlying Brownian motion has a compact support  at any fixed time provided that the associated Lambda-coalescent comes down from infinity not too slowly. We also find both upper and lower bounds on Hausdorff dimension for the support at any fixed time. When the associated Lambda-coalescent has a nontrivial Kingman component, the Hausdorff dimension for the support is exactly two at any fixed time.

For such a Lambda-Fleming-Viot process, we further prove a one-sided modulus of continuity result  for the ancestry process recovered from Donnelly and Kurtz's lookdown construction. As an application, we can prove that its support process also has the one-sided modulus of continuity (with modulus function C\sqrt{tlog(1/t)}) at any fixed time.

In addition, we obtain that the support process is compact simultaneously at all positive times, and given the initial compactness, its range is uniformly compact over time interval [0,t) for all t>0.

Under a mild condition on the Lambda-coalescence rates, we also find a uniform upper bound on Hausdorff dimension for the support and an upper bound on Hausdorff dimension for the range.


identifier: Shareghi Nojehdeh, Ehsan  (2013) Feature Combination for Measuring Sentence Similarity.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Sentence similarity is one of the core elements of
Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks such as
Recognizing Textual Entailment, and Paraphrase Recognition.
Over the years, different systems have been proposed to
measure similarity between fragments of texts. In this
research, we propose a new two phase supervised learning
method which uses a combination of lexical features to
train a model for predicting similarity between sentences.
Each of these features, covers an aspect of the text on
implicit or explicit level. The two phase method uses all
combinations of the features in the feature space and trains
separate models based on each combination. Then it creates a
meta-feature space and trains a final model based on that.
The thesis contrasts existing approaches that use feature
selection, because it does not aim to find the best subset of
the possible features. We show that this two step process
significantly improves the results achieved by single-layer
standard learning methodology, and achieves the level of
performance that is comparable to the existing state-of-the-art
methods.


identifier: Borck, Anja  (2013) From Disposable Architecture to Industrial Monument – The Concept of Contemporary Industrial Heritage in Quebec and in Germany.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation stems from a simple question: how do western societies, shaped by continual industrialization, form a heritage concept when confronted with their contemporary industrial building stock? The purpose of comparing Quebec’s attitude towards its contemporary industrial heritage to that of Germany was done to understand what effects were at play that led to different outcomes even though a number of significant parameters seemed very similar in both locations. The first two chapters of this thesis will show that both Quebec and Germany look back to a century old tradition in commemorating historic industrial sites, but the motivation to do so was coming from very different directions. This indicated that the two countries started their involvement in industrial heritage protection from differing positions. In Germany, not only was legal preservation of industrial sites gaining continued strength after it was re-established in the 1970s, but in most of the German Länder preservation curators included industrial machinery (technical or mechanical equipment) both inside and outside of the buildings, when adding an industrial site to their heritage list. The case studies show that the country’s curators have integrated already contemporary industrial sites in their protection demands. They treat these sites as historic records that store valuable information in the material itself and should therefore be treated with care, specifically when economic considerations requested to convert these sites.
Quebec’s officials hesitated for a much longer time to include industrial sites in their legal monument protection program, and when they did, it was implemented in a more arbitrary fashion. Quebec listed more than anything else small rural workshops to represent the province’s contemporary industrial heritage. The more representative large industrial complexes of the post-World War Two era remained without recognition. These sites are increasingly coming to the end of their intended life. Even if they have outstanding historical, artistic or technical qualities, they face demolition long before any possible heritage value could be addressed. This will lead to a gap in Quebec’s historic narrative in the future. Germany seems, in regard to contemporary industrial heritage recognition, some steps ahead of Quebec. Can Germany therefore be an inspiration for Quebec? This dissertation shows that there is no easy answer to that question but that an analysis by the reader of this thesis helps to guide, in a fruitful direction, the much needed discussion in Quebec.


identifier: Kim, Hyun Young  (2013) Comparison of Mono-and Bifunctional Forms of Haemophilus influenzae TyrA Protein.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The TyrA protein family of dehydrogenases includes prephenate dehydrogenase (PD) which is dedicated to the synthesis of L-tyrosine (L-Tyr).  PD is a monofunctional enzyme in many bacteria, but in Haemophilus influenzae, PD is bifunctional and is fused to chorismate mutase (CM).  The present work is focused on understanding the importance of the CM domain in PD structure and stability in the presence of guanidine hydrochloride (Gdn-HCl) and variable temperatures (VT).  Towards this goal, both full-length (FL) protein and an engineered monofunctional variant (∆80 CM-PD) form of TyrA from H. influenzae were overexpressed and purified using nickel affinity chromatography.  Measurements by far-UV circular dichroism (CD) and steady-state fluorescence spectroscopies suggested that both proteins were completely unfolded by 4.2 M Gdn-HCl, although in the presence of 1.5 M to 2.4 M Gdn-HCl, the FL protein was more prone than ∆80 CM-PD to time-dependent protein precipitation.  Thermal denaturation studies using far-UV CD spectroscopy and intrinsic fluorescence measurements revealed similar melting temperature of ~52°C for both proteins.  VT- FTIR experiments showed that the temperature-mediated unfolding pathways of the two enzymes were very similar but not identical.  Additionally the active site ligands, NAD+ and L-Tyr, stabilized intramolecular β-sheets of both proteins by ~5ᵒC.  VT experiments also support the idea that H. influenzae TyrA proteins retain their dimeric nature during unfolding and highlight the importance of the dimer interface in TyrA structure and function.


identifier: Kakumani, Raja Sekhar  (2013) Analysis of Genomic and Proteomic Sequences using DSP Techniques.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Analysis of biological sequences by detecting the hidden periodicities and symbolic patterns has been an active area of research since couple of decades. The hidden periodic components and the patterns help locating the biologically relevant motifs such as protein coding regions (exons), CpG islands (CGI) and hot-spots that characterize various biological functions. The discrete nature of biological sequences has prompted many researchers to use digital signal processing (DSP) techniques for their analysis. After mapping the biological sequences to numerical sequences, various DSP techniques using digital filters, wavelets, neural networks, filter banks etc. have been developed to detect the hidden periodicities and recurring patterns in these sequences. This thesis attempts to develop effective DSP based techniques to solve some of the important problems in biological sequence analysis. Specifically, DSP techniques such as statistically optimal null filters (SONF), matched filters and neural networks based algorithms are developed for the analysis of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), ribonucleic acid (RNA) and protein sequences.

In the first part of this study, DNA sequences are investigated in order to identify the locations of CGIs and protein coding regions, i.e., exons. SONFs, which are known for their ability to efficiently estimate short-duration signals embedded in noise by combining the maximum signal-to-noise ratio and the least squares optimization criteria, are utilized to solve these problems. Basis sequences characterizing CGIs and exons are formulated to be used in SONF technique for solving the problems.

In the second part of this study, RNA sequences are analyzed to predict their secondary structures. For this purpose, matched filters based on 2-dimensional convolution are developed to identify the locations of stem and loop patterns in the RNA secondary structure. The knowledge of the stem and loop patterns thus obtained are then used to predict the presence of pseudoknot, leading to the determination of the entire RNA secondary structure.

Finally, in the third part of this thesis, protein sequences are analyzed to solve the problems of predicting protein secondary structure and identifying the locations of hot-spots. For predicting the protein secondary structure a two-stage neural network scheme is developed, whereas for predicting the locations of hot-spots an SONF based approach is proposed. Hot-spots in proteins exhibit a characteristic frequency corresponding to their biological function. A basis function is formulated based on this characteristic frequency to be used in SONFs to detect the locations of hot-spots belonging to the corresponding functional group.

Extensive experiments are performed throughout the thesis to demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the various schemes and techniques developed in this investigation. The performance of the proposed techniques is compared with that of the previously reported techniques for the analysis of biological sequences. For this purpose, the results obtained are validated using databases containing with known annotations. It is shown that the proposed schemes result in performance superior to those of some of the existing techniques.


identifier: Wang, Jia Ning  (2013) Context-aware service discovery and service composition over smart phones.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
One of the advantages of smart phones is the ubiquity of sensing and computing power. The smart phone consists of a mobile computing platform. The Web browsers installed on the platform make it possible to surf the Internet through mobile broadband and Wi-Fi. An important aspect of smart phones is that they have application programming interfaces, which is able to take advantage of third-party applications. Diﬀerent from any desktop applications, the smart phone applications could be highly adaptive to contexts, i.e. according to context information, e.g. location, identity, and time, the applications are tuned to satisfy particular requirements in the contexts. On the other sense, service composition is a way to plan a  business process to fulﬁll business goals that cannot be achieved by individual business services. Service composition can be modeled as a AI planning problem. Based on the initial context and the goal context, planning-based service composition launches a goal-oriented composition procedure to generate a plan. Service composition over smart phones can be context-awareness. In this thesis, we want to investigate context based service discovery and service composition over smart phones. We propose a constraint-based context model. We include non-electronic services into service composition, which extends the scope of services considered in existing service composition research. Moreover, our composition algorithm suits mobile computation power because the service composition can adjust to the computation power of mobile phones easily. As
a motivating example, we build an entertainment planner over an Android phone.


identifier: Tartal, Mustafa Nihat  (2013) PossDB: An Uncertainty Data Management System Based on Conditional Tables.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Due to the ever increasing importance of the Internet, interoperability of heterogeneous data sources is as well of ever increasing importance.
Interoperability could be achieved for instance through data integration and data exchange. Common to both approaches is the need for the database management system to be able to store and query incomplete databases. In this thesis we present PossDB, a database management system capable of storing and querying incomplete databases.
The system is a wrapper over PostgreSQL, and the query language is an extension of a subset of standard SQL. Our experimental results show that our system scales well, actually better than comparable systems.


identifier: Jean, Amélie D.L.  (2013) Maternal Touch and Infants’ Self-Regulatory Behaviors during Face-to-Face Still-Face and Modified Still-Face Interactions.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Touch serves as one of the primary means of external emotion regulation for infants. Despite the important role for touch in infants’ emotion regulation, research examining its relationship to infants’ self-regulatory behaviors is scant. Understanding the relationship between internal and external means of regulation, such as touch, is necessary given the pivotal roles caregivers play in infant emotion regulation.
The current dissertation assessed how maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors contribute to infants’ emotion regulation in two studies. Study 1a examined maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors in full-term and very-low-birth-weight preterm infant-mother dyads during a Still-Face (SF) procedure. Across periods, the functions of touch used by mothers varied while infants increased their use of self-regulatory behaviors during the SF period. Full-term infants displayed more self-comfort regulatory behaviors following the SF period. Furthermore, functions of maternal touch were associated with infants’ self-regulatory behaviors. Study 1b examined the association between maternal nurturing touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors, and infants’ smiling and distress level. Mothers of full-term infants were found to increase their use of nurturing touch when their infants exhibited distress. Furthermore, maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors were associated with infants’ smiling.
Study 2 investigated maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors during a modified Still-Face with Touch (SF+T) procedure consisting of one Normal period followed by three SF+T periods. Maternal touch modulated infants’ responses to the SF and their reliance on their own regulatory behaviors. Although mothers varied the functions of touch they used across the periods, infants used similar amounts of self-regulatory behaviors. Finally, maternal touch and infants’ self-regulatory behaviors were temporally organized with infants’ affect and attention.
Results from these studies highlight the role of maternal touch as a regulatory strategy and mothers’ ability to use only one modality of communication, touch, to regulate their infants’ affect and attention. Results also extend our knowledge of infants’ emotion regulation by documenting the central roles that both mothers and infants play. Finally, results offer insight on the effect of prematurity on infants’ self-regulatory abilities and on the quality of maternal touch.


identifier: Aslani, Mina  (2013) Design and Evaluation of Algorithms for Parallel Classification of Ontologies.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Description Logics are a family of knowledge representation formalisms with formal semantics. In recent years, DLs have influenced the design and standardization of the Web Ontology Language OWL. The acceptance of OWL as a web standard has promoted the widespread utilization of DL ontologies on the web. One of the most frequently used inference services of description logic reasoners classifies all named classes of OWL ontologies into a subsumption hierarchy. Due to emerging OWL ontologies from the web community consisting of up to hundreds of thousand of named classes and the increasing availability of multi-processor and multi- or many-core computers, the need for parallelizing description logic inference services to achieve a better scalability is expected.

The contribution of this thesis has two aspects. On a theoretical level, it first presents algorithms to construct a TBox in parallel, which are independent of a particular DL logic, however they sacrifice completeness. Then, a sound and complete algorithm for TBox classification in parallel is presented. In this algorithm all the subsumption relationships between concepts of a partition assigned to a single thread are found correctly, in other words, correctness of the TBox subsumption hierarchy is guaranteed. Thereafter, we provide an extension of the sound and complete algorithm which is used to handle TBox classification concurrently and more efficiently. This thesis also describes an optimization technique suitable for better partitioning the list of concepts to be inserted into the TBox.

On a practical level, a running prototype, Parallel TBox Classifier was implemented for each generation of the classifier based on the above theoretical foundations, respectively. The Parallel TBox Classifier  is used to evaluate the practical merit of the proposed algorithms as well as the effectiveness of the designed optimizations against existing state-of-the-art benchmarks. The empirical results illustrate that Parallel TBox Classifier outperforms the Sequential TBox Classifier on real world ontologies with a linear or superlinear speedup factor. Parallel TBox Classifier can form a basis to develop more efficient parallel classification techniques for real world ontologies with different sizes and DL complexities.


identifier: Chatterjee, Arghya Kamal  (2013) Seismic response analysis of steel plate shear wall systems using detailed and simplified models.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Ductile Steel Plate Shear Walls (SPSWs) have been accepted widely as a very effective lateral load resisting system. However, their use in retrofit works is very limited because of the design inefficiency arising from the use of thicker than required commercially available infill plates. Consequently the ductility demand for the surrounding framing members is higher than required. SPSWs utilizing light-gauge cold-formed infill plates could be a viable alternative for rehabilitation of seismically deficient buildings. This thesis presents a numerical study using finite element models on the behavior of unstiffened light-gauge steel plate shear walls with welded infill plate connection. The detailed finite element models include both material and geometric non-linearity. This research describes in detail the validation of the key finite element models by comparing the results with that from the available experimental studies. Excellent correlation between the test results and the finite element analysis results has been achieved.

For seismic performance evaluation of a multi-storey building with SPSWs, detailed finite element models or a strip model can be used to represent the SPSW components. However, development and analysis of such models often require undesirable effort and excess time for high-to-medium rise buildings. A simplified model is developed in this research to study the behavior of SPSW system. In the simplified model, discrete elements are used for the framing members and the behavior of the infill plate is represented by equivalent diagonal bracing members. The simplified model, Equivalent Braced Model, is developed through repeated static and dynamic validations with experiment and detailed finite element models. The proposed Equivalent Braced Model would facilitate a simplification to the structural modeling of large buildings with SPSWs in order to evaluate the seismic performance using regular structural analysis tools and can prove to be a potential aid in performance-based seismic design of SPSW buildings. Finally, the developed equivalent braced model and the detailed finite element model are used to analyze three multi-storey light-gauge SPSWs (four-storey, six-storey and ten-storey) designed according to the capacity design approach.


identifier: McGuire, Mark Patrick  (2013) From the City to the Mountain and Back Again: Situating Contemporary Shugendô ("Japanese mountain asceticism") in Japanese Social and Religious Life.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis examines mountain ascetic training practices in Japan known as Shugendô (The Way to Acquire Power) from the 1980s to the present. Focus is given to the dynamic interplay between two complementary movements: 1) the creative process whereby charismatic, media-savvy priests in the Kii Peninsula (south of Kyoto) have re-invented traditional practices and training spaces to attract and satisfy the needs of diverse urban lay practitioners, and 2) the myriad ways diverse urban ascetic householders integrate lessons learned from mountain austerities in their daily lives in Tokyo and Osaka. This thesis argues that the creation of condensed mountain entry rituals such as the overnight Lotus Ascent of Mount Ômine, a successful campaign to designate sacred training grounds in the Kii Peninsulaa UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape and creation of an “eco-pilgrimage” in Kumano are best understood as creative strategies by Shugendô priests to maintain financial solvency, relevancy and market share while providing direct access to the transcendent in a competitive and uncertain time.

Though Shugendô priests and UNESCO designation served as gateways into this research, the experiences of urban lay ascetics are emphasized throughout. Two questions
animate the thesis: Why does rebirth during a grueling, twenty-six kilometer overnight mountain ascent imagined as ritual death and re-entry into the Tantric Womb become necessary?  How might urban ascetics' initial motivations and subsequent integration of mountain learning resonate with broader concerns about employment, environment, family, health and well-being, rising suicide rate, memory and commemoration during the recessionary and zero-growth period known as Japan's "Lost Decade(s)” (1990s - present)?

Reflections upon the attempt to represent this place and these practices in an accessible documentary film will be one element of a self-reflexive, collaborative and participatory research methodology informed by participant-observer fieldwork, interviews, focus groups and historiographical examination of the relevant primary, secondary and theoretical works.


identifier: Newman, Anne  (2013) A comparison of three intervention methods for women with breast cancer-related lymphedema: a pilot study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The incidence of breast cancer related lymphedema (BCRL) is estimated to be at 30% for women who undergo breast cancer treatment, thus creating the need for effective treatment interventions. This thesis will compare the immediate and short-term effects of three different interventions for BCRL (e.g., Manual Lymphatic Drainage (MLD), Aqua Lymphatic Therapy (ALT), and a Casley-Smith based exercise routine (CSER)) and to record any changes in physical symptoms after each intervention. Sixteen women between the ages of 35 and 75 with Stage II lymphedema were recruited. Each intervention was completed once by each participant and lasted approximately 45 minutes. Bilateral limb measurements to estimate changes in volume were performed using bio-impedance spectroscopy and circumferential arm measures. The Lymphedema Breast Cancer Questionnaire was utilized to subjectively gauge any change in symptoms. The main findings were: ALT was the only intervention that showed a significant (p≤0.05) decrease in extracellular fluid (ECF) from baseline to 20-24hrs post-intervention. When compared to the MLD, the ALT intervention demonstrated a 3.31% greater (p=0.038) reduction in ECF volume over 24hrs. With respect to circumferential arm measurements, there was a significant difference (p=0.021) in the percentage change between ALT and MLD at 10 min post intervention. No other circumferential arm measurement differences exist between ALT vs CSER or MLD vs CSER. There were no changes or any worsening symptoms following any interventions. Conclusion: In the immediate to short-term post-intervention period, ALT appears to be the most effective intervention in terms of reducing BCRL.


identifier: Theoret, Victoria C.  (2013) Understanding the Volunteer Experience: A Case Study of AIDS Community Care Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This qualitative case study examined the potential of transformational learning
through Volunteering at a Montreal based HIV/AIDS organization, Aids Community
Care Montreal (ACCM). Five volunteers agreed to participate in the project and they
were interviewed about their experiences at ACCM, HIV/AIDS education as well as their
judgement about the impact of volunteering in their lives. The author also underwent
training as a volunteer in the same organization and this experience provided another lens
in analyzing the interview results.
Through open ended interviews, five participants narrated the transformative
impact of learning about HIV/AIDS and working in the community centre. The
interviews were taped and transcribed and the analysis followed the ten steps of
transformative learning outlined by Mezirow. The participants acknowledged that their
experience has led them to be more proactive with safe sexual practices, as well as
encouraging others to learn about safe sex practices and the realization that HIV is no
longer a death sentence necessarily. The volunteer participants have also begun trying to
reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS beginning with their immediate social
circles and beyond.
The participants also expressed the importance of emotional connections and the
need for feeling useful in order to continue with their volunteer time investment. Without
feeling needed and useful, there is a certain level of dissatisfaction and while ideas and
perceptions on HIV/AIDS remain transformed, the motivation to continue working with
the organizations wanes.
This project is a first building block towards further study of the impact of
volunteering on transformational learning and whether or not the effects of similar
experiences can be long-lasting.


identifier: Krishna Murthy Mohan, Sundar Ram  (2012) Estimation of Seismic response of buildings and the effect of different scaling methods for ground motion.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The Seismic design code of Canada is changing rapidly to accommodate the needs of the future generation of buildings for management of earthquake hazard mitigation. In this context the recent advancement in Earthquake Technology and Structural Engineering has emphasized on the need for a better methodology and in-depth investigation into the area of structural performance evaluation in order to ensure that structures designed for the areas of high and moderate seismic hazard to the expected standards and meet the objective of life safety and collapse prevention in a real life scenario. In order to ensure the above performance objectives for a building structure, it is necessary to estimate its capacity with respect to the demand, and the dynamic response corresponding to the design levels of earthquakes. The research carried out here aims to investigate: (i) the earthquake demand and capacity profiles of a set of set of moment frame buildings designed according to the latest version of the National Building Code of Canada, and (ii) the effect of scaling and spectral matching techniques commonly applied to ground motions on the seismic demand parameters determined using the dynamic time history analysis. A set of buildings with steel moment resisting frames of 5, 10, 15, 20 stories in height and located in Vancouver area of Canada have been considered in this study. An extensive review has been conducted to determine the existing methods for performance-based design and the techniques available to selecting and scaling suite of earthquake records to perform a fully non-linear dynamic analysis in time domain. Based on that, a range of scaling techniques including linear scaling techniques, and spectral matching technique have been considered for an ensemble of recorded ground motion time histories. In addition a set of artificially generated spectrum-compatible earthquake records are also considered. The static pushover analysis has been carried out and the corresponding capacity curves have been obtained and interpreted with commonly used performance-based design methods. It is observed that all the methods considered here confirm that the existing design based on the code procedure is adequate and conservative. The pushover curves are also compared to the results obtained from the Time history analysis to determine the performance achievements of the buildings. The interstory drift obtained from the time history analysis using different scaling methods show a uniform and consistent pattern of deformation in low rise to medium rise frames whereas dispersion greater dispersion of the results has been observed in tall buildings. Other response quantities such as the lateral drift, base shear and bending moment show similar patterns. Based on the results from the research it is suggested to use the artificial records if site specific real ground motion records are unavailable. The scope for further research lies in exploring ways to the possibility of new scaling techniques that can control the dispersion in the response more effectively.


identifier: Ahmed, Mohamed Ibrahim Elgeuchy M. S.  (2013) Bending behaviour of thick-walled composite tubes.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This research presents the bending behavior of thick-walled composite tubes addressing the bending stiffness property theoretically and experimentally, and investigating the failure behavior experimentally. A theoretical formulation, based on 3D elasticity theory, is adopted for calculating the bending stiffness. An interesting bending stiffness behavior is brought up for thick-walled composite tubes made of two thick layers of [θ/-θ] stacking sequence. It is found that the bending stiffness value is decreasing when the wall thickness exceeds a specific value, for tubes have equal layers thickness and constant outer diameter (Do). A new parameter is defined from the used bending stiffness formulation, for each layer in the composite tube, denoted as “Eeff,n”, the effective extensional stiffness of the composite layer “n”. This new parameter represents the layer mechanical properties contribution in its bending stiffness, involving the effects of layer geometry and its interaction with adjacent layers in the tube. A novel parametric study is carried out using “Eeff,n” and it is found that the interaction effect improves highly the bending stiffness property. The responsible layer properties that control the interaction effect are specified and the improvement mechanism for the bending stiffness property is explained. Also the effective layer geometric parameters are specified and their role in the discovered bending stiffness behavior is investigated.
Making use of the obtained results, the bending stiffness of a tube made of two thick layers of equal thickness and [θ/-θ] stacking sequence is compared to another tube made of repeated units of [θ/-θ] stacking sequence within the tube wall thickness “Multi-sublaminates configuration”. It is found that the second tube has higher bending stiffness value, noting that the two tubes have the same geometry
iv
and made of the same composite material. This is because the configuration of the second tube permits higher interaction effect between tube layers and cancels the negative effect of geometric parameters. According to that a simple and accurate equation is derived for designing the bending stiffness of multi-sublaminates composite tubes including only the interaction effects.
In order to validate the superiority of the bending stiffness of multi-sublaminates composite tubes over tubes made of one sublaminate of thick layers, two thick-walled thermoplastic composite tubes are manufactured using automated fiber placement technique (AFP) and tested using a pure bending test setup. For the manufacturing process, a study is carried out to specify the process parameters for an AFP-made thermoplastic composite tube with acceptable quality. It is found that increasing the number of compaction passes improves the intimate contact between the composite layers and reduces the voids content. For the testing process, an adaptor ring is designed to permit fixing of the manufactured specimen in the pure bending test setup and to allow smooth conveying for the pure bending loading to the tested specimen. The pure bending test setup is shown to be a superior alternative test compared to the conventional 3-point and 4-point bending tests in testing composite tubes. The experimental results validate the obtained theoretical values and the used bending stiffness formulas.
Lastly, the failure behavior of multi-sublaminates thick-walled composite tube is investigated according to the bending test results. The mode of failure of the tube under bending is due to delamination of the outer layers. Also, it is found that thick-walled composite tubes failed safely compared to thin-walled composite tubes.


identifier: Burkholder, Casey M.  (2013) Exploring the Education of Hong Kong's Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) Secondary Students.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Hong Kong’s educational landscape has been shifting to include Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) students in public and government subsidized schools. Policies surrounding language of instruction, curricula and literacy practices have involved a negotiation of power, space, and belonging for Hong Kong’s NCS ethnic minority population. The thesis explores how secondary school is experienced by NCS students, facilitated by the teachers of NCS students, and designed by policy makers through the discourse of Hong Kong’s Education Bureau (EDB). By obtaining a post-structuralist theoretical framework (Foucault, 1980; Bourdieu, 1989, 1991; Bell & Russell, 2000; Robinson-Pant, 2001), and through in-depth interviews, and an analysis of the EDB’s printed materials this study suggests that 1) Non-Chinese Speaking students’ experiences of school do not align with the discourse of Hong Kong’s Education Bureau, and 2) that the experience of the category of “Non-Chinese Speaking” is problematic as it refers to much more than students’ Chinese language skills.  The findings from this study suggest that the current practice of schooling NCS students requires a rethink, as the experience of the category of “Non-Chinese Speaking” leads students to develop ideas about their exclusion from the community, which directly impacts their ideas about what it means to be a citizen of Hong Kong.


identifier: Nakhle, Wissam  (2013) On the Effect of Variable Opening Geometries, and Operating Conditions on High Pressure Hydrogen Releases: Ignition Risks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Understanding and predicting the behavior of pressurized hydrogen when released into air is needed for the safe utilization of hydrogen. Analysis based on Computational Fluid Dynamics, can be used to accurately study this flow and anticipate its consequence without performing expensive experimental testing. Simulation of sudden release of highly under-expanded hydrogen jet and detecting auto-ignition is the focus of this work. The present thesis addresses ignition risks associated with the diffusion-expansion of hydrogen into ambient air, through a series of case studies, covering several types of exit geometries: fixed circular, and fixed elliptic openings, as well as expanding circular geometries, under different pressure conditions, to describe the properties that affect ignition and to determine when ignition has occurred. To be more specific this research aims at capturing all the features of the flow required, to examine where and when the probability of ignition exists, and to determine the effect of changing the opening geometry on ignition risks.


identifier: Bossa, Roberto  (2013) The Busan International Film Festival as a Field-Configuring Event: How a festival redefined Korea's film culture both locally and globally.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Since the 1990s, no film culture has reached a higher level of international as well as national success than the South Korean film industry. Shifting from an obscure national film culture to an Asian dynamo in a timespan of only 20 years, the expansion and development of the country’s film industry allowed Korea to develop into the top cultural hub in Asia. This shift was possible thanks to various state institutions who encouraged and supported new production practices through various legislation. In 1996, taking advantage of the resurgence and development of the Korean film industry, various film industry members, in participation with municipal, provincial and state organizations, organized the first international film festival in Korea’s history, held in the southern port-city of Busan. This event would eventually play a crucial role in the success of Korean films both locally and on the global level. As a ‘Field-Configuring Event’, the Busan International Film Festival would be dedicated to the promotion, support, funding and development of the Korean film industry. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, BIFF has played a pivotal role in the success of Korean motion pictures across the globe, most notably in various A-list international film festivals, and at home, where market shares have soared to over 80% in 2013.


identifier: Mehemed, Ali Moftah Ali  (2013) Cooperative Diversity in CDMA over Nakagami−m Fading Channels.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Spatial diversity can be employed by sending copies of the transmitted signal using
multiple antennas at the transmitter/receiver, as implemented in multiple-input multipleoutput
(MIMO) systems. Spatial receive diversity has already been used in many applications
with centralized systems where base station receivers are equipped with multiple
antennas. However, due to the power constraints and the small size of the mobile terminal,
it may not be feasible to deploy multiple transmit antennas. User cooperation
diversity, a new form of space diversity, has been developed to address these limitations.
Recently, user cooperative diversity has gained more attention as a less complex alternative
to centralized MIMO wireless systems. It revealed the ability to improve wireless
communications through reliable reception.
One common network of the user cooperation diversity is the direct sequence code
division multiple access (DS-CDMA) in which the Rayleigh fading channels are adopted
and the orthogonality between users is assumed. The Rayleigh fading channels are unrealistic
since they cannot represent the statistical characteristics of the complex indoor
environments. On the other hand, Nakagami-m fading model is well known as a generalized
distribution, where many fading environments can be modeled. It can be used to
model fading conditions ranging from severe, light to no fading, by changing its fading parameter m.
The bit-error-rate (BER) and outage probability of uplink cooperative DS-CDMA over
Nakagami-m has not been addressed in the literature. Thus, in this thesis, the performance
of both decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative
asynchronous DS-CDMA system over Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. The
Rake receiver is used to exploit the advantages of multipath propagation. Besides, multiuser
detection (MUD) is used to mitigate the effect of multiple-access interference (MAI).
We show that our proposed multi-user system achieves the full system diversity gain.
The first part of the thesis introduces a new closed-form expression for the outage
probability and the error probability of the DF cooperative DS-CDMA over asynchronous
transmission over independent non-identical Nakagami-m fading channels. The underlying
system employs MUD such as minimum mean square error (MMSE) and decorrelator
detector (DD) to achieve the full diversity. The aforementioned closed-form expression
is obtained through the moment generating function (MGF) for the total signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) at the base station where the cumulative density function (CDF) is obtained.
Furthermore, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the system at high SNR to calculate
the achievable diversity gain. The results demonstrate that the system diversity gain
is fulfilled when MUD is used to mitigate the effect of MAI.
In the second part of the thesis, we study the performance of cooperative CDMA
system using AF relaying over independent non-identical distribution (i.n.i) Nakagami-m
fading channels. Using the MGF of the total SNR at the base station, we derive the outage
probability of the system. This enables us to derive the asymptotic outage probability for
any arbitrary value of the fading parameter m.
The last part of the thesis investigates the optimum power allocation and optimum
relay location in AF cooperative CDMA systems over i.n.i Nakagami-m fading channels.
Moreover, we introduce the joint optimization of both power allocation and relay location
under the transmit power constraint to minimize the outage probability of the system.
The joint optimization of both power allocation and relay location is used to minimize
the outage performance of the system, thereby achieving full diversity gain.


identifier: Salajegheh, Pooya  (2013) Vibrations of Thickness-and-width Tapered Laminated Composite Beams with Rigid and Elastic Supports.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Variable-width variable-thickness laminated composite beams provide stiffness-tailoring and mass-tailoring design capabilities. They are increasingly and widely being used in engineering applications including robotic manipulators, aircraft wings, space structures, helicopter blades and yokes, turbine blades, and civil infrastructure. These structures are subjected to time-varying loadings. In the present work, the free and the forced vibration response of symmetric linear-thickness-and-width-tapered laminated composite beams are considered. Considering a variety of tapered configurations according to different types of plies drop-off configurations, both conventional and advanced finite element formulations are developed based on the Kirchhoff and cylindrical laminated beam bending theories. Natural frequencies, mode shapes and forced vibration response of different types of internally-tapered composite beams are determined. Rigid and elastic supports are considered for the free vibration response of the beams. Rigid supports are considered for the forced vibration response of the beams. Comparison of the finite element solution with the Rayleigh-Ritz solution is performed. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of taper configurations, thickness-tapering angle, width-ratios, damping and boundary conditions on the free and forced vibration response of the variable-thickness variable-width laminated composite beams.


identifier: Mofidpoor, Mahsa  (2013) Index-based Join Operations in Hive.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Index-based Join Operations in Hive

abstract:
ABSTRACT
INDEX-BASED JOIN OPERATIONS IN HIVE
MAHSA MOFIDPOOR
The exponential growth of data being generated, manipulated, analyzed, and archived nowadays introduces new challenges and opportunities for dealing with the so called big data. Hive is a batch-oriented big data software, well suited for query processing and data analysis. Originally developed by Facebook in 2009 and now under the Apache Software Foundation, Hive is gaining popularity for its SQL like query language HiveQL and for supporting majority of the SQL operations in relational database management systems (RDBMS). Being the expensive operation in RDBMS, join has been the focus of many query optimization techniques to improve performance of database systems. We investigate such techniques for join operations in Hive and develop an index-based join algorithm for queries in HiveQL. When a query requires only a small subset of data selected by a predicate in the WHERE clause, the brute-force method which scans the entire tables results in poor performance for redundant disk I/Os, and irrelevant maps initiation in case the query is issued using the mapreduce.
In this work, we implement the proposed index-based technique and integrate it in Hive. To add our extension, we obtain Hive architecture details by reverse engineering the code and map our design to the conceptual optimization flow.To evaluate the performance, after setting up the environment, we run relevant test queries on datasets generated using the industry standard benchmark, TPC-H. Our results indicate significant performance gain over relatively large data or highly selective queries.