identifier: Hajiloo, Amir  (2016) Robust and Multi-Objective Model Predictive Control Design for Nonlinear Systems.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The multi-objective trade-off paradigm has become a very valuable design tool in engineering problems that have conflicting objectives. Recently, many control designers have worked on the design methods which satisfy multiple design specifications called multi-objective control design. However,the main challenge posed for the MPC design lies in the  high computation load preventing its application to the fast dynamic system control in real-time. To meet this challenge, this thesis has proposed several methods covering nonlinear system modeling, on-line MPC design and multi-objective optimization. First, the thesis has proposed a robust MPC to control the shimmy vibration of the landing gear with probabilistic uncertainty. Then, an on-line MPC method has been proposed for image-based visual servoing control of a 6 DOF Denso robot. Finally, a multi-objective MPC has been introduced to allow the designers consider multiple objectives in MPC design.

In this thesis, Tensor Product (TP) model transformation as a powerful tool in the modeling of the complex nonlinear systems is used to find the linear parameter-varying (LPV) models of the nonlinear systems. Higher-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) technique is used to obtain a minimal order of the model tensor. Furthermore, to design a robust MPC for nonlinear systems in the presence of uncertainties which degrades the system performance and can lead to instability, we consider the parameters of the nonlinear systems with probabilistic uncertainties in the modeling using TP transformation.  In this thesis, a computationally efficient methods for MPC design of image-based visual servoing, i.e. a fast dynamic system has been proposed. The controller is designed considering the robotic visual servoing system's input and output constraints, such as robot physical limitations and visibility constraints.

The main contributions of this thesis are: (i) design MPC for nonlinear systems with probabilistic uncertainties that guarantees robust stability and performance of the systems; (ii) develop a real-time MPC method for a fast dynamical system; (iii) to propose a new multi-objective MPC for nonlinear systems using game theory.  A diverse range of systems with nonlinearities and uncertainties including landing gear system, 6 DOF Denso robot are studied in this thesis. The simulation and real-time experimental results are presented and discussed in this thesis to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.


identifier: Khan, Mehran N. A. H  (2015) Monitoring Service Level Workload of Highly Available Applications.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: Elasticity is a key feature of cloud computation and is a major contributor to its popularity. Elasticity is defined as automatic provisioning/de-provisioning of resources to match workload changes over time. Service High Availability (HA) is among one of cloud computing’s big challenges. High Availability (HA) is defined as providing a minimum of 99.999% service availability. Maintaining service HA while scaling in/out is even more challenging. Recently, an architecture has been proposed for managing HA. Following the proposed architecture, an Elasticity Engine has been introduced that is capable of managing resources based on application level provisioning or de-provisioning alerts while preserving HA. In contrast to the prevailing monitoring solutions where Virtual Machine (VM) level workload is provided, the Elasticity Engine requires a monitoring solution that monitors service-level workload and triggers alerts accordingly. In this thesis, we propose an approach and an architecture for the monitoring of HA applications at the service level. Accordingly, the monitoring approach starts with monitoring the application components in traditional manner. Workload of the components are mapped to each component’s respective service assignment. The resource usages of all the components providing services is aggregated and mapped to the service level workload using a distributed client-server architecture. This approach allows for distinguishing between the different HA states, active or standby that a component can be assigned at runtime and it (the approach) adapts to the situations where switchovers happen under the control of the SA Forum middleware due to failures for example. The proposed monitoring architecture has been implemented and integrated with the Elasticity Engine to test its effectiveness and overhead. It has been shown that the implemented and integrated prototypes achieve elasticity in a cluster based on service level workload while keeping the monitoring overhead within 5% of its total resource.


identifier: Chen, Xin  (2015) A Re-Investigation of Gender Differences in Loyalty to Service Providers.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The purpose of this study is to further explore gender differences in consumer loyalty to service providers. Melnyk et al. (2009) drew on work on self-construal to suggest that female consumers are more loyal to individual service providers while male consumers are more loyal to service companies. In this thesis, we seek to test the robustness of their results, explore alternative potential explanations, and obtain a better understanding of the boundary conditions within which the effects can be expected to operate. Thus, we seek to replicate and extend the work done by Melnyk et al. (2009) while incorporating other theoretical perspectives and including control variables. Overall, the results of two studies did not support the finding of Melnyk et al. (2009) with regard to the effect of gender differences in consumer loyalty, possibly due to the lack of consistent differences in self-construal between men and women. Interestingly, differences in self-construal among consumers were found to have a direct effect on loyalty to service providers, such that consumers higher on relational interdependence showed greater loyalty to service employees while consumers higher on collective interdependence displayed greater loyalty to service companies. Additional analyses found that the level of consumer involvement, the type of service relationship, and perceived relational benefits all affected consumer loyalty. These findings should contribute to the literature in services marketing on consumer loyalty toward service providers, and guide practitioners in their efforts to increase loyalty.


identifier: Kaur, Jasneet  (2016) Investigating Barriers in Green Supply Chain Management.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
Investigating Barriers to Green Supply Chain Management

Jasneet Kaur

Green supply chain management has emerged as a trending topic of discussion for organizations thriving for enhanced competitive advantages, increased customer satisfaction, improved brand image, and of course minimum adverse impacts on the environment. It differs from traditional supply chain management in terms of consideration of environmental impacts of all the processes involved in a typical supply chain and intends to minimize their negative consequences. It involves going green from start to the end of the supply chain i.e. green design, green purchasing, green manufacturing, green packaging, green logistics, and green marketing. On one side, pressure from regulatory authorities, customer expectations, financial benefits, community groups, and media involvement act as potential drivers for adoption of green supply chain practices, there is still a long way to go considering the larger number of barriers currently being faced by organizations involved in corporate sustainability initiatives.
In this thesis, we present a DEMATEL based approach for investigating barriers in green supply chain management. The preliminary list of barriers is extracted from the literature review and classified into six categories namely Multiple M’s, Supply Chain Processes, Stakeholders of Supply Chain, Sustainability Area, Organizational Hierarchy, and Others. Expert opinions are solicited to collect data on the identified barriers and DEMATEL is applied to identify the relationship between the barriers and their sub-categories.
The results of our study show that complexity of design to reuse/recycle products, lack of technical expertise, difficulty in identifying environmental opportunities, lack of training, lack of awareness on the environmental impacts of business, lack of corporate social responsibility, complexity in identifying third parties to recollect used products and lack of R&D capability on GSCM practices are the prominent barriers. Actions are therefore required by business organizations interested in corporate sustainability initiatives to eliminate or minimize the effect of these barriers.
Keywords: Green supply chain management, Barrier classification, DEMATEL, Pareto analysis


identifier: Bernos, Thaïs  (2016) Relationship between demographic and genetic population size and role of the environment in a stream fish.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: As wild populations become increasingly small and vulnerable, conservation managers typically must make quick decisions based on limited resources. Two crucial parameters affecting management decisions are the census population size (N) and the effective number of breeders (Nb).  However, measuring N and Nb is often difficult, making it of interest to generalize one from the other. We assessed the relationship between N and Nb from 2008-2015 in twelve brook trout populations varying greatly in N (49-10032) and Nb (3-567). Most of the variability in Nb could be explained by N (R2m=0.54, p<0.001) or stream length (R2m=0.44, p<0.001) alone. The ratio Nb/N increased at small N or following an annual decrease in N (R2=0.49, p<0.01), suggesting density-dependent constraints on Nb/N (genetic compensation). We did not find any evidence for consistent differences invariability in Nb and/or Nb/N between small and large populations; however, small populations had more varying temporal variability in Nb/N ratios than large populations. Nb and Nb/N were respectively 2.5-fold and 2.3-fold more variable among populations than temporally within populations. Collectively, our results suggest that conservation resources could be saved by using N or Nb to infer the other to assess relative population sizes. However, using one variable to infer the other to monitor trends within populations is less recommended, perhaps even less so in small populations given their less predictable Nb vs. N dynamics.


identifier: Fu, Yu  (2016) New Development on Sense and Avoid Strategies for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can carry out more complex civilian and military applications with less cost and more flexibility in comparison of manned aircraft. Mid-air collision thus becomes profoundly important considering the safe operation of air transportation systems, when UAVs are increasingly used more with various applications and share the same airspace with manned air vehicles. To ensure safe flights, UAVs have to configure Sense and Avoid (S&A) systems performing necessary maneuvers to avoid collisions. After analyzing the manner of S&A system, avoidance strategies based on a subset of possible collision scenarios are proposed in this thesis. 1) To avoid a face-to-face intruder, a feasible trajectory is generated by differential geometric guidance, where the constraints of UAV dynamics are considered. 2) The Biogeography Based Optimization (BBO) approach
is exploited to generate an optimal trajectory to avoid multiple intruders’ threats in the landing phase. 3) By formulating the collision avoidance problem within a Markov Decision Process (MDP) framework, a desired trajectory is produced to avoid multiple intruders in the 2D plane. 4) MDP optimization method is extended to address the problem of optimal 3D conflict resolution involving multiple aircraft. 5) Considering that the safety of UAVs is directly related to the dynamic constraints, the differential flatness technique is developed to smoothen the optimal trajectory. 6) Energy based controller is designed such that the UAV is capable of following the generated trajectory.


identifier: Shahkar, Arash  (2016) On Matching Binary to Source Code.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: On Matching Binary to Source Code

abstract:
Reverse engineering of executable binary programs has diverse applications in computer security and forensics, and often involves identifying parts of code that are reused from third party software projects. Identification of code clones by comparing and fingerprinting low-level binaries has been explored in various pieces of work as an effective approach for accelerating the reverse engineering process.
Binary clone detection across different environments and computing platforms bears significant challenges, and reasoning about sequences of low-level machine in- structions is a tedious and time consuming process. Because of these reasons, the ability of matching reused functions to their source code is highly advantageous, de- spite being rarely explored to date.
In this thesis, we systematically assess the feasibility of automatic binary to source matching to aid the reverse engineering process. We highlight the challenges, elab- orate on the shortcomings of existing proposals, and design a new approach that is targeted at addressing the challenges while delivering more extensive and detailed results in a fully automated fashion. By evaluating our approach, we show that it is generally capable of uniquely matching over 50% of reused functions in a binary to their source code in a source database with over 500,000 functions, while narrowing down over 75% of reused functions to at most five candidates in most cases. Finally, we investigate and discuss the limitations and provide directions for future work.


identifier: Mashhour, Ibrahim  (2016) Experimental Study on Negative Skin Friction on Piles in Collapsible Soils due to Inundation.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Collapsible soil is a special type of soil, classified as problematic soil. It possesses a high strength in the unsaturated phase and loses its strength and exhibits substantial settlement when inundated. Many foundation failures occur around the world, many of which involve loss of lives, caused by problems associated with collapsible soils. One of the most commonly used type of foundation in collapsible soils is end-bearing piles resting on firm soil strata. However, these piles will be subjected to negative skin friction during wetting of the collapsible soil, inducing additional loads. Various case studies have reported foundation failures and excessive settlements upon the wetting of collapsible soil.
Researchers are facing serious challenges in dealing with piles in collapsible soils due to the complexity of the problem and the difficulties associated with modeling this behaviour numerically and experimentally. Relatively few investigations pertinent to pile foundations in collapsible soils subjected to inundation are available in the literature.
An experimental investigation was carried out to simulate the complex interaction between collapsible soil and a single end-bearing pile under various wetting and loading conditions. The experimental prototype setup was developed and calibrated in the laboratory in order to measure the drag load and accordingly the negative skin friction acting on the pile’s shaft for given soil/wetting/loading conditions. Collapsible soils with different collapse potential values were created in the laboratory by mixing kaolin clay with fine sand at predetermined ratios.  A two-dimensional axi-symmetrical numerical model was generated in order to conduct a parametric study by extending the data for a wider range. The numerical model was validated by experimental results obtained from this study. Based on the results obtained from the experimental and numerical models, a design theory capable of taking into account the effect of soil collapse under different wetting schemed was developed and recommended for use in practice.


identifier: Chowdhury, Md. Rashadul Islam  (2015) Removal of Arsenic from Contaminated Water by Granular Activated Carbon Embedded with Nano scale Zero-valent Iron.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This study investigated the removal of arsenic from groundwater by granular activated carbon (GAC) supported nano scale zero-valent iron (nZVI). GAC supported nZVI (nZVI/GAC) composite was synthesized by hydrolyzing a Fe(III) salt on GAC, reduced by NaBH4 and dried under vacuum. Synthesized nZVI/GAC was characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) along with EDS, BET surface area analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The experimental results were produced through the batch and Rapid Small Scale Column Test (RSSCT). The adsorption depends on pH, initial concentration, and reaction time. Arsenite adsorption capacity varies from 800 to 1400 μg/g over the pH 2-11. Arsenate adsorption was higher (3000-3700 μg/g) over the acidic pH range 2-6.5. Among competitive ions, phosphate and silicate affected the most while sulfate, nitrate, chloride, fluoride, manganese, magnesium and calcium had insignificant impact. The experimental data were evaluated with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms.  The adsorption capacity for arsenate, calculated from Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms, were 5000 and 6000 µg/g, respectively at pH 4.5. The reaction kinetics followed the pseudo-second order model. The initial sorption rate (h), determined from pseudo-second order kinetic model, was 666 µg/g.min. The dynamic behaviour of the RSSCT was predicted by the HSDM model using the software FAST 2.0. From the RSSCT results, it was found that the number of bed volumes treated depends on the empty bed contact time (EBCT) as well as the initial arsenate concentration.
The regeneration of spent nZVI/GAC using 0.1M NaOH was effective as it desorbed 87% of adsorbed arsenic. The solid waste can be safely disposed of in a sanitary landfill without any treatment as the concentration of leached arsenate determined by TCLP was much lower than the regulatory limit.  The arsenic removal mechanism was due to the combination of electrostatic and the complex formation, either monodentate or bidentate, between As(V) and nZVI corrosion products. The results indicated that nZVI/GAC is a promising adsorbent for arsenic removal.


identifier: Almey, Anne  (2015) Membrane-associated estrogen receptors and cognition in female rats.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
There are sex differences in dopamine-dependent diseases and behaviours, and accumulating evidence suggests that estrogens are partially responsible. This thesis examines the effects of estrogens on dopamine-dependent cognitive processes. Some of these cognitive processes are affected in schizophrenia, so these experiments also examined the combined effects of estrogen and the antipsychotic drug haloperidol on these cognitive processes.
The first study in this thesis examined the effects of estrogens and haloperidol on selective attention, measured in a latent inhibition paradigm. The result of these experiments demonstrated that estrogens have detrimental effects on latent inhibition, but facilitate an acute dose of haloperidol to restore latent inhibition in female rats. The next two studies extended these findings to two other cognitive processes negatively affected in individuals with schizophrenia: perseveration and reversal learning. Estrogens alone had no effect on perseveration or reversal learning in amphetamine sensitized female rats, but did fascilitate haloperidol to reduce perseveration and improve reversal learning.
Previous research has observed very low levels of estrogen receptors in the striatum, nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex, regions that mediate the majority of dopamine-dependent cognitive processes. Immunoelectron microscopy was used to examine estrogen receptors in these regions to provide a mechanism for estrogens’ effects on dopamine dependent behaviour. Immunohistochemistry was used to examine the distribution of estrogen receptors, ERα, ERβ, and GPER1, demonstrating that these receptors are observed primarily at presynaptic extranuclear sites and in glia in the striatum, nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex. In the striatum a small proportion of ERα and GPER1 are localized to cholinergic interneurons and a larger proportion of these receptors are observed in GABAergic neurons in the striatum. In the accumbens a low proportion of ERα and GPER1 were localized to catecholaminergic neurons, and a greater proportion of these receptors were observed in GABAergic neurons. The final experiment in this thesis examined whether binding at membrane-associated estrogen receptors could rapidly affect dopamine-dependent cognition. Increasing estrogens in the prefrontal cortex rapidly biases female rats towards use of place memory, indicating that binding at membrane-associated estrogen receptors can rapidly affect dopamine-dependent cognitive processes.


identifier: Mohammed, Azhar Uddin  (2016) Integrated Reliability Assessment of Water Distribution Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The condition of current water infrastructure in North America is alarming due to deterioration of old water mains indicating the incompetence of existing water distribution to cope with increasing demands. ASCE (2013) report card graded the drinking water networks a score of D, representing “poor condition”. In contrast, the Canadian drinking water infrastructure scored better, indicating “Good: adequate for now”. Despite this, 15.4% of the water distributions are graded “fair” to “very poor” with a replacement value of CAD 25.9 billion. Delaying the investment can result in degrading water service, increasing service disruptions, and increasing expenditures for emergency repairs. Taking into account the deterioration severity and investment gap, water utilities need an asset management tool that can effectively prioritize the rehabilitation works.
This research is aiming at developing an integrated reliability assessment model that can identify the crucial water main segments and prioritize their renewal at all hierarchical levels of the network. In this regard, the proposed research framework encompasses modeling aspects of mechanical and hydraulic condition of a WDN. The first model analyzes the mechanical condition of a WDN at the component, segment and network levels. This model utilizes reliability theory for assessing component and segment reliabilities, whereas minimum cut set approach is pursued for assessing mechanical reliability of a network. To facilitate this tedious process, it has been coded in MATLAB R2013b programming environment along with the utilization of Wolfram Mathematica 10.2 and Microsoft Excel 2013. The second model analyzes the hydraulic performance of a WDN in terms of hydraulic reliability. It involves the hydraulic simulation of a WDN in normal and failure conditions, which aid in obtaining the required as well as actual pressure head at demand nodes. The model is then formulated with pressure conditions to evaluate the available demand at demand nodes which in contrast to the required demand aids in predicting the hydraulic reliability of the network. Finally, an integrated reliability assessment model is presented to conclude the research methodology by determining the overall sub-network reliability.
The developed methodology is worked out on two case studies from the cities of London, Ontario and Doha, Qatar. Also, it is implemented on two different sub-networks from the City of London (north phase and south phase) for drawing comparisons, which concluded that the mechanical reliability of a network encompassed by newer components with less number of failures is greater than that of other networks. Additionally, the results of model implementation revealed that structure/configuration of the network also played an important role in affecting the overall network reliability. It was found 0.82 for the north phase sub-network and 0.84 for the south phase indicating that the south phase sub-network is more reliable. Therefore, the north phase sub-network takes the priority when scheduling the rehabilitation. The resulting reliability indices of a WDN, helps the municipalities to effectively prioritize the rehabilitation works at respective hierarchical levels. Moreover, the outcomes of this research also aid in identifying the most critical water main segments that need to be monitored constantly in order to prevent the network failure.


identifier: Moreno Pina, Daniel  (2015) Comparing Cosmopolitan Discourses Across Sexual Landscapes: Montreal’s Gay Village and Mile End District.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Gay spaces have long been a part in the urban landscape of major metropolitan areas in advanced capitalist societies. These urban forms were largely produced in the 1970s and 1980s as safe spaces where LGBTQ individuals could go to escape societal homophobia. In the following decades, these neighbourhoods underwent major urban restructuring associated with broader neoliberal processes of city remaking. In the beginning of the 2000s, a new wave of studies began correlating the neoliberal urban restructuring of gaybourhoods to the production of cosmopolitan spaces. The cosmopolitan discourse has been a driving force in the remaking of major metropolitan areas that wish to attract capital and compete in a global market formed by creative and diversified cities. According to contemporary literature on creative cities, gay neighbourhoods are an essential component in any global city, as they represent diversity and progressiveness. Alongside traditional gay neighbourhoods, new patterns of intra-urban migration among LGBTQ individuals led to the formation of neighbourhoods where sexual identities are not the main marker of the space but queer individuals are welcomed and an active part of the neighbourhood's life. Queer-friendly neighbourhoods are now a reality in the landscapes of major metropolitan areas. In the case of Montreal, the city’s queer-friendly neighbourhood (Mile End) is also home to a creative, young and middle-class population, marking it also as a cosmopolitan space. This research interrogates and compares what kind of cosmopolitan discourses residents of both the gay Village and the Mile End are enacting, producing and performing. The findings of this research indicate that cosmopolitanism is indeed being performed and actively (re)shaping both neighbourhoods. To what extent and what kind of cosmopolitan discourse is employed differs from one space to another and is directly liked to other social and spatial process such as gentrification, safety and urban sexual identities.


identifier: Arason, Colin  (2016) The World is Full of Noise: Music Supervision and the Construction of Meaning.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The licensed music that can frequently be heard accompanying motion pictures carries with it a wealth of information in the form of contextual baggage. This study actively works to unpack this baggage and detail the ways that filmmakers may harness the power of this contextual content through allusion and explicit reference. Select examples from three feature films by Gregg Araki are used to show how this process is affected by a variety of budgets and to illustrate how music supervision can act as a tool that aids in fostering connections with social subcultures, complements activist themes, and creates additional meaning . . .


identifier: Mookerjee, Shoham  (2016) Directing Precursor Flux to Optimize cis,cis-Muconic Acid Production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: cis, cis Muconic acid (CCM) is a compound that can be chemically converted to adipic acid, a major component of several copolymer plastics. Biological CCM-producing pathways with high yields have been characterized in Escherichia coli; however the downstream extraction process is prohibitively expensive at an industrial scale. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a better industrial production host for organic acids; however biological CCM-producing pathways in S. cerevisiae have been plagued with significantly lower yields as compared to production in E. coli. In this thesis CCM production was explored in S. cerevisiae by construction of a heterologous pathway expressing AroZ from K. pneumoniae, AroY from P. anserina and Hqd2 from C. albicans, which resulted in the production of 2.9 mg/L of CCM. Accumulation of a native metabolite, shikimate, was observed, implying inefficient channeling of carbon into the heterologous pathway. To test this hypothesis, the diversion of carbon flux into the heterologous pathway was explored by modulation of the pentafunctional Aro1 protein. Replacing the wild-type aro1 gene with a mutant version eliminated the accumulation of shikimate and increased the carbon flux into the heterologous pathway by 59%. In addition, two-step fermentations with aerobic and anaerobic phases were explored demonstrating the imbalance in oxygen requirements in the heterologous CCM pathway and ways to overcome it.


identifier: Khoueiry, Boulos  (2016) Capacity Approaching Coding Strategies for Machine-to-Machine Communication in IoT Networks.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Radio access technologies for mobile communications are characterized by multiple access (MA) strategies. Orthogonal MA techniques were a reasonable choice for achieving good performance with single user detection. With the tremendous growth in the number of mobile users and the new internet of things (IoT) shifting paradigm,   it is expected that the monthly mobile data traffic worldwide will exceed 24.3 exabytes by 2019, over 100 billion IoT connections by 2025, and the financial impact of IoT on the global economy varies in the range of 3.9 to 11.1 trillion dollars by 2025. In light of the envisaged exponential growth and new trends, one promising solution to further enhance data rates without increasing the bandwidth is by increasing the spectral efficiency of the channel. Non-orthogonal MA techniques are potential candidates for future wireless communications. The two corner points on the boundary region of the MA channel are known to be achievable by single user decoding followed by successive decoding (SD). Other points can also be achieved using time sharing or rate splitting. On the other hand, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication which is an enabling technology for the IoT, enables massive multipurpose networked devices to exchange information among themselves with minor or no human intervention.
This thesis consists of three main parts. In the first part, we propose new practical encoding and joint belief propagation (BP) decoding techniques for 2-user MA erasure channel (MAEC) that achieve any rate pair close to the boundary of the capacity region without using time sharing nor rate splitting. While at the encoders, the corresponding parity check matrices are randomly built from a half-rate LDPC matrix, the joint BP decoder employs the associated Tanner graphs of the parity check matrices to iteratively recover the erasures in the received combined codewords. Specifically, the joint decoder performs two steps in each decoding iteration: 1) simultaneously and independently runs the BP decoding process at each constituent sub-graph to recover some of the common erasures, 2) update the other sub-graph with newly recovered erasures and vice versa. When the number of erasures in the received combined codewords is less than or equal to the number of parity check constraints, the decoder may successfully decode both codewords, otherwise the decoder declares decoding failure. Furthermore, we calculate the probability of decoding failure and the outage capacity. Additionally, we show how the erasure probability evolves with the number of decoding iterations and the maximum tolerable loss. Simulations show that any rate pair close to the capacity boundary is achievable without using time sharing.
In the second part, we propose a new cooperative joint network and rateless coding strategy for machine-type communication (MTC) devices in the multicast settings where three or more MTC devices dynamically form a cluster to disseminate messages between themselves. Specifically, in the basic cluster, three MTC devices transmit their respective messages simultaneously to the relay in the first phase. The relay broadcasts back the combined messages to all MTC devices within the basic cluster in the second phase. Given the fact that each MTC device can remove its own message, the received signal in the second phase is reduced to the combined messages coming from the other two MTC devices. Hence, this results in exploiting the interference caused by one message on the other and therefore improving the bandwidth efficiency. Furthermore, each group of three MTC devices in vicinity can form a basic cluster for exchanging messages, and the basic scheme extends to N MTC devices. Furthermore, we propose an efficient algorithm to disseminate messages among a large number of MTC devices. Moreover, we implement the proposed scheme employing practical Raptor codes with the use of two relaying schemes, namely amplify and forward (AF) and de-noise and forward (DNF). We show that with very little processing at the relay using DNF relaying scheme, performance can be further enhanced. We also show that the proposed scheme achieves a near optimal sum rate performance.
In the third part, we present a comparative study of joint channel estimation and decoding of factor graph-based codes over flat fading channels and propose a simple channel approximation scheme that performs close to the optimal technique. Specifically, when channel state information (CSI) is not available at the receiver, a simpler approach is to estimate the channel state of a group of received symbols, then use the approximated value of the channel with the received signal to compute the log likelihood ratio. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme exhibits about 0.4 dB loss compared to the optimal solution when perfect CSI is available at the receiver.


identifier: Chraim, Ali  (2016) The Impact of Servant Leadership Behaviors on Trust and Organizational Citizenship Behavior.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The premise of this study is that the behavior of the organizational leader affects employee outcomes. More specifically, I seek to examine the relationship between Servant Leadership behaviors and employee organizational citizenship behaviors – both OCB-I (behaviors targeted towards an individual, such as altruism) and OCB-O (behaviors that directly affect the organization as a whole, such as civic virtue). I propose that this relationship is mediated by employees’ trust in their leader. This study adopts McAllister’s (1995) theoretical construct of trust, which distinguishes between the two dimensions of affect-based trust (rooted in emotion) and cognition-based trust (rooted in reason). Moreover, I propose that the link between trust in the leader and employee organizational citizenship behavior is moderated by the well-being of the employees. In the present research, the well-being of the employees will be assessed on three dimensions: emotional exhaustion (also referred to as burnout), life satisfaction as well as job satisfaction. The results revealed that Servant Leadership is positively and significantly correlated with employee organizational citizenship behavior. Additionally, only cognitive-based trust partially mediated that relationship. Contrary to expectations, employee well-being was not found to significantly moderate the relationship between trust in the leader and organizational citizenship behavior. Overall, the present study contributes to the leadership literature by establishing a link between servant leadership and employee OCB through the medium of trust. From a practical standpoint, the results of this study would benefit companies as a whole by raising the awareness the managers regarding the employee outcomes that their behaviors may cause, as trust and OCB are related to many positive employee outcomes (such as lower transaction cost, decreased turnover, increased motivation and commitment etc…) that can grant companies a competitive advantage.


identifier: O'Flaherty, Derek Kyle  (2016) Synthesis of Modified Thymidine and Intrastrand Cross-Linked DNA Probes to Investigate Repair by O6-Alkylguanine DNA Alkyltransferases and Bypass by Human DNA Polymerase η.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
O6-Alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferases (AGTs) are responsible for genomic maintenance by repairing O6-alkyl-2’-deoxyguanosine (O6-alkyl-dG) and O4-alkyl-thymidine (O4-alkyl-dT) adducts. AGT-mediated repair was investigated against DNA intrastrand cross-links (IaCL). A variety of cross-linked dimers linking the O6-atom of dG or O4-atom of dT were prepared synthetically to produce precursors for IaCL DNA that either lack or containing an intradimer phosphodiester group in the oligonucleotide backbone. Studies with AGTs demonstrated that: 1) O6-dG-alkylene-O6-dG flexible IaCL DNA (lacking the phosphodiester linkage) were efficiently repaired by hAGT. Repair of the model IaCL DNA occurred more efficiently in comparison to similar ICL DNA; 2) O6-dG-alkylene-O6-dG IaCL DNA containing the intradimer phosphodiester were moderately repaired by hAGT. Efficiency of the hAGT-mediated repair was contingent on the presence of the intradimer phosphate, which suggest conformational flexibility may be a requirement for repair by AGTs; 3) Flexible O4-dT-alkylene-O4-dT IaCL DNA evaded repair from all AGTs tested, whereas the flexible IaCL 5'-O4-dT-alkylene-O6-dG were efficiently repaired by hAGT. Interestingly, the 5'-O6-dG-alkylene-O4-dT was not proficiently repaired by hAGT supporting the importance of the 3'-phosphate group of the target dG nucleotide. 4) Flexible IaCL can be employed to generate DNA-protein cross-links (DPCs), with good conversions, as observed with repair of O6-dG-alkylene-O6-dG and 5'-O4-dT-alkylene-O6-dG by hAGT. The use of such cross-linking experiments may be useful for elucidating substrate discrimination across AGTs by X-ray crystallography.
Translesion synthesis (TLS) may be activated by the cell as a coping mechanism when DNA damage evades repair or remains otherwise irreparable by repair mechanisms. Human DNA polymerase η (hPol η) is a key TLS Pol involved in the bypass of certain UV-induced DNA damage, and lesions formed by platinum-containing chemotherapeutics. Bypass experiments were conducted to determine if conformational freedom of the lesion impacted hPol η processivity. Towards this end, bicyclic pyrimidines linking the C5-atom to the O4-atom, by an ethylene or a propylene bridge, were synthesized as conformationally locked mimics of the biologically relevant DNA damage O4-methyl thymidine (O4-MedT) and O4-ethyl thymidine (O4-EtdT), respectively. Bypass studies revealed that: 1) The conformationally locked pyrimidyl analogues described above were bypassed by hPol η with different profiles, relative to O4-MedT and O4-EtdT. All thymidinyl modifications evoked an error-prone behavior from hPol η, with insertion of dGMP being incorporated most-frequently in the growing strand. 2) IaCL bypass profiles of O6-dG-alkylene-O6-dG containing the intradimer phosphodiester group behaved significantly different relative to those IaCL lacking it. hPol η inserted the correct nucleotide (dCMP) across the 3'-dG residue for all IaCL studied, whereas an error-prone behavior was observed across the 5'-dG residue. While the lack of the intradimer phosphodiester caused frameshift adduct formation across the 5'-dG, hPol η inserted the incorrect dTMP across the 5'-dG of the canonical IaCL DNA. More studies are required to elucidate whether this dependence is shared for other types of lesions.


identifier: Ravaglioli, Raquel  (2016) Music Therapists’ Perspectives on how Self-Awareness Impacts their Work with Adolescents.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: A significant body of research indicates that self-awareness is recognized as a vital aspect in a therapist’s career. In a music therapy setting, self-awareness is also identified as a crucial aspect for music therapists who work with the adolescent population. However, studies have not yet established how music therapists’ self-awareness impacts their sessions when working with adolescents. Using a modified grounded theory method, this research investigated music therapists’ perspectives on how self-awareness impacts their work with adolescents. It comprised interviews of four board certified music therapists working with adolescents in the medical and/or mental health settings. Interview transcriptions were coded using methods from Hesse-Biber (2011). Comparisons were made of participants’ perceptions of self-awareness, reactions when self-aware, and influence of self-awareness during music therapy sessions with adolescents. Results indicated that music therapists address self-awareness personally and in regards to clients in order to adjust in the moment. Further research is recommended in order to explore self-awareness practices among music therapists and its complexity in greater detail. It is the researcher’s hope that music therapists utilize the findings of this research study to expand on and become more aware in their practice with specific populations of adolescents.


identifier: Wang, Mozhi  (2016) Takeover Rumour Effects on Bidding Firms.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This paper examines 680 initial U.S. takeover rumours which name both bidder and target firms from 2002 to 2011. We find that rumours attributed to an insider and those indicating a positive synergy would result from a takeover are significant predictors of future takeover announcements between these rumoured firms. Interestingly, these same rumour types are also significantly related to pre-rumour bidder firm returns. In addition, bidding firm rumour date returns are significantly higher for smaller firms, in line with the literature for bidding firm announcement date effects. Finally, for the subsample of rumoured firms which do engage in the rumored takeover, we find that the longer the interval between the rumour date and announcement date, the more positive the announcement date return. In sum, we interpret results as evidence confirming hypotheses that the anticipation of takeovers should be accounted for in the analysis of announcement date effects.


identifier: Janzen, Elizabeth  (2016) Music Therapists’ Perspectives on Working with Educational Assistants in Manitoba School Settings.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Music therapists who work in schools often collaborate with other professionals, including educational assistants.  Overall, the literature identifies that the educational assistant’s role in music therapy contexts is to assist students in achieving the goals that have been established in their individualized education plans and/or in their music therapy treatment plans.  However, literature and my experiences indicate that the complexities of the educational assistant’s role are not well understood, and that this confusion can have an adverse effect on therapeutic outcomes.  Although one study has examined educational assistants’ perspectives on this topic, very little literature exists to help guide music therapists and educational assistants in their professional collaborations.  The purpose of this study was to investigate music therapists’ perspectives on their experiences of working with educational assistants in school settings.  Three Canadian music therapists participated in individual qualitative interviews that examined their perspectives on collaborations that they had with educational assistants in school music therapy contexts.  These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach.  Results revealed information about collaborations that happened before, during and after music therapy sessions as well as information pertaining to aspects of collaboration that music therapists found helpful and aspects that they found challenging.  My interpretations as well as potential implications for practice and research are discussed.


identifier: Zhang, Dan  (2016) The Influence of Founder Status on Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Canadian IPO Firms.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This study compares performance for founder-managed firms and professional-managed firms by analyzing 138 Canadian IPO firms which went public from 2004 to 2013. In this paper, we measure firm performance in two ways: Tobin’s Q and ROA are used to measure a firm’s financial performance, while firm survival status is used as a supplementary performance measure. We find that founder-managed firms underperform and underlive its counterparts when firm performance is measured by Tobin’s Q and survival status. But founder status is proved to be unrelated with ROA. The negative influence of founder status can be explained by Relevant Transaction Hypothesis which states that founder-managers may act for the controlling family and are more concerned with its associated private income stream than with maximizing the value of the firm.


identifier: Guo, Lingfeng  (2016) Share Class Structures and Asset Transactions: Canadian Evidence.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Few researchers focus on how share class structures affect corporate decisions, particularly asset transactions. With a hand-collected sample of 1632 asset transactions by TSX- and TSX-V-listed purchasers, we first test whether the relative transaction values differ for single- and dual-class buyers, and then examine how the degree of dual class structures influences the relative transaction values with a subsample of 82 transactions involving only dual-class buyers. We also explore whether the relative value of asset purchases depends on three characteristics of dual-class purchasers. Our empirical evidence shows that the relative transaction value for a dual-class purchaser is significantly larger only when a subsample of family-controlled buyers is used, and that a higher degree of dual class structure corresponds to a larger relative transaction value. We find that the relative transaction values for family-controlled, dual-class purchasers are greater than those for nonfamily-controlled ones, that a higher family ownership leads to a bigger relative transaction value, and that the relative value for dual-class buyers who have more than one family member on the board is smaller.


identifier: Youssef, Marylen  (2016) Determining the Relationship between Salivary α-Amylase, Cardiovascular, and Hemodynamic Changes during the Cold Pressor Test.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The cold pressor test (CPT) has been long used as an activator of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) but it is not clear if the CPT consistently results in the increases in salivary α-amylase (sAA), and how the changes in salivary α-amylase are correlated to cardiovascular and hemodynamic parameters. Additionally it is not known how individuals can be characterized based on these correlations.

30 healthy participants, 14 males and 16 females, underwent a hand CPT for 5 minutes at 4°C while having their cardiovascular and hemodynamic parameters monitored and saliva sampled. The CPT resulted in changes in most cardiovascular and hemodynamic parameters measured, SBP, DBP, MAP, TPR, PEP, LVET, PEP/LVET, dP/dt, and dZ/dtmax. There was no significant change in HR, CO, and SV. The CPT caused an increase in salivary α-amylase at the end of the 5 minutes, that continued to increase up to 10 minutes post CPT. The change in magnitude (Δ) of Δ1 sAA or Δ2 sAA was correlated to the Δ1HR (ρ=0.5, p<0.01) (ρ=0.48, p<0.05) respectively. CPT sAA levels were correlated to baseline HR (ρ=0.43, p<0.05) and inversely proportional to Δ1SBP (ρ=-0.47,p<0.01) and baseline PEP (ρ=-0.38, p<0.05).When grouped based on high (<20mmHg) or low (>20mmHg) systolic response to the CPT, low responders had higher resting salivary α-amylase and higher resting HR than the high responders suggesting that SNS activity can be characterized using the CPT and salivary α-amylase measures. While the CPT caused robust changes in salivary α-amylase, the delayed increase suggests that other measures such as ΔSBP are better indicators of the SNS response in healthy people.


identifier: Mohamed Seif ElDin, Hany  (2016) In-Plane Shear Behaviour of Fully Grouted Reinforced Masonry Shear Walls.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Reinforced masonry (RM) shear walls are the key structural elements widely used to resist lateral loads in masonry buildings due to their capability to provide lateral strength, stiffness, and energy dissipation. The flexural behaviour of RM shear walls is well defined and follows the simple flexural theory of reinforced concrete structures based on plane-section assumption. On the other hand, the shear behaviour of RM shear walls in the plastic hinge region is more complex due to the interaction between the nonlinear responses of their constituent materials, namely: concrete masonry blocks, mortar, grout, and steel reinforcement. The main objective of this thesis is to evaluate the inelastic behaviour of fully grouted RM shear walls that are dominated by shear failure. The research objective was achieved by conducting experimental, numerical, and analytical studies.
The experimental work involved assessing the response of nine full-scale fully grouted rectangular RM shear walls when subjected to in-plane axial compressive stress, cyclic lateral excitations, and top moment. The main variables considered were the level of axial compressive stress, shear span to depth ratio, horizontal reinforcement ratio, anchorage end detail, and the spacing of horizontal and vertical reinforcement. The effect of the studied parameters is analyzed and presented in detail according to force-based, displacement-based, and performance-based seismic design considerations. Moreover, nonlinear finite element models were developed to simulate the behaviour of RM shear walls subjected to cyclic loading, and validated using results from the nine RM tested walls. Good agreements with the experimental load-displacement hysteretic loops were achieved in all models. In addition, a parametric study was performed to consider more variations in some of the parameters examined in the experimental work, which arrived at similar conclusions of the tested walls.
Using the results of the tested RM shear walls together with the parametric study, an equation for predicting the in-plane shear strength, Vn, of RM shear walls was proposed and verified with results of 64 RM wall tests from five sources in the literature. Statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed equation against ten widely-used equations, including the design equations given in the Canadian Standards Association CSA S304-2014, the US Masonry Standards Joint Committee MSJC-2013, and the Standards Association of New Zealand NZS 4230:2004. The analysis shows that the proposed equation provides a sufficiently conservative and more accurate prediction for Vn than any of the other evaluated equations.


identifier: Sahir, Rita  (2016) The Representation of Consultants as Experts in the Popular Press.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The consultancy profession has become a norm over the years and continues to record increasing entry rates (Glückler & Armbrüster, 2003). A proof of this trend is the growing use of consultants by managers, and the increasing reliance on them, sometimes even without tangible results at the end of their collaboration (Fincham, 1999; Stumpf & Longman, 2000). This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by academics. Over the past few decades, the consultancy profession has been increasingly discussed and researched in the management literature, but the existing studies seem to display little or no empirical evidence. If academic sources appear to be limited on the subject, the consultancy profession seems to be more exposed in the popular press. Thus, to understand the profession and chart its evolution, studying its representation in the popular press was essential. The popular press bears the responsibilities to disclose the truth to the public and at the same time reflects the latter’s opinion. The credibility granted to the consultancy profession through the press would explain the increased visibility and influence over the years. In order to know whether or not consultants were more used by journalists as sources to corroborate their facts, names and titles of direct quotes from 1978 to 2011, present in the front-page articles of the Business Day Section in the New York Times, were extracted for analysis. The results offer, among other things, a detailed picture of the representation of the consultancy profession over the years, compared to other business human sources used by journalists; valuable insights from journalists and consultants; and the data on consultants contextualized with major financial events.


identifier: Protheroe, Charles  (2016) Modifying redox and binding interactions between coordinated manganese and native bacterial reaction centers.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Between 2.8 and 2.4 billion years ago Nature designed a method to catalytically split water into oxygen and hydrogen with sunlight, a process that humanity struggles to perform efficiently to this day. This manifested itself as the evolution from anoxygenic to  oxygenic photosynthesis, a process which involved the incorporation of manganese ions from the environment by anoxygenic photosynthetic organisms, in order to utilize water as a new electron source. Recently, native bacterial reaction centers (BRCs), the protein complexes responsible for the photoelectric energy conversion of anoxygenic photosynthetic organisms, were shown to be able to utilize manganese as a secondary electron donor, an ability thought to only be possessed by oxygenic reaction centers. Here we uncovered several important details of this interaction, including the binding and donating sites of manganese in the BRCs, the rate of electron transfer from manganese to the BRC, and information on the composition of the manganese complex. This new information sheds light on the earliest step in the transition from anoxygenic to oxygenic photosynthesis, allowing an evaluation of the feasability of this potential evolutionary pathway by considering the effects of manganese on the native secondary electron donor, and on the final electron acceptor.


identifier: Burstein, Alon  (2016) What Makes Them Tick? A Global Comparative Analysis of the Tactics and Deadliness of Terror Organizations.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This study analyzes the connection between the ideological affiliation of terror organizations and the nature of their violent activity. Utilizing large-scale databases cross-referenced with additional coding regarding group ideological affiliation, it's purpose is, first, to determine whether ideology has an influence on the activities of terror groups; and second, to analyze the nature of this influence is, if it is indeed found to be of significance.

The findings indicate that: 1) there is a clear connection between ideological affiliation and the violent activities of terror organizations; and 2) of the primary ideological affiliations motivating terror organizations (nationalist, communist, religious etc), religious ideology has the most extreme impact on group actions, influencing the tactics of violent activity and resulting in greater numbers of casualties. These findings are corroborated by additional tests controlling for region, religious affiliation, and time periods, further establishing the critical importance religious ideology has as an influence on the violent activity of terror organizations.


identifier: Parkinson, Mary  (2016) Vocal Problems of Music Therapists in North America: A Survey.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: A music therapist’s voice is often an invaluable tool used in practice. Although maintenance and care of the voice appears to be an issue for music therapists, little research has been conducted to explore this topic. Research in other fields has shown symptoms, causes, and prevention measures for vocal problems as experienced by other occupational voice users. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and perceived symptoms and causes of vocal problems as they occur in credentialed North American music therapists. E-mails were sent to 6880 credentialed North American music therapists and 735 participants (response rate of 10.7%) completed an online survey that examined their use of voice, their self-reported experiences with vocal problems, the possible physiological symptoms, etiology, and psychological symptoms associated with the vocal problem, and the types of voice and vocal health educational formats they had partaken in. Results indicated that over half of respondents (59.5%) reported using their voice for 22 or more hours a week and that approximately half of respondents reported having experienced a vocal problem (53.9%). The most commonly reported physiological symptom was dysphonia, and the most commonly reported psychological symptom was dissatisfaction with the vocal component of music therapy work. Components of vocal misuse and vocal overuse were also explored, with singing in a loud environment, excessive singing, and inadequate preparation emerging as the most commonly reported. Finally, over 90% of respondents reported they felt vocal problems were a somewhat or very important issue for music therapists. Potential implications for the research as well as areas for future research are discussed.


identifier: O'Leary, Brietta  (2016) Upwardly Female: The Excessive/Transgressive Bodies of Tall Women on Television.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis works toward an understanding of how tallness is inscribed upon the female body in Anglo-Western popular culture through a textual analysis of three tall female television characters. As the ideal female body is positioned as being small, docile, and feminine, and the ideal male body as tall, powerful, and masculine, I seek to explore what happens when these signifiers intersect on the tall female body. The tall female body troubles and disrupts conventions of female embodiment, spatial negotiation, power dynamics, heteronormativity, and perceptions and understandings of sex and gender. Through case studies of Brienne of Tarth in HBO’s Game of Thrones (Gwendoline Christie, 6’3”), Coach Shannon Beiste in Fox’s Glee (Dot-Marie Jones, 6’3”), and 6’1” Miranda Hart in her BBC sitcom Miranda, I engage with concepts of excess, mobility, “taking up space” and “fitting,” femininity and masculinity, otherness and liminality, gaze, unruliness, and the perceptible body versus the experienced body. I situate each tall character’s embodied representation within the show’s narrative, generic, tonal, and production context, drawing on work that addresses action heroines, gendered violence, and medieval fantasy world-building; musical affect, situational empathy, and retroactive continuity; and the comedic female body, slapstick, and unruliness. This thesis addresses the lack of attention paid to height in popular and scholarly discourse on gender and embodiment by arguing that televisual representations of tall women reflect, reproduce, and challenge gendered norms around height, and how bodies are visually defined and constructed within the boundaries of the screen.


identifier: Zhang, Jing  (2016) Some Topics on Dirichlet Forms and Non-symmetric Markov Processes.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In this thesis, we discuss three topics on Dirichlet forms  and non-symmetric Markov processes.

First, we explore the analytic structure of  non-symmetric Markov processes. Let U be an open set of \mathbf{R}^n, m a positive Radon measure on U, and (P_t)_{t>0}  a strongly continuous contraction sub-Markovian semigroup on L^2(U;m).  We give an explicit Levy-Khintchine type representation of the generator A of (P_t)_{t>0}.  If (P_t)_{t>0} is an analytic semigroup,  we give an explicit characterization of the semi-Dirichlet form {\cal E} associated with (P_t)_{t>0}.

Second, we consider the  Dirichlet boundary value problem
for a general class of second order non-symmetric elliptic operators L with singular coefficients. We show that there exists a unique, bounded continuous solution by using the theory of Dirichlet forms and heat kernel estimates. Also, we give a probabilistic representation of the non-symmetric
semigroup  generated by L.

Finally, we present  new results on Hunt's hypothesis (H) for Levy processes. These include a comparison result on Levy processes which implies that big jumps have no effect on the validity of (H), a new necessary and sufficient condition for (H), and  an extended Kanda-Forst-Rao theorem.


identifier: Azami, Aria  (2016) Scheduling Hybrid Flow Lines of Aerospace Composite Manufacturing Systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Composite manufacturing is a vital part of aerospace manufacturing systems. Applying effective scheduling within these systems can cut the costs in aerospace companies significantly. These systems can be characterized as two-stage Hybrid Flow Shops (HFS) with identical, non-identical and unrelated parallel discrete-processing machines in the first stage and non-identical parallel batch-processing machines in the second stage. The first stage is normally the lay-up process in which the carbon fiber sheets are stacked on the molds (tools). Then, the parts are batched based on the compatibility of their cure recipe before going to the second stage into the autoclave for curing. Autoclaves require enormous capital investment and maximizing their utilization is of utmost importance.
In this thesis, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is developed to maximize the utilization of the resources in the second stage of this HFS. CPLEX, with an underlying branch and bound algorithm, is used to solve the model. The results show the high level of flexibility and computational efficiency of the proposed model when applied to small and medium-size problems. However, due to the NP-hardness of the problem, the MILP model fails to solve large problems (i.e. problems with more than 120 jobs as input) in reasonable CPU times.
To solve the larger instances of the problem, a novel heuristic method along with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) are developed. The heuristic algorithm is designed based on a careful observation of the behavior of the MILP model for different problem sets. Moreover, it is enhanced by adding a number of proper dispatching rules. As its output, this heuristic algorithm generates eight initial feasible solutions which are then used as the initial population of the proposed GA.
The GA improves the initial solutions obtained from the aforementioned heuristic through its stochastic iterations until it reaches the satisfactory near-optimal solutions. A novel crossover operator is introduced in this GA which is unique to the HFS of aerospace composite manufacturing systems. The proposed GA is proven to be very efficient when applied to large-size problems with up to 300 jobs. The results show the high quality of the solutions achieved by the GA when compared to the optimal solutions which are obtained from the MILP model.
A real case study undertaken at one of the leading companies in the Canadian aerospace industry is used for the purpose of data experiments and analysis.


identifier: Benner, Karen Elizabeth  (2016) Somewhere Between Orthodoxy and Good Taste: Santiago Díaz de Herrera’s Musical Settings of Psalms Dixit Dominus and Letatus Sum.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The music of Santiago Díaz de Herrera, an obscure early nineteenth-century Mexican composer, is oxymoronic in nature; it reflects the musical tastes of the Church officials and community for whom it was composed but not the guidelines for correct ecclesiastical music practice. This study is based upon two compositions by Herrera, the orchestrated choral psalm settings, Dixit Dominus and Letatus Sum, which were found at the Historical Diocesan Archives of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and transcribed into working scores. This music is studied in relation to taste and the practice of ecclesiastical and secular music in Mexico in and around the nineteenth century. The first area of investigation centers on the presence of ‘worldly’ sounds and the feminine voice in liturgical music through the lens of Catholic musical orthodoxy. The second complementary area of contextual study looks at the relationship between buen gusto (good taste) and musical culture in terms of education, musical conventions, and musical genres. The third trajectory reconfigures musical orthodoxy and taste through an interpretation of Herrera’s music wherein extra-musical associative connotations embedded in the psalm settings are considered through filters of current musicological approaches, with a marked emphasis on gendered representation. Lastly, the question of musical obsolescence is addressed through the reworking of Herrera’s music into a community-based art project. This interdisciplinary study makes a contribution to musicology pertaining to the music and musicians of Mexico’s nineteenth century and to developing new approaches for connecting disciplines of music performance and musicology to community-based activities.


identifier: Goubran, Sherif ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2365-0351 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2365-0351>  (2016) Energy Saving Impact of Air Curtains in Commercial Buildings.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This study investigates the energy saving impact replacing vestibules with air curtain doors (single doors fitted with air curtain units) has on energy usage of commercial buildings. Laboratory experiments were used to investigate the infiltration characteristics of air curtains in a small size chamber and to validate numerical simulation methods. Experimental flow and pressure as well as particle image velocimetry data confirmed that air curtains can significantly reduce air infiltration when compared to the single and vestibule doors. In addition, the results indicated that the CFD modeling methods used are valid in capturing the characteristics of the airflow at the door with air curtains. CFD simulations were conducted for a full scale door with consideration for the door operation cycle and the existence of people in the doorway. The results of the simulations were used to conduct energy simulations for two reference building models. The end use site-energy performances of the whole buildings with air curtain, vestibule and single doors are compared using two infiltration calculation methods. The energy simulations conducted show that, on a national average level, air curtain doors save energy (in comparison to code requirements). Finally, considering the space saving benefit of air curtains and their lower initial costs, air curtains are concluded to be a valid and energy saving alternative to vestibule doors in climate zones 3 to 8 and a valuable energy saving addition in climate zones 1 & 2.


identifier: Ezcurra Lucotti, Maria  (2016) The Threads, Trends and Threats of the Wedding Dress: A Collaborative, Studio-based Dissertation.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: A multi-faceted, collaborative studio-based project of doctoral research-creation, this thesis uses art, text, textiles, photographs and the body to explore how visual culture participates through dress in the creation of female stereotypes and, as an informal educative practice, contributes to the definition of feminine identities. It is centred on the participation of 19 women who guided the artistic transformation of wedding dresses to represent their different notions of marriage. This project allowed participants to experience the research-creation inquiry in both personal and social contexts, responding creatively through visual, material and embodied thinking. Conceptualizing and representing our experiences through dress and text, we developed new understandings about close relationships and community through imagination and intellect. Brides function here as representative stereotypes of femininity, while wedding dresses work as a metaphor for marriage in exploring the restraining symbolisms hidden in the form of tradition that certain current cultural and social rituals have for women. Based on collaborative research-creation processes and supported by inclusive ethnographic methods, this thesis intends to develop new understandings and awareness about the connection of fashion and popular visual culture to the ways women learn and generate meaning. The project was inspired by “Trash the Dress” (TTD) wedding photography, a relatively new and increasingly popular practice in North America which shows brides wearing their white dress in an environment outside of the traditional wedding context, damaging or destroying it, or even exposing themselves during the session—a cultural phenomenon just now beginning to attract the attention of theorists, scholars and artists. Through collaborative artistic processes, this project explores how femininity is influenced by popular and media representations of women as brides, considering personal issues related to love, commitment, family, tradition, and religion, and also the social challenges, responsibilities and negotiations that women face in conjugal relationships. Based on visual and textual analyses of participants’ transformed and embodied dresses and their responses to survey questions, the thesis concludes that working in collaboration with others can provide a context for personal learning and social growth, allowing participants to creatively explore their experiences together and to discuss and develop new ideas. Thus, The Threads, Trends and Threats of the Wedding Dress considers close relationships and love both as our subject of study and as a strategy to create new knowledge and ways of knowing through art-education in ways that allow for compassion, awareness and humanization.


identifier: Khademi Shamami, Keivan  (2016) Talking Archives: Voice-Over in Archival Film Practices.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Voice-over narration remains an overlooked element in the study of archival film practices. Theorists and filmmakers have explored the ways in which voice-over can be employed in documentary and fiction filmmaking, and in the essay film, but there has been little attention to its role in archival film practices. Some of the permutations of voice-over include the use of several pieces of narration from different sources; disembodied narrator; subjective commentary; unreliable narrator; self-reflexive narration, and no voice-over at all. Formal experimentation with voice-over in archival films has allowed filmmakers to introduce their often fragmentary audio-visual materials into new contexts and to establish novel forms of continuity. With equal focus on the aesthetic qualities of voice-over narration and its role in relation to narrative, this thesis examines the use of voice-over in the archival films of Peter Greenaway and Craig Baldwin. Through a close textual analysis of their films, this thesis aims to demonstrate the potential of voice-over narration in shaping the viewer's perception of the archive. It is argued that through an emphasis on the discontinuous nature of archival documents in their films (on thematic as well as formal levels) they construct partially-developed narratives, which serve different ends in each film. It is shown that whereas Greenaway's use of voice-over narration points to the subjectivity of the act of accessing and experiencing the archive, narration in Baldwin's cinema primarily draws attention to socio-political circumstances in which certain audio-visual "documents" have been produced. Interrogating the role of voice-over narration in archival film practices, this thesis concludes with the possibilities for further experimentation and theorization in this field.


identifier: Browning, Ben  (2016) Should I Skip This?: Cutscenes, Agency and Innovation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The cutscene is a frequently overlooked and understudied device in video game scholarship, despite its prominence in a vast number of games.  Most gaming literature and criticism concludes that cutscenes are predetermined narrative devices and nothing more.  Interrogating this general critical dismissal of the cutscene, this thesis argues that it is a significant device that can be used to re-examine a number of important topics and debates in video game studies.  Through an analysis of cutscenes deriving from the Metal Gear Solid (Konami, 1998) and Resident Evil (Capcom, 1996) franchises, I demonstrate the cutscene’s importance within (1) studies of video game agency and (2) video game promotion.
This thesis has two principal aims. The first is to argue that cutscenes complicate the player-centric models of agency that currently dominate the field.  A close analysis of cutscenes from varying periods of its history encourages us to develop a more expansive method for understanding how agency operates in games, one that gives additional attention to the oscillation between the player and system.  In this way, we move beyond the notion that cutscenes are simply predetermined and consider the precise means through which they are executed.  This leads into the second aim of this thesis, which is to demonstrate how cutscenes implement “technoattentive aesthetics”, which is to say, aesthetic strategies that allow hardware manufacturers and software publishers to standardize innovation and propagate the notion that newer video game technologies (or consoles) are inherently superior to their predecessors.  I argue that by supporting such ideas, cutscenes are key elements of the economy of perpetual innovation that the video game industry relies on.


identifier: Rolland, Mathieu  (2016) L'embargo Mishima : Une traduction relayée et ses paradoxes.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Le présent mémoire porte autour de la requête testamentaire de l’auteur japonais Yukio Mishima, qui a exigé que son œuvre maîtresse, La mer de la fertilité, soit uniquement  traduite à partir de la traduction anglaise, l’obligeant par le fait même à passer par le processus de la traduction dite « relais ».
Ce cas d’immixtion de l’auteur sur la traduction de son œuvre est l’occasion d’amorcer une réflexion sur la pratique de la traduction-relais dont le bagage théorique demeure relativement mince. Ainsi, par la mise en place d’une terminologie de cette pratique, d’une description ainsi que d’une analyse d’autres exemples de traduction-relais ou indirecte dans l’histoire, ce mémoire cherche à présenter ce phénomène sous un angle nouveau, détaché de certains tabous et préjugés qui lui sont généralement rattachés. C’est en grande partie en se basant sur l’exemple de « l’embargo Mishima » que ce mémoire permet, de par les différents exemples de traductions indirectes auxquels il fait référence, de mettre en perspective cette pratique.


identifier: Jahanbanifar, Azadeh  (2016) A Model-based Framework for System Configuration Management.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
A system can be viewed from different perspectives, each focusing on a specific aspect such as availability, performance, security. Configurations reflect the manageable resources of the system, their attributes and organization which are necessary for the management of the system for each aspect. Thus, for management purposes a system is generally described through various partial configurations (also known as configuration fragments). To form a consistent system con-figuration, these independently developed configuration fragments need to be integrated together. The integration of configuration fragments is a challenging task. This is mainly due to over-lapping entities (different logical representations of the same system resource) in the configuration fragments and/or complex relationships among the entities of the different configuration fragments. At runtime the system may be reconfigured to meet certain/new requirements or in response to performance degradations. These changes may lead to inconsistency as some changes may violate the constraints between entities. Maintaining the consistency and adjusting the system configuration at runtime is another challenging task. In our research, we propose to handle these two important issues in an integrated manner. We define a model-based framework for configuration management. We use the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its profiling mechanism for representing the configuration fragments. Using model weaving and model trans-formation techniques, we propose a solution for the integration of configuration fragments targeting specific system properties. To handle runtime changes, we propose a configuration validation and adjustment solution to check and preserve the consistency of the system configuration. We introduce a partial validation technique in which the runtime reconfigurations are checked against a reduced set of consistency rules instead of the complete set of rules and the reconfigurations are applied only if they are safe, i.e. they preserve the configuration consistency. For handling the changes that violate the consistency rules, we propose an adjustment technique to automatically resolve (if possible) the inconsistencies. This is achieved by propagating the changes in the configuration according to the system constraints following the possible impacts of the configuration entities on each other. Some heuristics are used to reduce the complementary changes and to limit the propagation. We evaluate the complexity of our adjustment technique and conduct experiments to evaluate its efficiency.
The Service Availability Forum middleware is used as an application domain in the examples throughout this thesis; however the proposed solutions are applicable in more general settings. We present proofs of concepts using different technologies. We use the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Papyrus for implementing the UML profiles. The Atlas Model Weaver (AMW) and Atlas Transformation Language (ATL) are used to integrate the configuration fragments, and we also use the APIs of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) in the Eclipse environment and the Microsoft Z3 constraint solver to develop a prototype tool of our partial validation and adjustment agents.


identifier: Viens, Marie-Pier  (2016) Voyage humanitaire scolaire et enseignement des arts : La photographie comme outil d’intégration et d’échange culturel.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Ce mémoire de recherche s’intéresse à l’usage de la photographie et d’appareils mobiles lors d’un voyage humanitaire scolaire. En 2013, un groupe de 36 élèves au secondaire a produit des suites photographiques en collaboration avec les familles d’accueil qui les hébergeaient lors d’un séjour au Guatemala. Ce projet, intitulé CróniCAM, a généré une large production photographique, vidéographique et écrite chez les élèves impliqués. L’expérimentation curriculaire mise sur pied par l’enseignante-chercheure a pour but l’intégration harmonieuse des élèves voyageurs à l’intérieur de la communauté qu’ils visitent. La recherche implique l’enseignement de la photographie au niveau scolaire et communautaire, l’utilisation de la mobilité et des réseaux sociaux ainsi que le montage de deux expositions et l’organisation d’évènements rassembleurs. Moyennant une utilisation dirigée de la photographie, les élèves effectuent un retour réflexif sur leur personnalité propre et s’intéressent aux valeurs des familles guatémaltèques dans le but de s’ouvrir à cette culture différente. Grâce à la recherche d’enseignement, la chercheure expose les avantages de l’enseignement de la photographie en contexte de voyage humanitaire scolaire dans l’objectif de favoriser l’ouverture des élèves par rapport aux situations nouvelles et créer un échange interculturel appréciable.


identifier: Turner, Lauren  (2016) We’re Not Going To Do Better Next Time.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: We’re Not Going To Do Better Next Time

abstract: The poems in We’re Not Going To Do Better Next Time are anchored around the biblical parable of Samson and Delilah (spelled “Dalila” here). Approaching the story from a secular contemporary perspective, the poems focus on the two characters themselves, rather than the religious elements of the traditional narrative. We’re Not Going To Do Better explores the dynamics of a flawed relationship and how two people relate (or fail to relate) to one another. Instabilities in the narrative’s consistency reflect Dalila and Samson’s dueling perspectives and the fallibility of memory, as well as how the choices made in a relationship can lead to many possible outcomes. The work falls into four sections: Prequels (to root the work in its source text), Encounters (relaying the relationship’s beginnings and progression), Fallout (how the relationship disintegrates), and Cleanup (the characters’ lives beyond each other). While the individual poems should be able to stand on their own, this collection is intended to be read as a narrative.


identifier: Hosseini, Seyedehfatemeh  (2016) Novel submerged membrane electro-bioreactor-anaerobic/anoxic ammonia oxidation (SMEBR-Anammox).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Conventional membrane bioreactor (MBR) is unable to remove nutrients to an acceptable level without additional operation units. However, submerged membrane electro-bioreactor (SMEBR) featured by a compact hybrid vessel, where biological processes, membrane filtration and electrokinetic phenomena take place simultaneously, is able to increase efficiency of nutrient removal. In SMEBR, nitrification and denitrification process happen due to creating alternately aerobic and anoxic conditions by supplying adequate direct current density (CD) and dissolved oxygen (DO). In order to upgrade total nitrogen (TN) removal, the research objective was to develop a novel SMEBR-Anammox. This research was the first attempt to create simultaneously aerobic condition for nitrifiers and anoxic for denitrifiers and anammox in a sole reactor. The experiments consisted of four phases where performances of Anammox, MBR, SMEBR and SMEBR-Anammox were tested and compared. All the reactors were fed with the synthetic wastewater while mixed-liquor suspended solids (MLSS) concentrations, current densities (CD) and dissolved oxygen (DO) were the influencing factors and they underwent optimization process. The same UF membrane module, temperature, SRT and HRT were applied in all tests.
In SMEBR-Anammox system, nitrifiers transform ammonia to nitrite and then to nitrate in aerobic phase, then, denitrifying bacteria generate gas nitrogen from nitrate in an anoxic phase. Furthermore, anammox bacteria use remaining nitrite to transform ammonia directly to nitrogen gas. Anammox (anaerobic/anoxic ammonium oxidation bacteria) was proven to be an effective method to eliminate high quantities of ammonium from wastewater; however their growth requires preserving special anoxic conditions during the entire process. Subsequently, an additional operation unit was constructed. Variation in these parameters affected the concentration of ammonia nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, phosphorous and chemical oxygen demand (COD) in the effluent. At steady state operation, the removal efficiencies of ammonia, nitrate improvement, phosphorus and COD in the SMEBR-Anammox were 97%, 99.95%, 99.91% and 99.87%, respectively. Accordingly, phosphorous removal was due to electrocoagulation process and phosphorous accumulative organism (PAO) growth while COD removal was the result of biological processes and flocculation.


identifier: Simpson, Kathryn  (2016) Making Monsters: Ugliness, Hatred, and Self-Representation in Viennese Modernity.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT

Making Monsters: Ugliness, Hatred, and Self-Representation in Viennese Modernity

Kathryn Simpson, PhD
Concordia University, 2016

This dissertation explores self-representation in early-twentieth-century Vienna, for example in local practices of self-portraiture.  Visual artists discussed include Richard Gerstl, the composer Arnold Schönberg (who also painted), Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele.  Nevertheless this project is interdisciplinary, and as such other forms of self-representation are also considered – for example rhetorical self-representational strategies by Viennese figures such as the satirical writer Karl Kraus, architect and theorist Adolf Loos, and the young philosopher-psychologist Otto Weininger.
The primary phenomenon under investigation in this discussion is the extensive use of ugliness as a strategy for self-representation in Viennese modernity, an ugliness that was connected specifically – and, as I detail, pervasively – to an affect of hate.  My argument is first and foremost that obsessive self-representation was a crucial component of Viennese modernity, and secondly that this obsession with self-fashioning and display must be understood at least in part in terms of a related cultural preoccupation with ugliness and hatred.
I analyze these cultural currents of hate and ugliness as they played out in philosophy, medicine (especially psychology and psychoanalysis), politics, and of course art history.  I consider the significance of the scholars of the Vienna School of Art History – such as Franz Wickhoff, who argued in defence of ugliness.  I also consider the role of ugliness in contemporaneous aesthetic philosophy, for example in the theory of negative empathy popularized first by Theodor Lipps and later by Wilhelm Worringer.  Sigmund Freud’s comments on ugliness and hate further illuminate a cultural milieu known both for its alienation and antagonism and for its artistic achievements.  I demonstrate that at the beginning of the twentieth century Viennese artists and thinkers fashioned oppositional personae and represented themselves as ugly for a variety of reasons: to emphasize the vanguard quality of their art, to grapple with Vienna’s virulent antisemitism, to work through other identity issues, to express a sense of martyrdom, to “tell the truth,” to create notoriety in a competitive local scene, and, ultimately, to affirm the totality of existence as that which includes the negative.


identifier: Chen, Longren  (2016) The effect of founders in IPO firms：A look at IPO firm valuation, delisting likelihood, and litigation risk.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This paper focuses on the impact of founder transitions in initial public offering firms. We examine transitions where the founder remains as CEO, stays in the top management team or on the board of directors, or is not in the firm anymore. We then test the model using 210 IPO firms with SIC codes in the range 7000-8999 that went public between 2000 and 2012. As robustness test, we divide the sample into IPO listings from 2000-05 and 2006-12, and differentiate between laddering vs. non-laddering related litigation, lawsuits for accounting reasons vs. non-accounting reasons, and dismissed vs. non-dismissed cases. The results suggest that firms tend to obtain higher valuations when they have professional managers. After three years, however, having the founder remain as CEO will be associated with a higher failure rate compared to having the founder leave the firm. In addition, within three years after the IPO, when a founder moves to a non-CEO role on the top management team or the board, the firms are less likely to face a lawsuit.


identifier: Awasthi, Rashami  (2016) Multimodal prehabilitation in patients undergoing colorectal cancer resection: The impact of supervised structured perioperative exercise on postoperative functional capacity.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Exercise training has been shown to positively affect the maintenance of functional capacity and facilitate recovery from surgery. This thesis proposes that a supervised pre- operative exercise training program would encourage patient compliance, thus maximizing the opportunity to regain functional exercise capacity 4-weeks post-surgery. The supervised group (Group S) received 4 training sessions at the Montreal General Hospital exercise laboratory along with a home-based exercise program during the pre-surgical period and provided daily supervised exercise during the post-surgical hospital stay. The unsupervised group (Group U) received a 4-week home-based exercise program during the pre-surgical period and were not seen by a kinesiologist during the post-surgical in-hospital stay. The exercise programs (both pre and post-surgery) included individualized aerobic, resistance and flexibility exercises. Both groups continued to exercise until 4 weeks post-surgery, after which they returned to the laboratory for evaluation. The primary outcome was functional walking capacity, as assessed by the six-minute walk test (6MWT).


identifier: Humphrey, Abigail  (2016) Word-cards in Action: A Classroom-based Study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Vocabulary is arguably the most important aspect of learning a new language, for without it, the successful expression of one’s thoughts, feelings, and desires cannot be achieved. There exist a multitude of ways through which vocabulary may be taught and learned, but one often-overlooked method in today’s communicative classroom environment is that of word-cards. In this study, word-cards were employed throughout a four-week session to aid ESL students (N=11) in the acquisition (recognition and use) of new vocabulary. This study aimed to answer the following three questions: (1) What features do classroom learners typically include or leave out in the making of their vocabulary cards, and which do they find most useful? (2) How do the learners perceive vocabulary learning through word cards? (3a) Are there measurable learning effects as indicated by performance on vocabulary tests administered at the beginning and end of a four-week school session during which vocabulary cards were used? (b) If so, to what extent was the knowledge acquired via word cards retained four weeks after the end of the session? Of a list of 213 potentially new words encountered in five separate 90-minute lessons, students were free to choose any 10 to 15 unknown words per lesson for which to create their word-cards (which resulted in a final average of 45 cards per student in total). Prior to beginning, both students and teacher were instructed in the basics of producing and using word-cards in their studies. Results indicated that the use of word-cards lead to the acquisition of new vocabulary. When the vocabulary that was learned with word-cards was compared to vocabulary learned without word-cards, results indicated a more successful overall acquisition rate for the word-card words.


identifier: Elias Downey, Martha  (2016) The Third Yes: Invitation, Response, and Collaboration in Dramatic Theology.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis, I position theology and theatre as conversation partners in order to argue that a dynamic, dramatic theology provides a viable and vibrant methodology capable of revealing what Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar identified as the “fire and light” at the heart of theology. This methodology stands firmly on the foundation of revelation through faith, tradition, and reason, but moves beyond this to dramatic encounter and the possibility of participation in the glory of God. At the intersection of theology and theatre I find three Yeses: divine invitation, human response, and divine/human collaboration or synergos. Using Balthasar’s Theo-Drama as a starting point, I engage with both theological and theatrical texts and practices in order to illustrate that the paradigm of gift as well as the aspects of “entering in,” movement, and embodied, live action are found in both disciplines. Four different approaches are utilised to illustrate the third Yes of divine/human collaboration: covenant, the plerosis of incarnation, theatrical and musical improvisation, and the concept of human interconnectivity in twentieth-century philosophy. Two important texts, the biblical book of Job and Luigi Pirandello’s play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, serve as proving grounds for the presence of the third Yes in both theology and theatre. By allowing the dialectic of divine initiative and human responsibility to play out within the context of drama, I seek to make room for a third way, one which is not biased toward either a theology from above or a theology from below, but one which reflects the ongoing dramatic encounter between divine and human actors.


identifier: Doonan, Natalie  (2016) Cloudberry Connections: Wilderness and Development on the Lower North Shore of Québec.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The region known as the Lower North Shore (LNS) consists of sixteen small communities spread along 400 km of coastline in northeastern Québec, Canada. Prompted by the collapse of its cod-fishing industry in the 1990s, the region has turned to place-branding strategies to encourage wilderness tourism as a form of economic renewal. This research-creation thesis examines rubus chamaemorus, or the cloudberry, a local wild berry, as a contested cultural symbol in this process.
The research question guiding this thesis asks: what are the effects of representations that are being used in efforts to stimulate economic development on the Lower North Shore of Québec? In particular, I analyze how the cloudberry is being used as a symbol of wilderness and purity in current place-branding projects in the region. This image perpetuates a frontier myth that the land is empty and available for privatization. The persistence of this narrative is shown across a history of similar settler colonial projects that use wilderness as a trope to justify so-called “development” of Indigenous land. This thesis argues furthermore that a relational approach to the cloudberry challenges its representation as a fixed “object”, understanding it instead as a nexus of lived relations that include a range of practices such as walking, cooking and camping, and a host of competing interests such as Concordia University, Université du Québec, local development centres on the LNS, as well as Anglophone, Francophone and Innu communities there. Through storytelling, the significance of cloudberries in everyday life on the coast is foregrounded, thus indicating social and environmental forms of well-being that should be respected and encouraged in various partnerships that are currently being negotiated there.
This research has involved building an immersive, interactive installation using projection mapping and voice recognition software. Manifest Cloudberry Dreams is a portable 16’ dome that serves both to archive and share video-recorded stories about harvesting and culinary practices using cloudberries on the LNS. These stories are vital counterpoints to dominant representations of the region as depressed, undeveloped, and dying.