identifier: TAZI, maha  (2021) Women’s Creative Disobedience and the Continuing (Gender) Revolution in Post-Arab Spring Morocco (2011-2020): Slam Poetry, Theatre, Visual Arts and RAPtivism.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation focuses on women’s creative expressions in post-Arab Spring
Morocco as they relate to their continuing struggle for human rights, social justice and gender
equality from 2011 to 2020. Specifically, I examine a number of artistic productions by four
self-identified Moroccan women artists from four distinct artistic disciplines - slam poetry,
theatre, visual arts and rap. I begin by locating women’s creative expressions in relation to
the literature on the creative insurgency of the Arab Spring and women’s creative
disobedience in contemporary Egypt. I pay particular attention to the gender paradox of the
Arab Spring, the rise of political Islam to power and its implications for women’s agency,
creativity and continued activism. This dissertation includes a textual and visual analysis of
the selected women’s artworks, supplemented by insights from the individual interviews I
conducted with the artists. Using bell hooks’s (1989) notion of talking back, which she
defines as a counter-hegemonic discourse that aims to contest and deconstruct structures of
domination, I argue that Moroccan women’s artistic expressions talk back to several social
and political realities that continue to undermine women’s social status today. These
productions emerge from and respond to a specific social and political context in post-
“revolutionary” Morocco (2011-2020), one that is characterized by both a hijacking of the
(political) revolution by the regime as well as the Islamists’ blatant backlash against women’s
rights.
Many scholars have previously argued that the Arab Spring failed precisely because it
did not include a gender-sensitive agenda. Drawing on Badran’s (2016)’s idea of the
continuing (gender and cultural) revolution in post-Arab Spring Egypt, I argue that
Moroccan women’s artistic productions exemplify several aspects of such a continuing
revolution in present-day Morocco. This is evident in the nature of the themes and topics that
women artivists address (i.e., epistemology), along with the way they interpret and make
meaning out of certain social realities that continue to undermine their social status today
(i.e., hermeneutics). The dissertation concludes by suggesting the continuing existence of a “transnational (feminist) revolution” in the North African region today where women
artivists are foregrounding gender as the focal point of both political analysis and praxis to
carry on the spirit of the 2011 revolutions.


identifier: Tesolin, Julia  (2021) “Boys Love Boy Toys”: A Qualitative Study Exploring the Role of Fathers in Young Boys’ Gendered Toy Preferences.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: Early childhood is an especially important period for children’s acquisition of gender related attitudes and beliefs. For boys, fathers serve as one of the primary social influences through which they learn about common gender stereotypes, including gender-typical and cross-gender play (Freeman, 2007). The current qualitative study was conducted with six boys (ages 4-6) and their fathers (ages 34-37), where fathers were first asked to complete an adapted version of the Child-Rearing Sex-Role Attitude Scale, which assessed their attitudes and beliefs about gender related toys, activities, and behaviors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the father-son pairs, or with the boys alone, where they participated in a series of toy-preference activities. Descriptive coding and content analysis were used to analyze the responses boys provided for their choices of toys. Responses indicated that boys have a more stereotyped definition of “girl toys” than they do of “boy toys”. Fathers’ self-described beliefs reported on the Sex-Role Attitude Scale were similarly reflected in their behaviours and comments during the interviews with their sons. The father-son dynamic, including father and sons’ responses to instances of gender non-conformity are discussed.


identifier: Cammalleri, Amanda, Perrault, Aurore A., Tarelli, Lukia, Caresse-Chakra, Emily, Patel, Rahul, Dang-Vu, Thien Thanh, Pepin, Véronique and Gouin, Jean-Philippe  (2021) A Randomized Trial of Exercise Training Versus Relaxation for the Treatment of Chronic Insomnia in Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

creator:
Cammalleri, Amanda
Perrault, Aurore A.
Tarelli, Lukia
Caresse-Chakra, Emily
Patel, Rahul
Dang-Vu, Thien Thanh
Pepin, Véronique
Gouin, Jean-Philippe

abstract:
Background:
Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome (OSA) is a common sleep disorder characterized by partial or complete blockage of the pharyngeal airway during sleep, posing as a significant public health concern. OSA is often comorbid with chronic insomnia (COMISA). Insomnia disorder involves a difficulty initiating sleep, maintaining sleep and/or early awakenings, despite time and opportunity for sleep, causing impairments in daytime functioning and significant distress. Individuals with COMISA suffer from worse sleep and daytime functioning, compared to individuals presenting with either disorder in isolation. Due to their insomnia complaints, these individuals tend to be less compliant with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, the gold standard treatment for OSA. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBTi) has shown promising results in this population but can be difficult for individuals to access, and alone, cannot improve OSA severity. This unique group requires a therapy targeted to both disorders, which would potentially improve apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and/or insomnia symptomology for a better sleep. Currently, no effective therapy tailored to these individuals has been found. Exercise is a potential non-pharmacological therapy that would simultaneously improve symptoms of both disorders. Studies examining the effects of exercise as a therapy for COMISA are lacking, and research examining exercise as a therapy for either of the two disorders alone yield mixed results likely due to variation in methodology and treatment approach.

Objectives:
(1) To determine if an 8-week exercise intervention would improve insomnia severity in patients with comorbid OSA and insomnia when compared to an 8-week active control condition of relaxation therapy. (2) To examine the effects of the exercise and relaxation interventions on cardiorespiratory fitness both within-groups and between-groups. (3) To examine if improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness would be associated with improved changes in objective and subjective sleep quality.

Methods:
Sixteen participants (10 female, 54.9  13.4 years of age) were randomised to 3 weekly sessions of exercise training or self-guided relaxation. The exercise sessions consisted of 60 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic and resistance exercise, with 1 weekly session supervised and the remaining two unsupervised at home or in the community. The protocol included a screening polysomnography (PSG) night, a cardiopulmonary exercise test, and an overnight PSG, as well as questionnaires (including the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI)) before and after the 8 weeks. All PSG recordings were sampled at 512 Hz (Somnomedics, Germany) and sleep stages were scored offline according to AASM guidelines. ISI and sleep efficiency (SE) (extracted from PSG) were assessed as primary outcomes. VO2peak (ml/kg/min), VO2 at the ventilatory threshold (VT), heart rate (HR) at 50% isotime (ISO) pre- and post- intervention were assessed as secondary outcomes. Bivariate correlations were also performed to examine any potential relationships between change in cardiorespiratory fitness and change in subjective and objective sleep parameters.

Results:
Results revealed a significant effect of time (pre, post 8-weeks) on ISI score (F(1,14)= 12.315; p=.003), but no significant effect of condition (exercise, relaxation) or time*condition interaction. Both exercise and relaxation had large effects on ISI, with exercise showing a larger effect size (Cohen’s d= 3.88) than relaxation (Cohen’s d= 0.184). No significant effects were found for SE. A significant time*condition interaction was found for VO2peak (ml/kg/min) (F(1,15)= 10.724; p=.006), with the exercise condition showing improvements. Spearman correlations indicated a non-significant association for change in ISI and change in VO2peak (ml/kg/min) (r=0.59; p>.05).

Conclusions:
Both exercise and relaxation reduced insomnia severity in people with COMISA, with exercise having a larger effect. Objective measures of sleep efficiency did not improve significantly in either group. Cardiorespiratory fitness improved with the partly home-based, moderate-intensity aerobic and resistance training intervention used in this study. Larger trials are warranted to confirm these findings.

Significance:
This is the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effects of an exercise intervention on sleep in this specific COMISA population.


identifier: Jia, Bingyan  (2021) Predicting cooling loads in hot and humid climates using machine-learning approaches.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
Predicting cooling loads in hot and humid climates using machine-learning approaches
Bingyan Jia
In residential, buildings cooling accounts for a significant amount of energy in hot, humid areas. In Qatar, cooling accounts for more than 60% of the country’s generated electricity. In previous years, overestimating cooling loads has led to wasted equipment costs and negatively impacted indoor thermal comfort. District cooling systems have gained popularity recently, both in Qatar and worldwide, due to advances in chillers, heat exchangers, and control systems. To determine the district cooling plant’s size and operation, it is vital to estimate building-level cooling loads. An accurate and fast prediction of building-level cooling loads is required to assist decision-making. There are several challenges in modeling building cooling loads, such as lack of detailed information regarding the buildings (e.g., building envelope), cooling energy data for validation, and computational effort. Furthermore, in multi-apartment residential buildings connected to a district or centralized cooling system, individual charging requires improvement. To save money and time on individual metering and charging, apartment-level cooling loads prediction is also required. Moreover, an apartment-level meta-model may be useful for optimizing building energy use and retrofit analysis at the apartment level.
This study aims to develop building- and apartment-level meta-models using machine learning approaches to predict the cooling load. Four machine-learning approaches are applied: multiple linear regression, support vector regression, artificial neural networks, and extreme gradient boosting. Critical parameters identified using sensitivity analysis are used as independent variables, which simultaneously consider the building envelope, climate, and internal heat gain parameters. New building energy models are created to test the meta-models’ performance.


identifier: Fathi Ajirloo, Bahman  (2021) Three Essays on Network Peer Effects on Firms and Financial Markets.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays that address recent topics in corporate finance that concern for scholars, policymakers, and investors. Main body of this dissertation has been developed based on the “nexus of contracts” theory of the firm which in recent years has sparked renewed debates on the motivation underlying firm size and boundary. The first essay explores a network of interconnected firms and examines the impact of the firm’s relationships with peers, rivals, and customers on its capital structure, and how the firm’s revealed peers influence its financing decisions. We demonstrate that industry classification approach is fraught with measurement error, and instead implement an alternative peer identification scheme that designates peer groups as those explicitly disclosed by managers to shareholders. The results contrast with previous studies that find only weak evidence for peer effects on capital structure. We find that peer effects are particularly strong when focal firms have persistent rivals, in the sense of supplying common customers for at least two consecutive years. While constructing the firm’s actual network poses a challenge, the new approach can lead to more real-world insights about firm behavior. In the second essay, I approach to a challenging version of peer effects model with firm’s and peer’s multinomial decision outcome as endogenous and financial fundamentals as exogenous explanatory variables. I show that managers do not set dividend policy independently and they are significantly under the influence of few self-disclosed diverse competitors rather than industry peers. The test results show that firm’s dividend change actions are significantly correlated with past dividend actions of its peers and it is highly predictable for the next period. I also investigate and report marginal effects of firm’s and peers’ different endogenous and exogenous determinants on the outcome decision variable for example a peer group with an overall dividend increase action in the past 180 days, increases the chance of the dividend increase in the focal firm. Considering the market capitalization of dividend paying firms, the identified marginal effects and prediction of the cash distribution are economically meaningful and important. In the third essay, I propose a new approach to model and measure intangible value of the firm as the joint of network feature and book value of the firm. Despite the growing importance, the empirical asset pricing research has struggled to evaluate the effects of intangible assets on firms’ market value. Utilizing characteristics of the firm network, I propose a network-centric value factor to replace the under-performing traditional value factor (HML) in a series of asset pricing factor model. I show that the new value factor portfolio provides stronger performance in all periods of the sample. I also explore short and long strategies to better understand effects of the networks on value of the firms. Initial findings emphasize that asset pricing studies should adjust the factor models by including intangible network value of the firm.


identifier: Mazaheri, Mandana  (2021) A recommender system for scientific datasets and analysis pipelines.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Scientific datasets and analysis pipelines are increasingly being shared
publicly in the interest of open science.
However, mechanisms are lacking to reliably identify which pipelines
and datasets can appropriately be used together. Given the increasing number of high-quality public datasets and
pipelines, this lack of clear compatibility threatens the
findability and reusability of these resources. We investigate
the feasibility of a collaborative filtering system to recommend pipelines
and datasets based on provenance records from previous executions.
We evaluate our system using datasets and pipelines extracted from the
Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform, a national initiative for open
neuroscience. The recommendations provided by our system (AUC$=0.83$) are
significantly better than chance and outperform recommendations made by
domain experts using their previous knowledge as well as pipeline and dataset descriptions (AUC$=0.63$). In particular, domain experts often neglect
low-level technical aspects of a pipeline-dataset interaction, such as the level of pre-processing, which are
captured by a provenance-based system. We conclude that provenance-based
pipeline and dataset recommenders are feasible and beneficial to
the sharing and usage of open-science resources. Future
work will focus on the collection of more
comprehensive provenance traces, and on deploying the system in production.


identifier: Lou, Andrés  (2021) Discourse Segmentation of Judicial Decisions for Fact Extraction.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In order to justify rulings, legal documents need to present facts as well as an analysis built on these. However, identifying what a \textit{Fact} is and what a \textit{non-Fact} is, and how they relate in order to bring together a legal document is often not an easy task. Because of a number of reasons, such as the domain-specific definition of the term \textit{Fact}, or the technical vocabulary that permeates the documents in which these are to be found, extracting the case-related facts from a legal document is usually time-consuming and expensive.

In this thesis, we present two methods to automatically extract case-relevant facts in French-language legal documents pertaining to tenant-landlord disputes. We base our approaches on the assumption that the text of a decision will follow the structural convention of first stating the facts and then performing an analysis based on them. This assumption is itself based on the widespread application of the IRAC legal document writing model and its many variants \parencite{beazley2018practical}. Given a legal document, we perform text segmentation to extract the parts that contain the case-relevant \textit{Facts} using two different approaches based on neural methods commonly used in Natural Language Processing and a novel heuristic method based on the density of \textit{Facts} in a segment of the text.

Our two approaches are based on the representation of legal texts as binary strings, where contiguous subsequences of 1's represent sentences containing \textit{Facts} and, conversely, contiguous subsequences of 0's correspond to sentences containing \textit{non-Facts}. The first approach consists of classifying each sentence in the document as either \textit{Facts} or \textit{non-Facts} using an ensemble model of independent word embeddings \parencite{mikolov2013efficient}, GRU networks \parencite{cho2014learning} and Convolutional Neural Networks \parencite{kim2014convolutional}. The second approach consists of a contextual classification of sentences as either class using recurrent architectures to create the binary string representation of the document; we experiment using LSTM networks \parencite{hochreiter1997long}, GRU networks, and Attention Encoder-Decoder models \parencite{bahdanau2014neural}. The segmentation is carried out by introducing the concept of \textit{purity}, a measure of the density of facts in a given subsequence in the binary string; the facts are extracted by maximising both the length and the purity of the substring containing the facts.

Extrinsic evaluations of both approaches show that the second approach outperforms the first by producing the greater number of documents whose segmentation point is predicted within a single sentence of difference from the one indicated by the gold standard. Nevertheless, a significant percentage of segmentation points are underestimated by being predicted more than four sentences away from the point determined by the gold standard.


identifier: Elgharabawy, Mounir  (2021) Cross-vendor Security Analysis of Android Unix Domain Sockets.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The Android operating system is currently the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Android is based on Linux and therefore inherits its features including its Inter-process Communication (IPC) mechanisms. These mechanisms are used by processes to communicate with one another and are extensively used in Android. Although the Android-specific IPC mechanisms have been studied extensively, Unix domain sockets have not been studied as much despite playing a crucial role in the IPC of highly privileged system daemons. In this thesis, we propose SAUSAGE, an efficient novel static analysis framework to study the security properties of these sockets. SAUSAGE considers access control policies implemented in the Android security model as well as authentication checks implemented by the daemon binaries. It is a fully static large-scale analysis framework specifically designed to analyze Unix domain socket usage in Android system daemons. We use this framework to analyze 200 Android images across eight popular smartphone vendors spanning Android versions 7-9. As a result, we uncover multiple access control misconfigurations and insecure authentication checks introduced by vendor customization. Our notable findings include a permission bypass in highly privileged Qualcomm system daemons and a vendor-specific daemon exposing an unprotected socket that allows an untrusted app to set the scheduling priority of other processes running on the system.


identifier: Palmer, Angela  (2021) Transitioning from theory into practice in the nursing profession: Challenges experienced by nurses with a CEGEP and bachelor’s degree in a long-term care facility in Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the different challenges individuals face when entering the nursing profession with either a CEGEP (college) or a bachelor’s degree. I interviewed two groups of newly qualified/registered nurses: one group with a bachelor’s degree the other with a college degree who are currently working in a Long-Term Care Facility (LTCF): seven Registered Nurses (RN), two CEGEP (DEC) and five bachelor (BScN) RNs all of whom agreed that they were not adequately prepared by their education to work in an LTC. Through my research, I identified their individual learning needs based on their educational backgrounds as well as current practice. The research questions that guided the interviews where:

1.	How did the entry level competency of CEGEP nursing diploma program prepare you for the workforce in Montreal?
2.	How did the entry level competency of the bachelor’s degree in Nursing prepare you for the workforce in Montreal?
3.	Do you feel that your employer supported you in integrating to the clinical setting?

Based on the information received from the participants lived experience I have made suggestions for designing an orientation program for newly hired nurses by LTCFs that takes into account the educational background of the novice nurses to optimize their learning and explore mentoring opportunities or approaches aiming at integrating them into the working environment of an LTCF.


identifier: Patterson, Kayley  (2021) Self-Actualization through Music Therapy for Older Adults at End of Life: A Philosophical Inquiry.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The purpose of this philosophical inquiry was to make a case for why older adults need opportunities for self-actualization at end of life, and to understand why music therapy is an ideal avenue through which to facilitate these opportunities. An evolving approach to music therapy for neurotypical older adults at end of life was conceptualized by adapting Zalenski and Raspa’s (2006) framework for achieving human potential in hospice, which draws upon Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and situates self-actualization as an ultimate end-of-life care goal. This evolving music therapy approach, entitled Circle of Self-Actualization, includes six components: music therapy as pain management (to address older adults’ physiological needs), music therapy as a safe space (to address older adults’ safety needs), music therapy as connection (to address older adults’ belonging needs), music therapy as self-empowerment (to address older adults’ esteem needs), music therapy as meaning (to address older adults’ self-actualization needs), and music therapy as transformation (also to address older adults’ self-actualization needs). Limitations of the inquiry as well as potential implications for practice and research are presented. It is the researcher’s intent that the rationale and evolving approach presented in this paper will help music therapists to further recognize and support older adult clients in the realization of their needs for self-actualization at end of life.


identifier: Goswami, Henish  (2021) Generating Topobathymetry Digital Elevation Model using Crowdsourced Bathymetry: A case of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River in Quebec.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The accuracy of two- and three-dimensional hydraulic modelling of free surface flow depends significantly on a complete and accurate geometric description of the river channel and floodplains in the form of a continuous, seamless digital elevation model (DEM). With the advent of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) surveys, high-resolution topographic data is increasingly becoming available. However, bathymetric information for most rivers is not available in ready-to-use digital data formats, mainly because the primary data collection methods, i.e., hydrographic surveys, are costly and time-intensive. The existing methods for generating topobathymetry digital elevation model (TB-DEM) require access to raw data and ground measurements to some extent. This study proposes a simple superposition-based approach to generating a seamless elevation model using terrestrial and bathymetry information available from secondary data sources, including crowdsourcing. It comprises geographic information system (GIS) based interpolation and geoprocessing techniques. An integrated TB-DEM is generated for part of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River and the overbank areas on the upstream side of Montreal Island in Quebec. The output DEM is verified using internal and external validation criteria. The upland topography is unaffected by the superposition process, whereas the interpolated bathymetry shows significant positive linear associations with the reference elevation data. The vertical accuracy of bathymetry DEM with respect to Canadian Hydrographic Service Non-Navigational Bathymetric Data-10 (NONNA-10) reference data is 1.43 m in root-mean-squared error. The results of 1-m × 1-m DEM from this study are useful for evaluations of fish habitat health, shoreline stability and drinking-water withdrawal-site selection, and for predictions of river floods, morphological changes, and changes of water quality. The methods are applicable to other sites for generating high-resolution DEMs.


identifier: Garoot, Afnan  (2021) Handwriting Analysis and Personality: A Computerized Study on the Validity of Graphology.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Handwriting analysis, also known as graphology, is defined as an analysis of a psychological structure of a human subject through his/her handwriting. It has been applied recently in different fields including areas where making a crucial decision is highly desirable such as forensic evidence, criminology, and disease analysis. However, making a crucial decision based on the results of handwriting analysis is a controversial scientific topic because
the validity of graphology rules is still in question.

A few validity studies on handwriting analysis have already been conducted earlier using the evaluation of correlation between psychological questionnaires and manual handwriting analysis and they ended up with conflicting results. Manual handwriting analysis suffers from some issues which could be the reasons of the early inconsistent results. Therefore, this study conducted an empirical study that investigates the validation of graphology rules
by evaluating the correlation between one of psychological tests named Big Five Factor Markers Test and our proposed automated handwriting analysis system that measures the level of the same big five personality traits based on graphological rules.

Our automated BFFM system is called Averaging of SMOTE multi-label SVM-CNN (AvgMlSC). It constructs synthetic samples using Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (SMOTE) and averages two learning-based classifiers i.e. Multi-label Support Vector Machine and Multi-label Convolutional Neural Network based on offline handwriting recognition to produce one optimal predictive model. The model is trained using 1066 handwriting samples written in English, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. The results reveal that our proposed model outperformed the overall performance of five traditional models with 93% predictive accuracy, 0.94 AUC, and 90% F-Score.

The statistical test of Spearman’s correlation reports that there is a statistically significant relationship between the score of the big five factors questionnaire and the graphologist’s evaluation for the Big Five Factors with a different strength of relationship. A weak positive
relationship is found for Extraversion. However, a moderate positive relationship is reported for Conscientiousness and Open to Experience. On the other hand, a strong positive relationship is indicated for Agreeableness, whilst a very weak positive relationship
has been found for the last factor which is Emotional Stability.


identifier: Rashid, Saima  (2021) SAGA complex subunits in Candida albicans differentially regulate Filamentation, Invasiveness and Biofilm formation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: SAGA (Spt-Ada-Gcn5-acetyltransferase) is a highly conserved, multiprotein co-activator complex that consists of five distinct modules. It has two enzymatic functions, a histone acetyltransferase (HAT) and a deubiquitinase (DUB) and plays a central role in processes such as transcription initiation, elongation, protein stability and telomere maintenance. We analysed conditional and null mutants of the SAGA complex module components in the fungal pathogen Candida albicans; Ngg1, (the HAT module); Ubp8, (the Dub module); Tra1, (the recruitment module), Spt7, (the architecture module) and Spt8, (the TBP interaction unit), and assessed their roles in a variety of cellular processes. We observed that spt7Δ/Δ and spt8Δ/Δ strains have a filamentous phenotype, and both are highly invasive in yeast growing conditions as compared to the wild type, while ngg1Δ/Δ and ubp8Δ/Δ are in yeast-locked state and non-invasive in both YPD media and filamentous induced conditions compared to wild type. RNA-sequencing-based transcriptional profiling of SAGA mutants reveals upregulation of hyphal specific genes in spt7Δ/Δ and spt8Δ/Δ strains and downregulation of ergosterol metabolism pathway. As well, spt7Δ/Δ and spt8Δ/Δ confer susceptibility to antifungal drugs, to acidic and alkaline pH, to high temperature, and to osmotic, oxidative, cell wall and DNA damage stresses, indicating that these proteins are important for genotoxic and cellular stress responses. Despite having similar morphological phenotypes (constitutively filamentous and invasive) spt7 and spt8 mutants displayed variation in nuclear distribution where spt7Δ/Δ cells were frequently binucleate and spt8Δ/Δ cells were consistently mononucleate. We also observed that spt7Δ/Δ and spt8Δ/Δ mutants were quickly engulfed by macrophages compared to ngg1Δ/Δ and ubp8Δ/Δ strains. All these findings suggest that the SAGA complex modules can have contrasting functions where loss of Spt7 or Spt8 enhances filamentation and invasiveness while loss of Ngg1 or Ubp8 blocks these processes.


identifier: Agwudagwu Elimby, Franca  (2021) Teaching to stress or stressing to teach? Meditation and teachers’ wellbeing.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Well-being is both a personal and societal quest. Any imbalance in well-being promotes stress. The stresses faced by teachers lead to negative consequences that can undermine their ability to sustain emotional health and positive interactions. Teachers are in a situation where they teach to stress or stress to teach. Through the framework of a Foucauldian critique of technologies of the self and positive education (Reveley, 2015), I use narrative inquiry to conduct a critical narrative analysis of literature and anecdotal accounts of teachers who practice Jyoti and Mindfulness meditations to identify any roles meditation may play in their well-being. My three research questions include the perceived part of Jyoti and Mindfulness meditations to teachers' well-being, how teachers who turn to meditation relate their practice to stress management, and why? Furthermore, whether individual teachers seem to accept the narrative of using their meditative practices to solve social and political problems imposed by their job.  Teachers’ use of Mindfulness meditation is associated to Foucault's technologies of the self in this study (Foucault, 1988). Findings indicate that participant teachers practice meditation individually and sometimes with their students. These teachers perceive meditation as beneficail both to them and their students. I did not observe any collective effort by the teachers to confront the multifaceted challenges that besiege the teaching profession. Hence, while meditation leads to individual transformation, the system remains unchanged.


identifier: Spilkin, Amanda  (2021) fNIRS Measurement of Cortical Activity in Younger and Older Adults During Gait and Dual-Task Assignment.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive brain imaging technique which measures brain activity via local changes in blood hemoglobin concentration. Since brain activity decreases as a function of age, it is expected that aging adults will demonstrate less hemodynamic changes and therefore, indicate less cortical activation compared to younger adults. To test the stated relationships, this study involves using the Near Infra-Red Optimal Tomography (NIROT) workflow with Maximum Entropy on the Mean (MEM), using personalized fNIRS and local 3D reconstruction to assess the hemodynamic response elicited during simultaneous walking and arithmetic tasks in healthy young and older adults. Personalized fNIRS consisted of following the Optimal Montage algorithm, which maximizes the positions of fNIRS sensors to increase sensitivity to two targeted brain regions: the Inferior Frontal Gyrus (IFG) and Middle Frontal Gyrus (MFG) which are both involved in performing mental arithmetic and shown to demonstrate compensatory behaviors in single task (mental arithmetic only) when compared to dual task (walking while performing mental arithmetic).
Single and dual tasks were considered for five younger adults and two older adults. Subject-specific optimal montages were calculated to ensure maximum light sensitivity to the target ROI and sufficient spatial overlap between sensors, allowing local 3D reconstruction of [HbO] and [HbR] response along the underlying cortical surface. Single task consisted of a block design arithmetic task (Serial-Sevens: sequential subtraction. For dual task, the same arithmetic task was performed, while participants were walking on a treadmill. NIRSTORM software package was used for channel space analysis of fNIRS signal, motion correction, modified Beer Lambert Law and block averaging. Reconstruction in 3D using Maximum Entropy on the Mean (MEM) was calculated using the same number of trials for each subject.
In addition to answering questions encompassing brain activity as a function of age and balancing a cognitive task during gait, the study provided data for investigating trends around motion artifacts and testing the effectiveness of an accelerometer during simultaneous gait and fNIRS acquisitions. Due to restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, this study serves as a proof of concept and methods in improving the quality of data.


identifier: Meriem El Boudadi, MB  (2021) Brain Drain: Why Moroccan Journalists Leave their Country.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis analyzes the reasons Moroccan journalists leave their country. It looks closely at the conditions under which journalists work in the country, what they are searching for when they leave, and their experiences working abroad. Ten Moroccan journalists were interviewed (five women and five men). They were asked to share their own experiences while working in Morocco and after they left. In-depth interviewing was used to facilitate the exchange between the researcher and the participants. Giddens’ (1984) and Mosco’s (2009) structuration theory was mobilized as a theoretical framework to situate their experiences.

This research found that journalists left because they were looking for personal freedom and to improve their quality of life. They were also interested in personal development, in their careers and education. While restrictions on press freedom weren’t identified as a primary reason to leave the country, the participants offered insight into how self-censorship that occurs in Moroccan media can follow them to other countries. Finally, looking for more financial security was a reason to leave for half of the journalists who were interviewed, but even those who were not financially motivated to search for work elsewhere found that the higher salaries they received abroad have contributed to their increased quality of life.


identifier: Ayoup, Patrick ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2412-0491 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2412-0491>  (2021) A Case Study on Gamifying DevOps Practices in Industry.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Gamification is the use of game elements such as points, leaderboards, and badges in a non-game context to encourage a desired behavior from individuals interacting with an environment. Recently, gamification has found its way into software engineering contexts as a means to promote certain activities to practitioners. Previous studies investigated the use of gamification to promote the adoption of a variety of tools and practices, however, these studies were either performed in an educational environment or in small teams of developers in the industry.

In this thesis, we performed a large-scale mixed-methods study on the effects of badge based gamification in promoting the adoption of DevOps practices in a very large company and evaluated how practice adoption is associated with changes in key delivery, quality, and throughput metrics of 333 software projects. Our results indicate that gamification accelerated the adoption of some DevOps practices by at least 60%, with increased adoption rates up to 6x. We found mixed results when associating badge adoption and metric changes: teams that earned testing badges showed an increase in bug fixing commits but output fewer commits and pull requests; teams that earned code review and quality tooling badges exhibited faster delivery metrics. Finally, our empirical study was supplemented by a survey with 45 developers where 73% of respondents found badges to be helpful for learning about and adopting new standardized practices. Our results contribute to the rich knowledge on gamification with a unique and important perspective from real industry practitioners.


identifier: Amooye Foomany, Nima  (2021) A Novel 3D Printed Wrist Rehabilitation Robot: Design, Development and Optimal Trajectory Planning.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Rehabilitation of patients suffering after stroke impairment is a lengthy process and requires experienced therapists. These limitations have led to the introduction of rehabilitation robots that can operate for a longer time while eliminating the lack of professional therapists. In this thesis, we propose a two-degrees-of-freedom robot for wrist rehabilitation, referred to as MOCH. The MOCH mechanism comprises a remote center of motion (RCM) mechanism with a rotation center outside of the robot structure.
When the patient holds the robot end-effector, coinciding the RCM of the robot with the rotation axis of the wrist,  allows pure rotational motion of the hand.
As the RCM lies out of the robot structure, there is less risk of interference with the patient. Furthermore, MOCH benefits a novel actuation that enables the actuators to be grounded, reducing the inertia and the size of the robot. The optimal design of MOCH is provided considering the mechanical criteria and requirements of the wrist rehabilitation. Based on the proposed design, a prototype of the robot is developed with a total mass of 1.3 kg using 3D printing technology. Additionally, we introduce a novel methodology for passive rehabilitation exercise, exploiting the wrist dynamics which removes the complexity of force/impedance control approaches. This method involves designing an optimal trajectory within the limits of the wrist motion, and to keep the applied torque on the patient's hand in a safe range without using force sensors. The proposed trajectory is tested on a healthy individual using the implemented prototype.


identifier: Tarricone, Sofia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9548-6469 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9548-6469>  (2021) The Painlevé II hierarchy: geometry and applications.  PhD thesis, Concordia University (in cotutelle with Angers University).

abstract: The Painlevé II hierarchy is a sequence of nonlinear ODEs, with the Painlevé II equation as first member. Each member of the hierarchy admits a Lax pair in terms of isomonodromic deformations of a rank 2 system of linear ODEs, with polynomial coefficient for the homogeneous case. It was recently proved that the Tracy-Widom formula for the Hastings-McLeod solution of the homogeneous PII equation can be extended to analogue solutions of the homogeneous PII hierarchy using Fredholm determinants of operators acting through higher order Airy kernels. These integral operators are used in the theory of determinantal point processes with applications in statistical mechanics and random matrix theory. From this starting point, this PhD thesis explored the following directions. We found a formula of Tracy-Widom type connecting the Fredholm determinants of operators acting through matrix-valued analogues of the higher order Airy kernels with particular solution of a matrix-valued PII hierarchy. The result is achieved by using a matrix-valued Riemann-Hilbert problem to study these Fredholm determinants and by deriving a block-matrix Lax pair for the relevant hierarchy. We also found another generalization of the Tracy-Widom formula, this time relating the Fredholm determinants of finite-temperature versions of higher order Airy kernels operators to particular solutions of an integro-differential Painlevé II hierarchy. In this setting, a suitable operator-valued Riemann-Hilbert problem is used to study the relevant Fredholm determinant. The study of its solution produces in the end an operator-valued Lax pair that naturally encodes an integro-differential Painlevé II hierarchy. From a more geometrical point of view, we analyzed the Poisson-symplectic structure of the monodromy manifolds associated to a system of linear ODEs with polynomial coefficient, also known as Stokes manifolds. For the rank 2 case, we found explicit log-canonical coordinates for the symplectic 2-form, forming a cluster algebra of specific type. Moreover, the log-canonical coordinates constructed in this way provide a linearization of the Poisson structure  on the Stokes manifolds, first introduced by Flaschka and Newell in their pioneering work of 1981.


identifier: Hatami Majoumerd, Shadi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-8144 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0048-8144>  (2021) Development of a Global Statistical Framework for Estimating Landscape Freeze-Thaw under Changing Climate Conditions with Application to Québec.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Seasonal Freeze-Thaw (FT) dynamics are among the most important landscape processes, influencing ground thermal and hydrological characteristics across cold regions. These impacts can further affect the environmental processes, socio-economic, and cultural activities developed around the use of lands and waters. From a physical perspective and at the large spatial and regional scales, temperature and snow depth are the key drivers of variability in the timing and distribution of FT dynamics. However, climate change has significantly affected both temperature and snow depth over the past decades, and thus FT dynamics in time and space. As a result, it is of a great importance to understand and quantify the control of changing climate on FT characteristics and project future states of FT characteristics subject to future climatic projections. This knowledge and modeling capability can provide an invaluable information for agricultural activities, infrastructure design and maintenance, monitoring the ecosystem’s livelihood, and estimating land-induced greenhouse gas emissions due to permafrost degradation. This thesis provides a generic and globally relevant statistical framework to quantify the compound control of temperature and snow depth on FT dynamics over different spatiotemporal scales. A set of gridded observed temperature and snow depth data with the remotely sensed state of the frozen soil are utilized as basis for understanding the climate control on FT dynamics and their spatiotemporal variability. Using these gridded data records, it is possible to greatly overcome the limitations in using station-based data, particularly at higher latitudes. Utilizing future projections of climate models along with a rigorous data processing step and different statistical methodologies, future projections of precipitation type, snow depth, and FT can be obtained over the required spatial and temporal resolutions. Although statistical models have been widely used to address the impact of changing climate on different environmental processes, to the best of our knowledge, there was no previously known formal framework to pair the hydroclimatic data with FT patterns. In this work, bivariate and multivariate copula methodologies are used to statistically model the interdependencies between a relevant set of hydroclimatic variables and different FT characteristics and consequently quantify the control of climate on FT patterns over observed and future time episodes. By considering Québec as a case study, it is demonstrated that how this methodology can be fused with available bottom-up and top-down impact assessment approaches. In the bottom-up impact assessment approach, the response of FT characteristics to a range of feasible future climate conditions is quantified using various forms of stress tests in the form of what-if scenarios. To implement the model in the context of top-down impact assessments, a dynamic copula model with time-varying parameterization is advised and accordingly, future FT characteristics are projected conditional to future air temperature and snow depth in Québec.


identifier: Mohammadhossein, Ghayour ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1061-9830 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1061-9830>  (2021) Mechanical Performance and Failure of Laminated Composites Made by Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) Process.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) is a new robot technology that has the advantages of both the rapid manufacturing process and reducing material waste. However, new types of defects are introduced into the composite structures when using the fibre tows instead of composite prepreg sheets. These defects can cause geometrical discontinuities and local material inhomogeneities. Although the effect of these defects on the in-plane mechanical performance of composite structures can be found in the literature, there is still a lack of knowledge in studying the out-of-plane and impact response of the composite laminates.
The main objective of this research study is to investigate the effect of induced tow-gaps on the Low-Velocity Impact (LVI) response and Compression After Impact (CAI) response of the thin composite plates. For this purpose, defective quasi-isotropic composite plates have been manufactured with the AFP technique. Two millimetres of tow-gaps are embedded in all composite plies to provide an average of 8% of pre-cured volumetric gaps in all specimens.
The test specimens are subjected to impact loads with impact energies of 5 J, 10 J, and 15 J, and the corresponding impact response and projected delamination of the defective plates are compared with the baseline sample. Delamination areas are measured using the Ultrasonic C-scan technique. CAI tests are carried out to evaluate the residual compressive strengths of the defective impacted samples. Furthermore, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique is used during the CAI tests to measure the in-plane strains of the specimen under compressive loading. Effect of the curing process on the gap formation is evaluated by measuring the Induced Gap Shrinkage Factor (IGSF) using microscopic observation. This factor is used for numerical simulation of the defective composite plates.  Additional tests on beams are performed to evaluate the out-of-plane response of the defective beams.  Three-point bending tests are carried out on both short and standard beams to measure the interlaminar shear strength and flexural stiffness/strength of the composite beams with tow-gaps.
Furthermore, Induced Defect Layer Method (IDLM), a robust meso-macro model, is developed for damage analysis of the defective laminates. This method uses a geometrical parameter to incorporate induced gaps in the elastic, inelastic, and softening behaviour of the material. The main advantage of the proposed method is that a novel homogenization technique is used to include tow gaps in composite damage analysis of defective laminates. In addition, IDLM evaluates the mechanical response of the defective laminates with acceptable precision and less computational time compared to the current numerical models.
Results indicate that tow-gaps can reduce the impact resistance of the composite plates by about 17% for low levels of impact energy. It is also shown that the interaction of induced gaps and impact damage at the compressive residual strength reduction of impacted thin composite plates is significant and cannot be neglected. Numerical results show that the IDLM is a robust method for damage analysis of the composite laminates with induced gaps.


identifier: Tavakoli Kafiabad, Shayan  (2021) Design and Planning of Maintenance Logistics Networks.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The system up-time and availability play an essential role in industrial, maritime, aeronautical, and health care sectors. These sectors utilize, in general, several advanced capital systems, such as gas turbines, radars, airplane engines, and MRI-scanners. Most of these technical devices contain expensive and low-demand repairable parts. The management of maintenance logistics networks deal with decisions both in the design and planning phases. In the design phase, goals such as the allocation of users to maintenance centers and spare-part provisioning are pursued. On the other hand, the planning phase deals with decisions in terms of workforce, capacity, and aggregate planning. Maintenance planning is a hard task due to several conflicting constraints, such as sporadic demand, uncertain repair and inspection time, limited capacity, and availability of resources (inventory and certified operators). Our problem of interest is mainly motivated by maintenance logistics networks in the context of gas turbine engines. The maintenance service providers to these devices are confronted with the interaction of workforce training and operations planning along with demand and repair time uncertainty, that introduce new challenges to the management of these logistics networks.
In the first part of this thesis, we devise a decision model to obtain the optimal size of workforce, training schedule, repair quantity, as well as number of repair jobs to outsource so as to minimize the cost of repair operations, spare part stock, training, outsourcing, and penalties incurred for the delayed delivery of repaired equipment over a planning horizon. Then, we evaluate the impact of integrating workforce training with operational planning decisions in maintenance facilities. Besides, we analyze the role of risk mitigation strategies such as outsourcing of repair jobs to other maintenance centers and borrowing of certified operators in the presence of demand fluctuations by formulating a two-stage stochastic programming model.
 The second part of the thesis is an effort to incorporate the repair time uncertainty into the decision model developed in the first contribution. We propose a multi-stage stochastic programming model for integrated production and workforce planning under independent random repair times of faulty components. Then, we develop an approximate decomposition algorithm, based on Lagrangian relaxation approach, to efficiently solve the problem for real-size instances. This algorithm relies on decomposing the MSP model into sub-models corresponding to component scenario trees and coordinating them via a sub-gradient algorithm to obtain a high-quality feasible solution.
In the final part of this thesis, given an MLN that provides maintenance/repair services to geographically dispersed equipment users, we propose a two-stage robust optimization model for collaborative design and planning of maintenance networks under demand uncertainty. The goal of this model is to determine the optimal allocation of customers to each maintenance center along with the initial stock level of different spare parts in each facility so as to minimize the cost of late deliveries under worst-case demand scenarios. We consider component and operator sharing strategies as the recourse actions in this model to hedge against the demand surge. The proposed approach is compared with a deterministic model by the aid of Monte-Carlo simulation on several test instances inspired by a real case study.


identifier: Hedayati Nasab, Siavash ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0011-5161 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0011-5161>  (2021) Accelerated Temporal Schemes for High-Order Unstructured Methods.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The ability to discretize and solve time-dependent Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) remains of great importance to a variety of physical and engineering applications. Recent progress in supercomputing or high-performance computing has opened new opportunities for numerical simulation of the partial differential equations (PDEs) that appear in many transient physical phenomena, including the equations governing fluid flow. In addition, accurate and stable space-time discretization of the partial differential equations governing the dynamic behavior of complex physical phenomena, such as fluid flow, is still an outstanding challenge. Even though significant attention has been paid to high and low-order spatial schemes over the last several years, temporal schemes still rely on relatively inefficient approaches.
Furthermore, academia and industry mostly rely on implicit time marching methods. These implicit schemes require significant memory once combined with high-order spatial discretizations. However, since the advent of high-performance general-purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU), renewed interest has been focused on explicit methods. These explicit schemes are particularly appealing due to their low memory consumption and simplicity of implementation.
This study proposes low and high-order optimal Runge-Kutta schemes for FR/DG high-order spatial discretizations with multi-dimensional element types. These optimal stability polynomials improve the stability of the numerical solution and speed up the simulation for high-order element types once compared to classical Runge-Kutta methods. We then develop third-order accurate Paired Explicit Runge-Kutta (P-ERK) schemes for locally stiff systems of equations. These third-order P-ERK schemes allow Runge-Kutta schemes with different numbers of active stages to be assigned based on local stiffness criteria, while seamlessly pairing at their interface. We then generate families of schemes optimized for the high-order flux reconstruction spatial discretization. Finally, We propose optimal explicit schemes for Ansys Fluent finite volume density-based solver, and we investigate the effect of updating and freezing reconstruction gradient in intermediate Runge-Kutta schemes. Moreover, we explore the impact of optimal schemes combined with the updated gradients in scale-resolving simulations with Fluent's finite volume solver. We then show that even though freezing the reconstruction gradients in intermediate Runge-Kutta stages can reduce computational cost per time step, it significantly increases the error and hampers stability by limiting the time-step size.


identifier: Kamar, Céline  (2021) Online Shaming and Life in the Public Eye: Navigating the Grey Zones in the Politics of Social Disapproval.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Smartphones and social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) have become omnipresent in Western societies. A public social media profile can reach a global audience, but the opposite is also true, a public social media profile can receive comments from all over the world. Should a social media user emit a post or statement that goes viral for being controversial, they will be subjected to a wide array of responses ranging from approval to disapproval to denigration (Ronson, 2015). A tension lies in the contemporary and cultural tendency to experience social disapproval as degrading, and this thesis will undertake the exploratory challenge of examining if and how a distinction can be made between expressing a difference of opinion and commenting in a way that puts down others for not meeting one’s approval. To do so, the following study conducted an emotional discourse analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Kleres, 2010; De Courville Nicol, 2011) of 219 tweets, displaying varying tones and intensities, in response to statements from Quebecoise singer-songwriter Safia Nolin. Combining my analysis with an interdisciplinary emotions-oriented approach (Armon-Jones, 1988; Hochschild, 1983; Thoits; 1989; Freund; 1990; Scheff, 1990; Davis, 2012; Feldman-Barret, 2018), I used the work of De Courville Nicol (2011; 2021; 2021a; 2021b; 2021c) to study the links between social disapproval, contemporary anxiety, feeling rules, and socio-emotional norms. In my analysis, I present the finding that Safia Nolin’s statements display signs of social, generalized, and separation anxiety. I then expand on the argument that the tools to counter those anxieties were embedded in audience members' advice, as users systematically oriented the singer towards the feeling rules of positive relationality for social anxiety, positive realism for generalized anxiety, and positive individuality for separation anxiety.


identifier: Tian, Xuelin  (2021) Assessment of Air Pollution and Carbon Emission from Fuel Consumption Activities.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The consumption of fuel is associated with a number of environmental issues. One of the major environmental concerns is the increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollution. GHG emissions and air pollution are mainly from the human activities such as transportation, non-renewable electricity production, oil and gas production, and heating and cooling of buildings. In this thesis, a comprehensive review was conducted to assess the impact of elements in urban form on on-road vehicles GHG emissions. A small-medium North American city case study was given to track the progress in reducing real-world emissions over time and to estimate the future air quality impacts based on the trends of fleet mixes. It helps gain understanding of detailed source apportionment information to quantify the contributions to total emission made by different vehicle body types, different fuels, and manufacturer models in recent decades and how the fuel economy of the vehicle fleet has changed over the years. Following that, an assessment was conducted to analyze the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on GHG emissions from urban transportation and air quality in Canadian cities. The reduced traffic experienced throughout several lockdowns offers a glimpse of what air quality in cities would look like if the country switched to low-carbon transportation modes. Finally, the reductions in NO2 emissions from thermal power plants in Canada were assessed to evaluate the government commitment of switching from fossil fuels to clean energy. The satellite observation was developed as a supplementary information management tool to verify the effect of technologies and policies on emissions changes from threshold perspective on a smaller spatial scale. Overall, this thesis provides some new insights on assessing air pollution and carbon emission levels from transportation and electricity sectors.


identifier: Nachaj, Alexander  (2021) The Celibate Celebrity: Intersections of Masculinity, Stardom and Sanctity in Mid-Century American Catholicism and the Body of Fulton J. Sheen.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was a bestselling author and a mid-century Emmy award-winning television personality. For a major American Catholic figure of the twentieth century whose presence continues to impact American Catholicism and whose ongoing canonization cause continues to grab headlines in the Catholic press, he is remarkably understudied within academia. Using Sheen as a case study, this dissertation proposes a new rubric for examining modern religious figures and demonstrates how the overlapping fields of celebrity and masculinity studies complement the study of mid-century North American Catholicism. By examining these intersections of the sacred and the secular in Sheen’s autobiography, afterlife, television series and body, I argue that for figures like Sheen modern notions of sanctity cannot be understood without also understanding their celebrity.
Few studies examine, much less acknowledge, the intertwined and ambiguous nature of modern religious celebrities – of which America has produced no shortage over this past century. This has led to a lacuna in the field where religious studies scholars have shied away from examining the complications and theoretical implications of fame intertwined with sanctity. My approach in this work is thus interdisciplinary, involving not just the lens of religious studies but also the overlapping fields of celebrity studies as well as critical gender studies. My chapters are structured thematically, with a recurrent emphasis on the intersections between mid-century celebrity and sanctity, and the interplay between then-contemporary norms of religious and secular masculinity.
Ultimately, I aim to demonstrate that the connections between these aligned fields and mid-twentieth century American religion extend far beyond the life of the figure under examination. It is my hope that scholars of religious can begin to implement similar rubrics in their examination of modern American Catholic figures.


identifier: Date, Jennifer Anne ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2166-1137 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2166-1137>  (2021) Model-Based Enhanced Operation of Building Convective Heating Systems and Active Thermal Storage.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis presents an experimental and theoretical study of a reduced-order modelling methodology and dynamic response of convectively heated buildings and active thermal storage. A methodology was developed for the generation of control-oriented building models which can be used within model predictive control (MPC) or other model-based control strategies to satisfy occupant comfort and improve building-grid interaction. A methodology to identify and evaluate MPC strategies is presented to improve a building's energy flexibility. There is an emphasis on modelling building thermal mass and a dedicated thermal storage device. The two applications for reduced-order thermal modelling (buildings and dedicated active thermal energy storage devices) require different modelling approaches for control applications. Several case studies are introduced and are typical Quebec construction with convective-based heating systems: a detached low-mass house, a low-mass retail building, and a warehouse (with active thermal storage device).

The residential building study outlined a methodology for multi-level control-oriented modelling with several zones and multiple floors. This multi-level approach allows the user to “zoom in and out” so that models at each control level remain manageable. In the second case study, implementation of MPC was presented for a conventional bank building to reduce the yearly utility bill and avoid the summer peak load penalty. A cost savings of 25% on the yearly electric utility bill and a peak power reduction of 38% were achieved. With the new optimized operation, the cost per square meter for the bank would decrease from $30.19/m2 to $22.57/m2, or a yearly savings of $7.62/m2.

The last case study comprises a 1650 m2 warehouse equipped with a dedicated active high-temperature thermal energy storage device. A methodology was presented for the development and analysis of control-oriented models for enhanced operation of the electric thermal storage device. The goal was to maximize the building energy flexibility the building could provide to the grid by evaluating the Building Energy Flexibility Index (BEFI). A BEFI of 55% to 100% was achieved. The average demand during the critical times was reduced between 36 kW and 65 kW and the utility cost to the customer can be reduced by 12-30%.


identifier: Jahangiri, Bahareh  (2021) Investigating the impact of thermal bridging calculation methods on building energy performance – a comparative study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Current energy building codes and standards commonly consider the impact of thermal bridging in assessing building envelope performance. This research examines four thermal bridging calculation methods and provides a comparative study of the challenges, limitations, and effectiveness of each method to evaluate heating and cooling energy demands.
Each calculation method is applied to 21 different residential buildings covering a variety of building archetypes in Montreal. The equivalent envelope thermal resistance values are reported, and the impact on annual heating and cooling demand is evaluated using building performance simulation.
The results show that the underestimation of annual heating demand could reach 37% when the impact of linear thermal bridges is ignored. The annual cooling demand is also shown to be overestimated by 14%. In addition, the variation in Window to Wall Ratio (WWR) and Vertical Surface Area per Floor Area Ratio (VFAR) are highly correlated to the heating and cooling energy demand deviation.


identifier: Wright, Leah  (2021) The Social, the Socio, and the HPA: How peer rejection, peer acceptance, and socioeconomic status relate to children’s HPA-axis activity.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Understanding how socioeconomic status (SES) “gets under the skin” to impact health has puzzled researchers for decades. SES is a complex, multifaceted construct that can be examined using a variety of methodologies. Additionally, SES can impact diverse and interrelated spheres of development. This dissertation attempts to parse how SES and the peer group individually and additively impact children’s cortisol levels. Study 1 examines children’s cortisol at the beginning and end of their first year of kindergarten and finds that rejected children have flatter morning cortisol slopes, while lower SES children have higher cortisol at the end of the school year compared to their higher SES peers. Study 2 examines children’s diurnal cortisol and cortisol response to positive and negative peer experiences and finds that girls from lower income families have a flatter diurnal cortisol slope. It also found that children not accepted by their peers had little cortisol response to positive or negative peer experiences, while accepted children had elevated cortisol following positive peer experiences. Study 3 examines these same variables in relation to hair cortisol and found that children from a lower income background have higher hair cortisol, while low levels of parental education moderated the association between rejection and acceptance such that children from families with lower levels of parental education had low cortisol when they were rejected or not accepted and high cortisol when they were accepted or not rejected. Together, these sets of results highlight the importance of using multiple measures of SES to better understand its association with peer difficulties and cortisol. Understanding how social factors and SES impact the HPA-axis could inform intervention programs designed to help disadvantaged children.


identifier: Sayadi, Amir  (2021) Modeling and Force Estimation of Cardiac Catheters for Haptics-enabled Tele-intervention.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Robot-assisted cardiovascular intervention (RCI) systems have shown success in reducing the x-ray exposure to surgeons and patients during cardiovascular interventional procedures. RCI systems typically are teleoperated systems with leader-follower architecture. With such system architecture, the surgeon is placed out of the x-ray exposure zone and uses a console to control the robot remotely. Despite its success in reducing x-ray exposure, clinicians have identified the lack of force feedback as to its main technological limitation that can lead to vascular perforation of the patient’s vessels and even their death. The objective of this thesis was to develop, verify, and validate mechatronics technology for real-time accurate and robust haptic feedback rendering for RCI systems. To attain the thesis objective, first, a thorough review of the state-of-the-art clinical requirements, modeling approaches and methods, and current knowledge gaps for the provision of force feedback for RCI systems was performed. Afterward, a real-time tip force estimation method based on image-based shape-sensing and learning-from-simulation was developed and validated. The learning-based model was fairly accurate but required a large database for training which was computationally expensive. Next, a new mechanistic model, i.e., finite arc method (FAM) for soft robots was proposed, formulated, solved, and validated that allowed for fast and accurate modeling of catheter deformation. With FAM, the required training database for the proposed learning-from-simulation method would be generated with high speed and accuracy. In the end, to robustly relay the estimated forces from real-time imaging from the follower robot to the leader haptic device, a novel impedance-based force feedback rendering modality was proposed and implemented on a representative teleoperated RCI system for experimental validation. The proposed method was compared with the classical direct force reflection method and showed enhanced stability, robustness, and accuracy in the presence of communication disruption. The results of this thesis showed that the performance of the proposed integrated force feedback rendering system was in fair compliance with the clinical requirements and had superior robustness compared to the classical direct force reflection method.


identifier: Rounis, Efstratios Dimitrios  (2021) A Novel Design Methodology for Air-based Building Integrated Photovoltaic/Thermal (BIPV/T) Systems with Coupled Modelling of Wind-driven and Channel Flow-driven Convective Phenomena.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Open-loop air-based building integrated photovoltaic thermal (BIPV/T) systems have the potential to become integral elements of net-zero or near net-zero building design. In addition to on-site electricity generation, BIPV/T systems offer various options for producing useful heat when coupled with the building’s HVAC system. Furthermore, when properly designed, they can fulfil building envelope functions for heat, moisture and air transfer, thus replacing the building envelope exterior layer, while offering superior architectural value compared to racked or building-applied photovoltaic (PV) systems.
Despite their potential, these systems comprise a very small share of PV applications and are not yet a mature technology. This can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, there are no standardised design guidelines, with the majority of realized systems being custom designs, not easily repeatable or scalable, and not adherent to established building techniques. Secondly, the documented performance of PV/T and BIPV/T systems is highly variable due to varying prototype designs and inconsistent testing conditions. Finally, the modelling of such systems is equally inconsistent, especially with regard to the wind-driven and channel flow convective heat transfer, elevating uncertainties in the prediction of a system’s performance, further reducing confidence in such applications. The latter usually results in non-optimal thermal utilization and overheating of the PV panels that will affect their durability.
The main objective of this thesis is to set the foundation for a novel design and modelling approach for BIPV/T systems that can lead to increased share of applications of power generating envelopes (facades and roofs) for both new building constructions and retrofits, as well as enhanced system performance and durability.
This research consists of two main parts. The first part focuses on BIPV/T design considerations and investigates the adoption of curtain wall design techniques, modified for the BIPV/T systems. The purpose of this part is to address the lack of design standardization of BIPV/T and set the foundation for the adoption of common building practices in BIPV/T design, also incorporating concepts of modularity and prefabrication. To this end, the design, development and the indoor experimental testing of a modular BIPV/T curtain wall prototype is presented. The prototype was conceived as part of a large façade application and was built using commercially available curtain wall mullion extrusions and frameless semi-transparent, glass-on-glass PV (STPV) modules with two levels of transparency. Furthermore, several thermal enhancement techniques deemed suitable for building integrated systems were incorporated, namely multiple air intakes, using transparent instead of opaque PV modules, as well as a specially built flow re-direction component. The prototype was tested in an indoor solar simulator facility under conditions representative of full-scale demonstration projects. It was found to have comparable or better thermal performance (26-32%) compared to other systems in literature (17-32%), with potential for further improvement if optimized in terms of its geometry and flow rate.
The second part of this work presents a novel approach for the modelling of convective phenomena, which takes into consideration the interlinked nature of wind-driven and channel flow-driven convection of air-based BIPV/T systems. Indeed, part of the reason for the lack of standards for BIPV/T systems is the lack of a widely accepted method for modelling convective phenomena. The key parameters that have been found to affect the thermal performance of a BIPV/T system, including the environmental (or boundary) conditions, are formulated into dimensionless groups and correlated to the ratio of wind-driven convective heat transfer over the system’s heat recovery. This correlation was verified through solar-simulator testing of a modular BIPV/T system under varying environmental conditions, flow rate, channel aspect ratio and PV module opacity. Outlet air temperature predictions from the proposed modelling approach showed very good agreement with the experimental results (within ±0.4°C), as well as superior performance compared to commonly used modelling approaches (which have accuracy of ±3.0°C). Literature has shown that use of said approaches could result in up to more than 10°C error in the predicted outlet air temperature, resulting in poor thermal utilization and possible overheating of the PV panels.
This methodology can be tailored to individual systems via calibration through key temperature monitoring and can be instrumental in the optimal control and heat utilization for a coupled BIPV/T-HVAC system. In addition, it yields increased durability and performance of the PV installation through incorporation of more efficient cooling strategies, through accurate outlet air temperature and PV temperature predictions, respectively.


identifier: Zarin, Nagina  (2021) Hybrid Radio Resource Management for Heterogeneous Wireless Access Network.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Heterogeneous wireless access network (HWAN) is composed of fifth-generation (5G) and fourth-generation (4G) cellular systems and IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area networks (WLANs). These diverse and dense wireless networks have different data rates, coverage,
capacity, cost, and QoS. Furthermore, user devices are multi-modal devices that allow users to connect to more than one network simultaneously. This thesis presents radio resource management for RAT selection, radio resource allocation, load balancing, congestion control mechanism, and user device (UD) energy management that can effectively utilize the available resources in the heterogeneous wireless networks and enhance the quality-of-service (QoS) and user quality-of-experience (QoE).
Recent studies on radio resource management in HWAN lead to two broad categories, 1) centralized architecture and 2) distributed model. In the centralized model, all the decision making power confines to a centralized controller and user devices are assumed as passive
transceivers. In contrast, user devices actively participate in radio resource management in the distributed model, resulting in poor resource utilization and maximum call blocking and call dropping probabilities.
In this thesis, we present a novel hybrid radio resource management model for HWAN that is composed of OFDMA based system and WLAN. In this model, both the centralized controller and the user device take part in resource management. Our hybrid mechanism
considers attributes related to both user and network. However, these attributes are conflicting in nature. Moreover, a single RAT selection is performed based on user location and available networks, whereas UD with a multi-homing call receives the radio resource share from each network to fulfil its minimum data rate requirement. A novel approach is proposed for load balancing where an equal load ratio is maintained across all the available networks in HWAN. Performance evaluation through call blocking probability and network utilization will reveal the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
The demand for more data rates is on the rise. The 5G heterogeneous wireless access network is a potential solution to tackle the high data rate demand. The 5GHWAN is composed of 5G new radio (NR) and 4G long-term evolution (LTE) base stations (BSs). In a practical system, the channel conditions fluctuate due to user mobility. We, therefore, investigate
radio resource allocation and congestion control mechanism along with network-assisted distributive RAT selection in a time-varying 5GHWAN. This joint problem of radio resource allocation and congestion control management has signalling overhead and computational
complexity limitations. Therefore, we use the Lyapunov optimization to convert the offline problem into an online optimization problem based on channel state information (CSI) and queue state information (QSI). The theoretical and simulation results evaluate the performance
of our proposed approach under the assumption of network stability. In addition, simulation results are presented to depict our proposed scheme’s effectiveness. Furthermore, our proposed RAT selection scheme performs better than the traditional centralized
and distributive mechanisms.
Recently an increase in the usage of video applications has been observed. Therefore, we explore hybrid radio resource management video streaming over time-varying HWAN. Using the Lyapunov optimization technique, we decompose our two-time scale stochastic optimization
problem into two main sub-problems. One of the sub-problems is related to radio resource allocation that operates at a scheduling time interval. The radio resource allocation policy is implemented at a centralized control node responsible for allocating radio resources
from the available wireless networks using Lagrange dual method. The other sub-problem is related to the quality rate adaptation policy that works at a chunk time scale. Each user selects the appropriate quality level of the video chunks adaptively in a distributive way based
on buffer state and channel state information. We analyze and compare the QoE of our proposed
approach over an arbitrary sample path of channel state information with an optimal T-slot algorithm. Finally, we evaluate the performance analysis of our proposed scheme for video streaming over a time-varying heterogeneous wireless access network through simulation results.


identifier: Shirani, Ali  (2021) Small-scale Controlled Blast Facility for Material Testing.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In our modern society, many explosive materials are used for different purposes. Blasts produced by explosive materials are encountered in building demolition, rock excavation, mining, and military contexts. Regardless of the source or intended use of an explosive, human exposure to the aftermath of an explosion can be very destructive. Therefore, studying and understanding blast wave structure, physical appearance, protection against such waves, and the behavior of materials under blast loads, are vital.
Blast experiments are usually expensive, dangerous, and need a large space to set up. The purpose of this project is to develop a small-scale and affordable apparatus that can reproduce varying blast profiles, in a controllable fashion. In this study, a blast tube with four driver sections is employed. Two dynamic pressure transducers (PCB) and an oscilloscope are used to record blast profiles. To produce different blast waves, thirteen sets of pressures in the driver sections were considered. The main parameters of the blast waves (Ps, td, b, and I+) in each set were determined. Under certain initial conditions, the resulting blast wave has two distinct expansion rates or an internal shock. The conditions under which the produced blasts most resemble free-field blasts are examined.

Keywords: Blast waves, Fitting blast waves, Peak overpressure, Positive time duration, Positive impulse


identifier: Rjoub, Gaith ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7282-0687 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7282-0687>  (2021) Artificial Intelligence Models for Scheduling Big Data Services on the Cloud.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The widespread adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) applications in many critical sectors (e.g., healthcare, unmanned autonomous systems, etc.) and the huge volumes of data that are being generated from such applications have led to an unprecedented reliance on the cloud computing platform to store and process these data. Moreover, cloud providers tend to receive massive waves of demands on their storage and computing resources. To help providers deal with such demands without sacrificing performance, the concept of cloud automation had recently arisen to improve the performance and reduce the manual efforts related to the management of cloud computing workloads.
However, several challenges have to be taken into consideration in order to guarantee an optimal performance for big data storage and analytics in cloud computing environments. In this context, we propose in this thesis a smart scheduling model as an automated big data task scheduling approach in cloud computing environments. Our scheduling model combines Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), Federated Learning (FL), and Transfer Learning (TL) to automatically predict the IoT devices to which each incoming big data task should be scheduled to as to improve the performance and reduce the execution cost. Furthermore, we solve the long execution time and data shortage problems by introducing a FL-based solution that also ensures privacy-preserving and reduces training and data complexity.
The motivation of this thesis stems from four main observations/research gaps that we have drawn through our literature reviews and/or experiments, which are: (1) most of the existing cloud-based scheduling solutions consider the scheduling problem only from the tasks priority viewpoint, which leads to increase the amounts of wasted resources in case of malicious or compromised IoT devices; (2) the existing scheduling solutions in the domain of cloud and edge computing are still ineffective in making real-time decisions concerning the resource allocation and management in cloud systems; (3) it is quite difficult to schedule tasks or learning models from servers in areas that are far from the objects and IoT devices, which entails significant delay and response time for the process of transmitting data; and (4) none of the existing scheduling solutions has yet addressed the issue of dynamic task scheduling automation in complex and large-scale edge computing settings.
In this thesis, we address the scheduling challenges related to the cloud and edge computing environment. To this end, we argue that trust should be an integral part of the decision-making process and therefore design a trust establishment mechanism between the edge server and IoT devices. The trust mechanism model aims to detect those IoT devices that over-utilize or under-utilize their resources. Thereafter, we design a smart scheduling algorithm to automate the process of scheduling large-scale workloads onto edge cloud computing resources while taking into account the trust scores, task waiting time, and energy levels of the IoT devices to make appropriate scheduling decisions. Finally, we apply our scheduling strategy in the healthcare domain to investigate its applicability in a real-world scenario (COVID-19).


identifier: Bulut, Alma  (2021) Analyse des clitiques du serbo-croate dans le cadre du programme minimaliste.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Les clitiques du serbo-croate doivent toujours être placés en respectant des règles spécifiques.
Dans le cas contraire, les phrases ne sont pas convenables et la dérivation échoue. Lors de la
formulation des phrases et de l’insertion des clitiques dans celles-ci, il faut respecter les règles
requises. Malgré les restrictions placées par ces règles, selon mes recherches, je propose que les
clitiques en serbo-croate sont beaucoup plus simples comparativement à ce qui a été suggéré par
d’autres chercheurs. La simplicité étant une des clés de la langue serbo-croate.
Mon objectif était d’étudier, dans le cadre du programme minimaliste, la position que
les clitiques du serbo-croate occupent au sein de la phrase. Plus particulièrement, j’ai mis l’accent
sera mis sur la position que ces éléments occupent par rapport à un syntagme nominal (SN)
placé en tête de phrase.
En effet, quoique l’analyse en termes de deuxième position des clitiques du Serbo-croate soit
en général acceptée par les chercheurs, les propositions concernant la définition de leur hôte
diffèrent grandement. D’où mon intérêt envers la recherche empirique décrite dans cette thèse.
Cette recherche, qui à ma connaissance sera la première en son genre, pourrait lever le voile
sur les clitiques du croate (un dialecte du serbo-croate) et la position que ces éléments occupent
par rapport aux autres éléments syntaxiques d’un énoncé.
Dans ma thèse, j’ai proposé que le comportement des clitiques auxiliaires, phrastiques et
pronominaux en serbo-croate peut être expliqué avec facilité dans le cadre du
programme minimaliste. Si l’on prend en considération que cette langue fait partie de celles dont
le trait EPP des clitiques auxiliaires, phrastiques et pronominaux doit être vérifié et éliminé de
la dérivation pour la convergence phrastique, on peut alors comprendre pourquoi la réalisation
desdits clitiques dans la position initiale de la phrase n’est jamais observable dans la
production langagière des locuteurs natif de cette langue.


identifier: Li, Gang  (2021) Auction-Based Efficient Online Incentive Mechanism Designs in Wireless Networks.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Recently, wide use of mobile devices and applications, such as YouTube and Twitter, has facilitated every aspect of our daily lives. Meanwhile, it has also posed great challenges to enable resource-demanding users to successfully access networks. Thus, in order to enlarge network capacity and fully make use of vacant resources, new communication architectures emerge, such as D2D communications, edge computing, and crowdsourcing, all of which ask for involvement of end mobile users in assisting transmission, computation, or network management. However, end mobile users are not always willing to actively provide such sharing services if no reimbursements are provided as they need to consume their own computation and communication resources. Besides, since mobile users are not always stationary, they can opt-in and opt-out the network for their own convenience. Thus, an important practical characteristic of wireless networks, i.e., the mobility of mobile users cannot be ignored, which means that the demands of mobile users span over a period of time. As one of promising solutions, the online incentive mechanism design has been introduced in wireless networks in order to motivate the participation of more mobile users under a dynamic environment. In this thesis, with the analyses of each stakeholder's economic payoffs in wireless networks, the auction-based online incentive mechanisms are proposed to achieve resource allocations, participant selections, and payment determinations in two wireless networks, i.e., Crowdsensing and mobile edge computing. In particular, i) an online incentive mechanism is designed to guarantee Quality of Information of each arriving task in mobile crowdsensing networks, followed by an enhanced online strategy which could further improves the competitive ratio; ii) an online incentive mechanism jointly considering communication and computation resource allocations in collaborative edge computing networks is proposed based on the primal-dual theory; iii) to deal with the nonlinear issue in edge computing networks, an nonlinear online incentive mechanism under energy budget constraints of mobile users is designed based on the Maximal-in-Distributional Range framework; and iv) inspired by the recent development of deep learning techniques, a deep incentive mechanism with the budget balance of each mobile user is proposed to maximize the net revenue of service providers by leveraging the multi-task machine learning model. Both theoretical analyses and numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed mechanisms.


identifier: Wilkinson, R. Poppy  (2021) Core Aspects of Grandiose Narcissism in Childhood: Grandiosity and Entitlement in Social Context.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Arriving at a definition of narcissism has been a controversial process. Recently, two defining aspects of narcissism have been identified, self-importance and entitlement, that can be expressed both grandiosely and covertly (Krizan & Herlache, 2018). The present project focuses on grandiose narcissism in children. Grandiose narcissism is understood as multidimensional (e.g., with dimensions of grandiosity and entitlement) but research on its core aspects in children is limited. A better understanding of the dimensions of narcissism in children is critical, primarily because they have been shown to relate to different outcomes in adults. Evidence suggests that entitlement is associated with more problematic social outcomes than grandiosity. The aim of this project was to assess the potentially different social correlates of grandiosity and entitlement in children. This was achieved using self-report and peer-report data collected in a short-term longitudinal design with 5th and 6th grade students in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and Barranquilla, Colombia. The results of Study 1 suggest that grandiosity and entitlement are two related but distinct dimensions of grandiose narcissism in children, measurable across two cultural contexts. Grandiosity in particular was associated with positive self-appraisals of social competency and self-worth, above and beyond acceptance by peers. Study 2 assessed the relation between grandiosity/entitlement and peer-assessed prosocial behaviours (care, justice, comfort, proactive and reactive help) and aggression (physical and relational). Within time, entitlement was found to negatively relate to all prosocial behaviours, and prior levels of entitlement negatively predicted later care and justice. Prior levels of entitlement also positively predicted subsequent physical aggression. These same patterns were not found for grandiosity. Study 3 assessed how grandiosity and entitlement, respectively, predicted popularity while accounting for characteristics of the social and cultural context. A key and consistent finding across our models was that entitlement more negatively predicted popularity in classrooms high in communal care, as well as in Barranquilla as compared to Montreal. The opposite pattern was observed for grandiosity in some of the models. Together, these studies provide support for these two dimensions of narcissism being distinct and that the social consequences of entitlement are of particular concern.


identifier: PAKZADI, SEYED AMIRREZA  (2021) A Viscoelastic Approach for the Characterization of Bending Behavior of Uncured Unidirectional Carbon/Epoxy Prepreg.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: High demands of composites application in various industries have led to top-quality manufacturing techniques, including automated fiber placement and double diaphragm forming. These advanced technologies are restrained by defects formation during the layup and forming process. Several studies have been conducted to investigate the effect of process parameters and to identify the different forming mechanisms for better understanding defect formation. Among these parameters, the bending property of uncured prepreg is the primary factor that can dominate the most common emerging defect known as wrinkle during composite forming. Perceiving these properties in depth could reduce the costs of the experiment extensively as they could be proper input for simulation software to have better defect prediction. Since composites are classified as viscoelastic materials, the main goal of this thesis is to study the effect of viscoelasticity on the bending stiffness of uncured carbon epoxy prepreg. For this purpose, a stress relaxation test has been implemented using a tensile test machine at room and elevated temperatures. Also, the effect of temperature on the viscoelastic behavior of the sample is discussed. In conformity with the experimental observations, a new nonlinear viscoelastic model is proposed and compared to linear models. It is shown that this proposed model is able to address viscoelastic behavior not only in the prior and after elastic region but also out of the testing time range. Within this thesis, a bending test method for defining the bending behavior of prepreg materials at forming conditions was developed based on a horizontal cantilever beam. Then, both linear and nonlinear aspects have been coupled with constitutive bending equations to represent the bending behavior and its time dependency. At last, a finite element (FEM) is performed in the ABAQUS platform in order to depict the results correlations. Moreover, a simple deformation mechanism has been simulated to represent the effect of deformation rate perfectly.


identifier: Fech, William  (2021) More than Movies: Art House Cinemas in the Digital Age.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis offers a cultural and industrial mapping of US-based art house cinemas—small theatrical exhibitors specializing in foreign, independent, documentary, repertory, or non-commercial studio film—since the digital transition in projection technology near the turn of this century. For much of their history, art house cinemas offered so-called “sophisticated” film-going experiences catered to appeals of cultural distinction and cinephilia. But in reaction to the challenges posed by the costs of digital projection, which threatened to and in some cases did close small exhibitors, the sector sought to re-imagine itself. Many art houses restructured under nonprofit organizations with operational mandates far different from those of their predecessors. This study attends to these reconfigurations.
	The following chapters draw from a rich tradition of exhibition scholarship, theories of cultural taste-making, and on-the-ground discourses among art house administrators. I consult film programs, promotional material, newspaper articles, personal interviews, and industry data reports in positing a reconceptualization of art houses as multi-purpose cultural institutions, not mere receptacles for leisure and encounters with foreign-language film. Central to this reworking has been Art House Convergence, a resource network of art houses and their allies that has promoted professionalization, nonprofitization, and politicization of the art house space since 2006. I also focus on two case studies: The Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon, and FilmScene in Iowa City, Iowa—theatres whose transformations over the last 15 years speak concretely to the larger trajectory of the sector. Where distinction and cinephilia once reigned as pillars of these exhibitors, dynamic and diverse approaches to programming, community-centric services, and left-liberal cultural projects have ascended to the fore. By creating an aggregate portrait of a new industrial common sense, comprised of changing practices and ideas about cinema’s place in cultural formations, this project points to a pressing need to view art houses differently than previous models allow and to provoke a rethinking about their role in film culture today.