identifier: Hardy-Vallée, Michel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9652-1262 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9652-1262>  (2019) Making Photography Speak: John Max’s Open Passport (1973) and Photographic Narration.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this dissertation, I present a detailed case study of the photographic book Open Passport (1973), by Canadian photographer John Max (1936–2011), on the basis of primary and secondary sources, including newly discovered materials. The photographic book has recently emerged as an axis to organize photographic history. Max’s book, an iconic object in Canadian photography history, nevertheless raises significant challenges to disciplinary consensus. Open Passport is an exemplary work of variant performance that demonstrates the interdependence of different modes of photographic dissemination. It offers a major test case for notions of photographic meaning, artwork, medium, and history. Performing a series of analyses—semiotic, philosophical, and historical—on Open Passport, I show how books are important sites of photographic meaning, with qualifications. Including a constellation of variants and related works—such as photo-stories, exhibitions, motion pictures, and slide shows—the relevant art historical context of Open Passport upsets the modernist historiography of an autonomous medium favoured by recent studies of the photobook. I also draw attention to the historicity of knowledge and propose an application of philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s notion of fusion of horizons for understanding Open Passport in context as a belonging. The major contributions to knowledge of this dissertation are a renewed and extensive understanding of the work of John Max as a major artist, a more deeply reasoned study of the place of the photographic book within photographic history, as well as methodological innovations in the study of the photographic sequence.


identifier: Satti, Vijay  (2019) Secure Configuration and Management of Linux Systems using a Network Service Orchestrator.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract:
Manual management of the configuration of network devices and computing devices (hosts) is an error-prone task. Centralized automation of these tasks can lower the costs of management, but can also introduce unknown or unanticipated security risks. Misconfiguration (deliberate (by outsiders) or inadvertent (by insiders)) can expose a system to significant risks.

Centralized network management has seen significant progress in recent years, resulting in model-driven approaches that are clearly superior to previous "craft" methods. Host management has seen less development. The tools available have developed in separate task-specific ways.

This thesis explores two aspects of the configuration management problem for hosts:
(1) implementing host management using the model-driven (network) management tools;
(2) establishing the relative security of traditional methods and the above proposal for model driven host management.

It is shown that the model-driven approach is feasible, and the security of the model driven approach is significantly higher than that of existing approaches.


identifier: Poirier, Prince  (2019) Franglais.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Franglais

abstract: This poetry collection follows a speaker who stands in between binaries of language and gender identity. Weaving together English and French, these poems seek to ask what it means to contain a plurality of identities. The overarching narrative of this collection is of a speaker struggling with their gender identity, as well as the death of their Quebecois father. The collection works with several forms, primarily free verse with the use of slashes (/). I have chosen to use slashes in my work as both a visual way to represent binaries (either/or), and to encourage the reader to read the poems as music. Other forms included in the collection include sonnets, glosas, and list forms. “Franglais” is an exploration of trans identity, bilingualism, family, and what we inherit from our families.


identifier: Brunen, Benjamin  (2019) How do ambient and structural variables influence the entry into and full passage of drainage culverts by mammals and their ability to act as wildlife passages?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Roads present a significant barrier to wildlife movement for many species. While designated wildlife crossing structures have been heralded as an attractive solution to many of the problems associated with roads, they are often prohibitively expensive. Autoroute 10 in Southern Quebec is one of many highways in Canada that would benefit from such structures, but currently has none in place. However, the highway has a series of periodically placed drainage culverts designed to allow water to cross underneath the road surface. Through monitoring trail camera footage inside of 13 drainage culverts, and animal track stations along a 20 kilometre stretch of highway A10, this project aims to (1) determine what factors influence the number of full passages of drainage culverts by mammals, and (2) parse the effects that these factors have on the entry into and subsequent full passage of drainage culverts by individual animals. Overall, 20 species were observed outside of the drainage culverts in this study, but only animals highly tolerant to water, including raccoons and American mink, were observed fully crossing the structures with regularity. Water level and polyethylene as a construction material were the strongest deterrents for both the number of full passages, as well as entry into the culverts. Additionally, we found that many factors influenced an individual entering a culvert, while no variables impacted its full passage once it had entered.
Moving forward, this data will be invaluable in determining where best to focus future habitat fragmentation mitigation efforts along highway 10. In this study we introduced zero-inflated negative binomial generalized linear mixed models as a statistical method in a road ecology study for analyzing the effects that variables have on excess zeros in the data, as well as the value of combining trail camera data inside of drainage culverts with track data in the adjacent habitat. We conclude that drainage culverts are ultimately not suitable substitutes for designated crossing structures for mammals, and recommend that where it is not feasible to install designated wildlife crossing structures, dry ledges be installed in existing drainage culverts to better allow small- and medium-sized mammals to safely cross under the road surface while avoiding the water inside of them. Future road ecology studies are needed along all major highways, both with and without mitigation measures already in place, to better understand the effects that roads are having on wildlife.


identifier: Sayed, Sayed Ibrahim  (2019) Models and Algorithms for Inbound and Outbound Truck to Door Scheduling.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Cross-docking is a logistic strategy that facilitates rapid movement of consolidated products between suppliers and retailers within a supply chain. It is also a warehousing strategy that aims at reducing or eliminating storage and order picking, two of which are known to be major costly operations of any typical warehouse. This strategy has been used in the retailing, manufacturing, and automotive industries. In a cross-dock, goods are unloaded from incoming trucks, consolidated according to their destinations, and then, loaded into outgoing trucks with little or no storage in between.
In this thesis, we address an integrated cross-dock door assignment and truck scheduling problem in which the assignment and sequencing of incoming trucks to strip doors and outgoing trucks to stack doors is optimized to minimize the total time to process all trucks. We present a mixed integer programming formulation to model this problem and some valid inequalities to strengthen the formulation. We also present two metaheuristics to obtain high quality solutions in reasonable CPU times. These algorithms use a mix of composite dispatching rules, constructive heuristics, local search heuristics which are embedded into a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) and an iterated local search (ILS). Results of computational experiments are presented to assess the performance of the proposed algorithms, in comparison with a general purpose solver.


identifier: Amrollahibuki, Roya  (2019) Modeling Construction Equipment in 4D Simulation and Application in VR Safety Training.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Enhancing safety and productivity in construction sites is of principal importance, especially in congested sites. Scheduling and visualizing the construction progress in a Four-dimensional (4D) model with a high Level of Detail (LOD) are expected to improve safety, productivity, and constructability in construction sites. In spite of the large number of studies using Building Information Modeling (BIM) for visualization of the construction activities at the macro-level, these research works do not fully consider the scheduling and animating the equipment operations at the micro-level. This study aims to visualize the construction equipment activities to model the erection of a structure with prefabricated components along with other resources, such as workers and temporary equipment. The construction process is modeled in Fuzor Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) and the collision test is run to find the upcoming dangers. In addition, one of the areas where 4D can be used is for safety training. It is expected that the combination of 4D BIM with Virtual Reality (VR) improves the safety knowledge of construction workers, students, and equipment operators. Despite the large number of research works on the use of Three-dimensional (3D) VR in construction training, 4D VR is not sufficiently used for training purposes. This study aims to improve the safety knowledge of construction students by using a VR-based training approach. The specific objectives of the research are: (1) Identifying the requirements for construction equipment modeling and comparing the available commercial and research platforms in terms of visualizing, animating, and simulating equipment movements; (2) Animating and scheduling the construction processes at the micro-level in 4D BIM; and (3) Enhancing and evaluating the safety knowledge of construction management students in terms of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and equipment-related hazards using VR. In the first stage, the construction 4D context was developed and the safety scenarios about PPE- and equipment-related hazards were added. Secondly, construction students were given the initial VR-based training regarding hazard scenarios. Then, their safety knowledge was tested and they were asked to express their learning experience.
The conclusions of this research are as follows: (1) When equipment tasks are visualized and scheduled at the micro-level in 4D BIM, the conflicts can be detected in advance and the cycle time of equipment can be determined, leading to the improvement of safety, productivity, and constructability in construction sites; (2) VR safety training improves hazard recognition of construction students since they can experience risky conditions in virtual construction sites; and (3) The capability of students in identifying equipment-related hazards would improve when they experience safety risks applied in 4D VR.


identifier: Kalbasi Ashtari, Mohammad Hossein  (2019) A Decision-Support Tool for the Choice of Fabrication Routes in the Context of Mass Personalization.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In the saturated competitive markets of today, Mass Personalization (MP) is getting more and more attention. MP refers to the affordable fabrication of personalized products where the customer is involved from the beginning of product life-cycle (design phase). In order to keep personalized products affordable, it is important to select the most cost-effective fabrication route for each individualized order. To do so, this study proposes a Web-based Personalized Manufacturing Consulting System (WebPMCS) towards selecting the most cost-effective processes/resources for mass personalization in the on-demand manufacturing context. The proposed tool includes a Graphical User Interface (GUI), a cost estimation model, and a relational database. In this document, we explain the steps towards WebPMCS design and development. Then, we adapt WebPMCS to Spark Assisted Chemical Engraving (SACE). By the aid of this case-study, we validate the tool, and determine the most cost-effective fabrication routes for several personalized orders. Finally, we suggest using multi-head machines for SACE personalized fabrication and prove its benefits using WebPMCS. The proposed tool acts as an advanced calculator and a process/resource selector, and is aimed to be used as an enabling module for industry 4.0 manufacturing philosophy.


identifier: Gismondi, Chris J.  (2019) How the Arctic Became White: Qallunaat Explorers’ Misrepresentations of the Botanic Landscape.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: On account of its geographic remoteness from southern Canada and Europe, the Arctic region has long been consumed and mediated by images and media, yet until now, little scholarly attention has been given to explorers’ sketches, prints, and other disseminated visual culture. This thesis investigates the historic roots of the perception that the Arctic landscape is a "flat, white nothingness." I ask how and why explorers throughout the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries represented the Canadian-Alaskan Arctic as devoid of flora, as they often visited in the summer months when the land is covered in mosses, lichens, flowers, and other colourful plant life, and actively gathered botanical samples on these same expeditions. In this thesis I argue that Qallunaat explorers deliberately misrepresented the Arctic environment to bolster their own accomplishments and supposed technological superiority, despite having to continuously rely on Indigenous technologies and knowledge of the land for survival. Colonial explorers’ images are generally variations on the theme of ice and snow, oversimplifying a complex natural order. These landscape representations replace a focus on the natural environment with a focus on the explorer “exploring”. In this thesis, I demonstrate how Inuit artists challenge these outsider narratives by foregrounding their botanical knowledge and reasserting their own representations of their home land, Inuit Nunangat, through contemporary art practices. I read the land's agency, Inuit knowledge, and environmental art history back into this dominant discourse of frozen imagery. This thesis addresses how we construct and consume images of the natural world, which landscapes we deem important or aesthetically pleasing to conserve, and what others we designate to be sacrificed for industry. This is crucial to the polar region, a place that climate change is rendering increasingly important in global politics and economics.


identifier: Desgagné, Gabrielle  (2019) La mise en valeur muséale du patrimoine autochtone auprès de la société québécoise: le modèle de La Maison amérindienne.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Cette recherche qualitative s’inscrit dans le contexte de « réconciliaction », de résurgence autochtone et de décolonisation des disciplines et des institutions québécoises, en appui à la continuité culturelle des Premières Nations, Métis et Inuit. Elle explore le contexte géographique, organisationnel, interculturel et multisensoriel de mise en valeur patrimoniale au musée multi-nations La Maison amérindienne à Mont Saint-Hilaire pour comprendre le phénomène général auprès de la société québécoise et son implication dans les relations sociales. Reposant sur les méthodologies autochtones, l’approche impliquait la collaboration avec l’équipe du musée – entrevues/discussions, bénévolat, droit de regard – et utilise la sociologie des émotions, les études sensorielles et l’anthropologie muséale. L’analyse montre un contexte globalement capacitant pour les parties impliquées (équipe, partenaires, visiteurs) à travers l’expérience de rencontre vécue en tant que savoir corporel, facilitée par le musée dont la mission est d’être un lieu d’échange, de partage et de rapprochement entre peuples. Cette expérience se transpose dans la société, refermant le cercle en participant à une forme de solidarité sociale. Spécifiquement, le modèle multi-nations distinct et avantageux, organisé par l’action commune d’Autochtones et de non-autochtones, opère une mise en valeur significative malgré plusieurs obstacles systémiques sociaux. Sa position stratégique au coeur d’une érablière est essentielle à la mise en valeur de l’acériculture – qui, entre autres, influence fortement le patrimoine québécois – et de l’importance naturelle et territoriale chez les Premières Nations; son approche explicitement multisensorielle, surtout gastronomique, permet la mise en valeur d’un ensemble de richesses culturelles pouvant être constatées corporellement dans les lieux.


identifier: Simon, Ina  (2019) The Problem of Uncertainty in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In the following paper I argue that uncertainty is a key hermeneutic in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan by referring to an analysis the original text. Uncertainty is a barrier to the standard of reciprocity in social interactions that is dictated by God via natural law. The importance of uncertainty is tied to several key conceptual distinctions – among these the division of individuals according to two character types, modest and vainglorious, is key. Another important distinction is the difference in social relations between the state of nature and the civil state. I will argue that within the civil state the tension resulting from the uncertainty born of the two-fold division of characters is resolved in a way that makes Christian ethics possible.


identifier: Wilkins, Zachary Carleton  (2019) As the Slabs Burn.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: As the Slabs Burn

type: Thesis PeerReviewed


identifier: Leppla, Dominic  (2019) Radical Communication: Politics after 1968 in/and Polish Cinema.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The anniversary of 1968 provides an opportunity to revisit its unique intersection of revolutionary politics and collective creativity, in which cinema was caught up as never before—in the production of a certain political affect, global in its scope. This dissertation pursues what followed in its wake, using the case of People’s Poland, which saw an unprecedented labour struggle in the region just as things had begun to dissipate elsewhere—from the mid-1970s on—culminating in one of the largest social movements in human history, in 1980, the independent and free trade union Solidarność (Solidarity). In recuperating these years, we locate a corresponding, alternative history for Polish political aesthetics and radical cinema practice after 1968, using a combination of historical documentation, close reading, and theoretical intervention. Like the politics of 1968, and the horizontal organizing of Solidarity, these films put pressure on existing categories of “the political,” locating it an aesthetics of participation and the spirit of research, in which viewers play a large part in constructing meaning, rather than it being a function of a self-contained “political text.” Much of this grows out of the strong documentary tradition in Polish cinema, which the film artists under discussion then subvert, pushing beyond its limits. We see how, in different ways, contemporaries Grzegorz Królikiewicz (Ch. 1) and Krzysztof Kieślowski (Ch. 2 and 3) call into question this tradition—the former using an avant-garde/film-theoretical approach, and the latter developing an immanent critique of the capacity of cinema to represent (i.e., speak for) political reality. Piotr Szulkin (Ch. 4) adds to these a haptic, affective element that explicitly theorizes labour as the subject of cinema. Finally, Andrzej Żuławski (Ch. 5) pushes these haptic, affective, elements into the red, using a visceral approach that marries genre cinema and historical embodiment, drawing on the traditions of Polish Romanticism and utopianism. In sum, these films use viewer participation to forge an embodied, affective, negativizing cinema aesthetic able to encompass a wider array of human experience than that circumscribed by Party politics or the (male) discourse of the intellectual opposition. This we call radical communication.


identifier: Araiza Iturria, Carlos Andrés ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6584-8913 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6584-8913>  (2019) Modeling and measuring insurance risks for a hierarchical copula model considering IFRS 17 framework.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis, a stochastic approach to insurance risk modeling and measurement that is compliant with the new International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS 17) is proposed. The compliance is achieved through the use of a semiparametric hierarchical copula which accounts for the dependence between the lines of business of the Canadian auto insurance industry. A model for the marginal unpaid claim liabilities of each line of business based on double generalized linear models is also developed. Development year and accident year effect factors along with an autoregressive feature for residuals enable modeling the dependence between the various entries of the loss triangles in a given line of business. Capital requirements calculations are then performed through simulation; numbers obtained with univariate and multivariate risk measures are compared. Moreover, a risk adjustment for non-financial risk required by IFRS 17 is also computed through a cost of capital approach.


identifier: Mirgholami Mashhad, Mahsa  (2019) EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interfacing via Motor-Imagery: Practical Implementation and Feature Analysis.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The human brain is the most intriguing and complex signal processing unit ever known to us.
A unique characteristic of our brain is its plasticity property, i.e., the ability of neurons to modify
their behavior (structure and functionality) in response to environmental diversity. The plasticity
property of brain has motivated design of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) to develop an alternative
form of communication channel between brain signals and the external world. The BCI systems
have several therapeutic applications of significant importance including but not limited to rehabilitation/
assistive systems, rehabilitation robotics, and neuro-prosthesis control. Despite recent
advancements in BCIs, such systems are still far from being reliably incorporated within humanmachine
inference networks. In this regard, the thesis focuses on Motor Imagery (MI)-based BCI
systems with the objective of tackling some key challenges observed in existing solutions. The
MI is defined as a cognitive process in which a person imagines performing a movement without
peripheral (muscle) activation. At one hand, the thesis focuses on feature extraction, which is
one of the most crucial steps for the development of an effective BCI system. In this regard, the
thesis proposes a subject-specific filtering framework, referred to as the regularized double-band
Bayesian (R-B2B) spectral filtering. The proposed R-B2B framework couples three main feature
extraction categories, namely filter-bank solutions, regularized techniques, and optimized Bayesian mechanisms to enhance the overall classification accuracy of the BCI. To further evaluate the effects
of deploying optimized subject-specific spectra-spatial filters, it is vital to examine and investigate
different aspects of data collection and in particular, effects of the stimuli provided to subjects to
trigger MI tasks. The second main initiative of the thesis is to propose an element of experimental design dealing with MI-based BCI systems. In this regard, we have implemented an EEG-based
BCI system and constructed a benchmark dataset associated with 10 healthy subjects performing
actual movement and MI tasks. To investigate effects of stimulus on the overall achievable performance,
four different protocols are designed and implemented via introduction of visual and voice
stimuli. Finally, the work investigates effects of adaptive trimming of EEG epochs resulting in an
adaptive and subject-specific solution.


identifier: Zhang, Aoran  (2019) Three Essays on the Role of Political Connections in Corporate Finance.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation investigates the influence of political connections on corporate financing activities in China. The thesis consists of three chapters. In the first essay, we explore whether and how political connections affect the likelihood of completing a cross-border M&A deal for Chinese publicly listed, but privately-owned enterprises (POEs) and the resulting firm performance. In line with the proposed political connection trade-off theory, we demonstrate that POEs with politically connected top managers are more likely to complete a cross-border M&A deal than POEs with no such connections, but that this comes at the cost of negative announcement returns and subsequent lower accounting performance. These findings support the idea that politically connected top managers engage in empire building behavior at the cost of shareholders’ wealth.
     In the second essay, we examine how political connections influence the likelihood of corporate bond issuance for POEs in China. Using a sample of Chinese POEs from 2007 to 2016, the research shows that politically-connected POEs are more likely to issue corporate bonds as a debt-financing instrument than their non-connected counterparts, and that they achieve lower coupon rates (i.e., lower refinancing costs). On the other hand, this research indicates that corporate bond-issuing POEs in China have weaker corporate governance and a surprisingly higher default probability. Overall, the results show that the corporate bond market in China is strongly distorted by political factors.
     In the third essay, we study how implicit government guarantees affect the yield spreads of Chinese corporate bonds. We presume that quasi-municipal corporate bonds (so called “Chengtou” bonds), issued by local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), carry an implicit government guarantee. Using a sample of publicly traded corporate bonds between 2010 and 2017, we find that bond investors are significantly less sensitive to bond-specific risks for corporate bonds with an implicit government guarantee: the yield spreads of Chengtou bonds are significantly lower than those of corporate bonds issued by POEs in China. We also find that corporate bonds from Northeast China are riskier than those issued by firms elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, we discover that policy changes introduced by the central government, which were intended to regulate local debt financing activities, significantly reduced the gap in yield spreads between Chengtou bonds and bonds issued by POEs. Overall, the empirical results suggest that implicit government guarantees play a crucial role in corporate debt market and that China's recent policy changes reduce the effectiveness of implicit government guarantees, making corporate bond market more market-oriented.


identifier: Cherkas, Anna  (2019) Understanding the Impact of CEO Motivations for M&As on Post-Acquisition Target Performance.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The market for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) is growing steadily, yet scholars claim that acquisitions can destroy a firm’s value and reduce operating performance (King, Dalton, Daily, & Covin, 2004). Many researchers argue that top managers have personal motives to undertake M&As that can jeopardize the shareholders’ gains (Morck, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1990). However, research has also demonstrated that managerial ownership of the firm tends to restrain managers from acting in their personal best interests (Datta, Iskandar‐Datta, & Raman, 2001; Bliss & Rosen, 2001). Higher compensation that CEOs receive after an acquisition and the reduction of the job-related risks by diversification into unrelated businesses are often cited as factors that lead to top managers’ decision to undertake M&As (Harford & Li, 2007; Amihud & Lev, 1981). Despite such advances of knowledge in the current literature on M&As, it is still unclear how CEO motivations for an M&A are linked to post-acquisition underperformance of a target. To address this gap in the literature, this study examines the impact of self-serving motivations of top managers to undertake an M&A on the post-merger operating performance of a target firm. This study also investigates how CEO ownership affects the post-merger target performance. The results show that, on average, an increase in the total yearly compensation to CEOs does not have a significant impact on target performance one year after deal completion. Thus, large rewards granted to CEOs after M&As may not motivate them to achieve higher profits one year post-merger. Acquisition of an unrelated target, on the other hand, has a positive effect on target performance following a merger. This result provides evidence that CEO motives to diversify personal risks with an acquisition of unrelated targets do not impede post-acquisition profits. Findings also suggest that CEO stock ownership does not improve the post-merger operating performance of targets, mainly due to the very small equity stakes owned by CEOs (1.75% on average). This study contributes to the existing literature on the role of CEOs in understanding the post-M&A performance.


identifier: Taleb, Ikbal ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1738-2642 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1738-2642>  (2019) A QUALITY MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR BIG DATA.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In the Big Data Era, data is one of the most important core elements for any governmental, institutional, and even private organization. Acquiring, processing, and analyzing large amounts of heterogeneous data to derive valuable information has become crucial to both large and small organizations. However, efforts to extract valuable insights are useless if the quality of the data is not comprised. Assessing Data quality is a key differentiator to eliminate poor quality data and therefore support Big Data processes, including pre-processing, processing, and analytics. Moreover, the abundance of raw data issued from various sources and the scalable sizes, speeds, and formats in which data is generated and processed affect the overall quality of data. Consequently, Big Data Quality has become an important factor to ensure quality throughout the Big Data lifecycle.
In this research, we focus on the Quality of Big Data before, during, and after the pre-processing phase, which includes sub-processes such as data cleansing, integration, enrichment, filtering, and normalization. Hence, we propose a Big Data Quality Management Framework featuring components, processes, in addition to algorithms to support and ensure Data Quality before any processing. The framework’s main features include continuously improved data quality profile realized through Big Data sampling, profiling, quality mapping, quality assessment, quality rules discovery, quality control and monitoring. The outcomes of quality evaluation represent the essence of a Data Quality Profile (DQP). A DQP is a fundamental component of the proposed framework incorporating critical data quality information including the data profile, quality dimensions scores, and the quality rules. The quality rules are generated by the rule discovery component during the Data Quality Dimension score results against the quality requirements and acts accordingly. Moreover, the DQP is extended and updated with relevant quality-related data information throughout all the framework’s processes.
Another important process of the framework is the pre-processing of data samples, producing pre-processed data that is re-injected into the framework to certify and confirm that the DQP is delivering the pre-defined quality requirements. We also propose a Big Data quality profile repository that stores and manages data quality profiles, data quality rules, and pre-processing activities such as data cleansing and data transformation. The repository is indexed by data quality dimensions, data type, data domain, and data attributes.
The quality evaluation results’ analysis generally leads to improved data quality score enhancements; these deeper quality assessments can reveal additional insights about the data and its quality. Determining which aspects will have a more (or less) impact on the data quality is crucial. These aspects vary in terms of data attributes, observations and types, and can be represented in rows, in columns, or in an unstructured format. To extract these insights, we propose an exploratory quality profiling component supported with algorithms to profile the data quality and  discover highly relevant data attributes using techniques such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
To cope with Unstructured Big Data (UBD) quality evaluation, we extend our framework to support extra features that address UBD quality assessment throughout the Big Data lifecycle. We propose a UDB quality model that emphasizes the unstructured data discovery, profiling, extraction, exploitation, classification, feature extraction and selection activities. These activities were applied to textual, multimedia and social media data characterized as schema less data which will prompt additional challenges for evaluating Quality of UBD. These include for instance challenges related to UBD data parsing, metadata composition, schema construction, feature extraction, pre-processing, and analytics.
The novelty of our solution resides in its ability to estimate the quality of Big Data and to create ongoing data quality profiles and their repositories to record Big Data quality profiling results, thereby making it possible to reuse them for other Big Data sources. Moreover, the importance of addressing Big Data quality in the early phases of a Big Data’s lifecycle will significantly save on costs and ensure accurate data analysis.


identifier: Gil, Diego Nicolas  (2019) A Study on the ‘Intervals of Perception’ and the ‘Architectures of Experience’: towards Schizosomatics.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis is a study on movement. Movement is defined as the relational and transitional activity of ecologies of experience that can not be recognized in legible categories of subject and object nor knower and known. Movement is what happens at the interstices of what can be recognized in clear and distinct sense perception. Through these indistinct relations and transitions in return, movement generates perceptions, environments, and bodies. The disciplines lending techniques to study the indistinct quality of movement are those of process and affect philosophy, somatic practices, and choreography. These carry conceptual and practical techniques to live the research immanently, without establishing a distance from experience that would return to a clear and distinct perspective.

This lived research is done through three separated but mutually included scenarios: the ‘intervals of perception’, the ‘architectures of experience’, and the ‘schizosomatics’. Every scenario researches while it gives shape to techniques: the interstices of perception, the emergent architectures of the ecologies of experience, and transversal modes of embodiment.

If this study were to be a proposition for certain questions, it can be said, retrospectively, that the questions would be the following ones: assuming there are ontogenetic power operations shifting the way in which the relational and transitional movements emerge to generate perceptions, environments, and bodies, could these techniques shaped be of help to those movements that are less capacitated to emerge? And secondly: assuming that today’s theories of perception —influenced by the separation between the ‘conceptual’ and the ‘physical’ (rationalism, empiricism) and also influenced by the internalization of experience inside a distinct category of the human (phenomenology)— give fewer chances to register the ontogenetic operations in movement, can this study offer an alternative philosophical frame to register emergent power?


identifier: Kang, Qingbo  (2019) Medical Image Segmentation by Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Medical image segmentation is a fundamental and critical step for medical image analysis. Due to the complexity and diversity of medical images, the segmentation of medical images continues to be a challenging problem. Recently, deep learning techniques, especially Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) have received extensive research and achieve great success in many vision tasks. Specifically, with the advent of Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs), automatic medical image segmentation based on FCNs is a promising research field. This thesis focuses on two medical image segmentation tasks: lung segmentation in chest X-ray images and nuclei segmentation in histopathological images.
For the lung segmentation task, we investigate several FCNs that have been successful in semantic and medical image segmentation. We evaluate the performance of these different FCNs on three publicly available chest X-ray image datasets.
For the nuclei segmentation task, since the challenges of this task are difficulty in segmenting the small, overlapping and touching nuclei, and limited ability of generalization to nuclei in different organs and tissue types, we propose a novel nuclei segmentation approach based on a two-stage learning framework and Deep Layer Aggregation (DLA). We convert the original binary segmentation task into a two-step task by adding nuclei-boundary prediction (3-classes) as an intermediate step. To solve our two-step task, we design a two-stage learning framework by stacking two U-Nets. The first stage estimates nuclei and their coarse boundaries while the second stage outputs the final fine-grained segmentation map. Furthermore, we also extend the U-Nets with DLA by iteratively merging features across different levels. We evaluate our proposed method on two public diverse nuclei datasets. The experimental results show that our proposed approach outperforms many standard segmentation architectures and recently proposed nuclei segmentation methods, and can be easily generalized across different cell types in various organs.


identifier: Gupta, Varun  (2019) An Empirical Evaluation Of Attention And Pointer Networks For Paraphrase Generation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In computer vision, one of the common practice to augment the image dataset is by
creating new images using geometric transformation, which preserves the similarity.
This data augmentation was one of the most significant factors to win the Image Net
competition in 2012 with vast neural networks. Similarly, in speech recognition, we
saw similar results by augmenting the signal by noise, slowing signal or accelerating
it, and spectrogram modification.
Unlike in computer vision and speech data, there haven not been many techniques
explored to augment data in natural language processing (NLP). The only technique
explored in text data is by lexical substitution, which only focuses on replacing
words by synonyms.
In this thesis, we investigate the use of different pointer networks with the sequence
to sequence models, which have shown excellent results in neural machine translation
(NMT) and text simplification tasks, in generating similar sentences using a sequence
to sequence model and of the paraphrase dataset (PPDB). The evaluation of
these paraphrases is carried out by augmenting the training dataset of IMDb movie
review dataset and comparing its performance with the baseline model. We show
how these paraphrases can affect downstream tasks. Furthermore, We train different
classifiers to create a stable baseline for evaluation on IMDb movie dataset. To our
best knowledge, this is the first study on generating paraphrases using these models
with the help of PPDB dataset and evaluating these paraphrases in the downstream
task.


identifier: Fitzgibbon, Linda  (2019) Roots and Routes: Memory and Identity in the Irish Diaspora in Canada.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Historians of Irish emigration have referred to the 1950s as a “lost decade.” During this ten-year window, half a million people (of a population of three million) left Ireland in search of new lives overseas. This dissertation focuses on Irish emigration to Canada in the decades after the Second World War and examines the complex social, cultural, political and economic forces that fueled the departure of so many young people from the new Republic of Ireland and its neighboring statelet, Northern Ireland. Whereas Irish emigration to Canada in the nineteenth century has been the subject of intensive scholarship, there is a serious lacuna in the written history of postwar immigration from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to Canada. This interdisciplinary thesis seeks to redress this historiographical imbalance.

Roots and Routes: Memory and Identity in the Irish Diaspora in Canada is based on an extensive case study that investigates Irish cultural memory and diasporic space in the National Capital Region of Canada; in particular, its Irish Seniors Social Group Ottawa (ISSGO) that was created in 2005. This cohort is part of a network of grassroots community organizations spread throughout the Irish diaspora that receives fiscal support from the Irish government. Recognizing contributions made by its expatriate communities to their homeland, this funding supports programmes that promote, preserve and foster Irish culture among various constituent communities of Ireland’s diaspora worldwide.

Despite the popularity and prevalence of “Irish culture and heritage” in virtually all corners of the globe, there is no agreement among scholars as to the precise characteristics of Irish culture and heritage—either in Ireland, or among Irish diasporic communities overseas. This lack of clarity and consensus begs critical questions such as: What is Irish cultural identity and cultural memory in Irish diasporic communities? Does such a phenomenon as a “sense of Irishness” exist? If so, how is it manifested and maintained, especially outside of Ireland? Identity is central to how people find meaning in their lives. Hence, scholars need to ask precise and probing questions about how Irish people construct their identities—both at home and abroad. This interdisciplinary thesis explores these questions in a specific diasporic setting—the Irish Seniors Social Group in the National Capital Region of Canada.

The members of this community network have carved out an Irish diasporic space in Canada and have formed a vibrant element of the Canadian mosaic during the past six decades. In unveiling their sociocultural lifeworlds, other questions naturally arise: Who are these people? What region in Ireland did they come from? When did they come, and what motivated them to come to Canada? Where did they settle in Canada? Did they maintain links with family and friends in Ireland? Why did they join ISSGO? What role did geography, time, class, education, religion, gender, and age play in how this cohort became attached to—or detached from—a particular place?

Drawing on an interdisciplinary research model that incorporates diaspora studies, gender history, space-place studies, and oral history, this thesis highlights the significance of roots and routes as fundamental elements in the creation of Irish diasporic lifeworlds in Ottawa, and situates these lifeworlds within a broader metanarrative of Irish emigration to Canada. This dualism will be explored in respect to Canadian immigration policy; individual and collective memories of emigration; settlement patterns; social, cultural and economic mobility; homecoming, and gendered histories.

The dissertation argues that Irish cultural identity is a complex and layered phenomenon, shaped and reshaped by spatial and temporal forces that impact the macro and micro lifeworlds of Irish people worldwide. Highlighting the twin impact of roots and routes as formative elements in the creation of diasporic communities, the dissertation focuses on the spatial settings in which ethnic identities are nurtured and maintained, and on how networks such as the Irish Seniors Social Group in Ottawa maintained and replenished Irish diasporic identities for over half a century.


identifier: Aksoy, Ayberk  (2019) Heimdallr: A gatekeeper for IoT.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Heimdallr: A gatekeeper for IoT

abstract:
In today’s wired and interconnected world, a sheer number of devices are now able to connect to the Internet and expose the data generated by user inputs or the devices’ built-in sensors. These growing numbers of Internet of Things (IoT) devices are called smart and they range from mobile phones, smart televisions, IP cameras, household and industrial appliances, to Wi-Fi thermostats and thermometers. The reason for the avalanche of IoT devices is their convenience and remote accessibility over the traditional versions. However, as with other technological breakthroughs, IoT has major issues regarding the security of access and control of the data generated and hence privacy.
To address these issues, we propose in this thesis a system-based approach:  the system consists of two parts to monitor users’ IoT devices. The first aspect of this system is a firewall monitoring and controlling the incoming and outgoing traffic to and from the IoT devices which are connected to the Internet via a new generation of modem/router called Heimdallr. The second aspect is to store locally in this modem/router the user’s IoT related data and allow a secure interaction by only the “owner” user with these data and the IoT devices. A new concept is introduced in the system to ensure that any update to the IoT software is verified and certified by a central not-for-profit organization. Heimdallr would not allow any update to the IoT’s software to be made unless the update has been certified by this certification agency. The certification agency has a role similar to CSA or UL organizations which provide testing, inspection and certification services and are involved in setting standards.


identifier: Gupta, Jyotsana  (2019) Execution/Simulation of Context/Constraint-aware Composite Services using GIPSY.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: For fulfilling a complex requirement comprising of several sub-tasks, a composition of simple web services, each of which is dedicated to performing a specific sub-task involved, proves to be a more competent solution in comparison to an equivalent atomic web service. Owing to advantages such as re-usability of components, broader options for composition requesters and liberty to specialize for component providers, for over two decades now, composite services have been extensively researched to the point of being perfected in many aspects. Yet, most of the studies undertaken in this field fail to acknowledge that every web service has a limited context in which it can successfully perform its tasks, the boundaries of which are defined by the internal constraints placed on the service by its providers. When used as part of a composition, the restricted context-spaces of all such component services together define the contextual boundaries of the composite service as a unit, which makes internal constraints an influential factor for composite service functionality. However, due to the limited exposure received by them, no systems have yet been proposed to cater to the specific verification of internal constraints imposed on components of a composite service. In an attempt to address this gap in service composition research, in this thesis, we propose a multi-faceted solution capable of not only automatically constructing context-aware composite web services with their internal constraints positioned for optimum resource-utilization but also of validating the generated compositions using the General Intensional Programming SYstem (GIPSY) as a time- and cost-efficient simulation/execution environment.


identifier: Verma, Manisha  (2019) Analysis, Design, and Control of a Single-Phase Single-Stage Grid-Connected Transformerless Solar Inverter.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
As energy utilization is increasing with the rise in the world’s power demand, the traditional energy sources are depleting at a high pace. It has led to attention drawn towards inexhaustible energy resources. There is a huge augmentation in the power generation from renewable energy sources (RES) like wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, etc. to reduce the stress on conventional energy sources like fossil fuels, oil, gas, etc. There has been a steep increase in interest for wind and solar energy systems. PV energy has been growing swiftly in the past two decades which made it most demanded power generation system based on RES. This worldwide requirement for solar energy has led to an immense amount of innovation and development in the Photovoltaic (PV) market. The Conventional grid-connected PV inverter was either with DC/DC converter or without DC/DC converter. These inverters were isolated using a transformer either on the grid (AC) side as a low-frequency transformer or as a high-frequency transformer on the DC side. Elimination of the transformer leads to a galvanic connection between the grid and PV module. This gives rise to the flow of leakage current which is disastrous for the system when it exceeds a specific value. Thus, minimization of this leakage current after the removal of the transformer has been an interesting topic explored by many researchers. Many topologies have been proposed targeting reduction in this leakage current either by 1.) Directly connecting the PV negative with neutral of utility grid or 2.) Disconnecting the PV panel side from AC side. This generally involved addition of more switches or diodes or supplementary branches to disconnect during the freewheeling period. Generally, the above-mentioned ways lead to a reduction in efficiency due to increased losses or complex circuitry.
The motivation of this thesis is to design a transformerless inverter for single-phase PV grid-tied system with a smaller number of devices and still has minimum ground current. It discusses the prevailing inverter topologies in detail and then explains the modes of operation of the proposed inverter. A simple control strategy has been derived and passive elements of the inverter are designed. The simulation results presented have validated the theoretical claims. The experimental results which are similar to simulation results are evidence that the proposed topology is suitable for PV grid-tied systems.
Also, the dynamic modeling of the inverter has been done to derive the plant transfer function. Then, the Proportional Resonant (PR) controller has been designed to ensure the flow of sinusoidal current into the grid with zero steady-state error and constant sinusoidal grid voltage irrespective of load change. The simulation and experimental results achieved high performance which makes this topology successful and promising for grid-tied PV systems.


identifier: Khan, Mayesha  (2019) Examining the Effects of Social Anxiety and Event-level Mood Changes on Alcohol Use in Young Adults.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Background. According to self-medication theories, individuals high in social anxiety (SA) are at risk for misusing alcohol because of its anxiolytic effects. Consistent with dual process and delayed discounting theories, the immediate relief provided by alcohol initiation is central to explaining this risk pathway. Objective. Ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) were used to examine mood changes within a single drinking event, and to test whether these help explain SA risk for heavy alcohol use. Hypotheses. Those high in SA would show decreased anxious (tense) and (possibly) depressed (sad) mood and increased positive (happy) mood when they first initiate alcohol. Further, steeper mood changes would predict heavier alcohol use over the night. Method. Undergraduates (N=229, 154 women, Mage=20.5 years) completed self-reports (i.e., SA) during a lab baseline. This was followed by EMAs of mood and alcohol use on smartphones (hourly 6:00pm-1:00am; morning-after 12:00pm) over four consecutive weekends. Moods from the first three hours of drinking (pre-initiation, 1st-drink, post-initiation) were examined. Analyses. Multilevel growth models were estimated. Results. Elevated SA predicted high anxious, low positive, and high depressed pre-initiation mood. Elevated SA predicted a steeper decrease in anxious (but not positive or depressed) mood across the three time-points. Within-person analyses revealed that a steeper decrease in anxious and a steeper increase in positive mood were associated with increased alcohol use over the night. Conclusion. Consistent with hypotheses, the results suggest that the initial anxiolytic effects of alcohol - i.e., emotional relief – may account for SA risk for alcohol misuse. Gender differences are discussed.


identifier: Tran, Anh Tuan  (2019) Prediction of Fatigue on Rotating-Shift Workers.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Rotating shifts have become prevalent in many industries, leading to a growing concern about the impact of fatigue on workers performance and safety. Thus, it is useful to develop a method to predict the fatigue of workers with rotating shifts. This thesis aims at contributing to the development of such method by building data-driven models to predict level of fatigue.

We use random forest classifier and random forest regressor to build two fatigue prediction models. A third model is built by a combination of random forest classifier and regressor. Two imbalanced datasets from different groups of workers in the same industry are used. We explore two strategies to deal with imbalanced datasets: random over-sampling and class weights.
We select features with feature importance of random forest and discover that a set of 19 features, selected from 38 original features, gives best performance.

We obtain good prediction accuracy on both datasets. The combined model reaches mean absolute error of 0.93 and 0.83 on two datasets, on a 9-level scale of fatigue. In the area of high level of fatigue, which in real work is of particular interest, our model can predict with average 85\% confidence that the true level falls into +-1 range of prediction.

We conclude that fatigue can be predicted with high confidence, based on a dataset of sleep patterns, work schedules and demographic data. Future work will focus on model generalization to datasets from different industries or geographical areas; and the discovery of other sets of features that give better prediction.


identifier: Sibthorpe, Nicola  (2019) Scripts.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Scripts

abstract:
Scripts is an autobiographical narrative that explores the intersections of neuro-divergence and queerness through the lens of “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” originally said by Judith Butler. Following the narrator from birth to early twenties, the novella will explore the intricacies of social dynamics and non-verbal communications. It demonstrates the effects and consequences when those communications fail.
Beyond the theoretical, this is ultimately a story about family, and the strength that can come from such relationships. The narrator explores how it can be a struggle to raise a child who doesn’t automatically adapt socially, but always from the lens of love and support. This is shown alongside the close relationship the narrator has with her siblings.
The novella is divided into four sections - The Baby, The Child, The Teenager, and The Adult - and largely takes place in the last three. The narrative moves through different points of view, each being used in to create a sense of immediacy, distance, or unfamiliarity with the reader to reflect the sense of self the narrator is experiencing. Similarly, formatting and genre is played with throughout the text to demonstrate the skills that the narrator is learning and developing.


identifier: Wathieu, Estelle  (2019) the radical potential of queer nature’s presence on instagram: queer and “decolonially-informed” stories of more-than-human solidarities.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Queer Nature is a nature-connection project in service of the queer community and their allies. Queer Nature was launched in 2016 by Altai, Pinar, and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories (Boulder Country, Colorado). They offer sliding scale workshops and ‘wilderness’ immersions that facilitate multispecies relationship-building and access to ancestral skills while bringing awareness to Indigenous and settler colonial histories. In parallel to these activities, the Queer Nature co-founders regularly share photographs and stories on the corporate social media platform Instagram. Now followed by more than 14,000 people online, this artistic, activist, and scholarly project is representative of the ways that systematically marginalized communities can use social media as a means for community building and circulating ideas and practices. The market-driven nature of online networking services and the financial interests that dictate them mean that platforms such as Instagram are constantly changing. The infrastructures that support these services are, further, fragile and vulnerable, particularly with regard to the crisis of climate change. With these considerations in mind, this thesis creates a space in which Queer Nature's online artistic practice is given a careful, critical contextualization as both participating in queer visual culture and contributing to a “futurist” sensibility. Grounded in photographic visual analysis, this thesis investigates the radical potential of Queer Nature’s images, and their circulation, in a time of great uncertainty. The context of this work is both political, in that attacks against queer and racialized communities have not ceased, and environmental, in that the dramatic loss of biodiversity and the rapid rise of sea levels have the most profound impact on the most vulnerable populations.


identifier: Paoli, Amélie  (2019) Breeding phenology of a semi-domesticated reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) population in response to climatic variability.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The timing of reproduction in plant and animal species is a strong determinant of offspring viability and reproductive success. The large changes in climate reported the last decades could therefore have unprecedented consequences on population dynamics. The breeding time of many species have changed over the past two to three decades in response to climate change, and a developing trophic mismatch between the peak of energy demands by reproducing animals and the peak of forage availability has caused many species’ reproductive success to decrease. The main aim of this thesis was to determine how reproductive phenology of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) responds to the changes in its environment and whether there could be resulting fitness consequences. Using long-term datasets of 45 years of birth dates, 13 years of mating behaviors and 14 years of copulation dates of a semi-domesticated reindeer population in Kaamanen, northern Finland, I showed that both the reindeer timing of mating and timing of calving have occurred earlier over time, in response to climate. Climatic variables at four key periods in the reproductive cycle of reindeer were identified as driving the changes in reindeer breeding phenology: winter, late winter/early spring, summer and autumn. Those phenological changes allowed reindeer to keep track of its changing environment, leading to an improvement in females’ reproductive success. I also found a “head-start” benefit with some females always doing better than others do. However, a later vegetative senescence in autumn negatively affected females’ physical condition in winter and the subsequent calf’s birth weight and calf’s first-summer survival. If climatic changes were to exacerbate, the population dynamics of several ungulate species will certainly be affected.


identifier: Huang, Chunxiang  (2019) Can Depletion Attenuate the Reverse Priming Effect of Slogans on Behaviour?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Consumers are constantly exposed to marketing stimuli which influence them in different ways. For example, exposure to brands has a priming effect on consumers, such that consumers behave consistent with the brand’s image. Exposure to slogans, however, generates a reverse priming effect, where consumers behave opposite to the brand’s image (Laran, Dalton and Andrade, 2011). It is argued that these differences in behaviour occur because slogans, but not brands, are perceived as persuasion tactics by consumers. Yet, it seems plausible that when consumers are depleted (i.e., when they already engaged in a task that required self-control), and then shown a slogan, they may struggle to recognize the marketers’ intent to persuade. It is also plausible that depleted consumers may struggle to resist persuasive tactics. In my thesis, I investigate these possibilities by testing whether depletion can attenuate the reverse priming effect of slogans. I also examine whether perceived persuasion intent predicts consumers behaviour. Across two studies, I show that when people are depleted, exposure to slogans led them to behave consistent with the brand’s image; that is, depletion attenuated the reverse priming effect. This effect occurred when a traditional depletion manipulation was used, and when depletion was manipulated vicariously. I also show that exposure to slogans increased perceived persuasion intent ratings (relative to exposure to a brand) under nondepletion. Perceived persuasion intent ratings did not predict behaviour under nondepletion, nor did it predict behaviour under depletion.


identifier: Ilacqua, Samantha  (2019) “Carrying their stories”: The experience of active listening at Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Although the pervasiveness of sexual violence on Canadian university campuses is becoming a common feature of news stories, the sociological literature only addresses some elements of the problem. While the rates and roots of sexual violence are well known – as is its impact on those who survive it – less knowledge has been produced regarding the support of survivors. Scholars have demonstrated that supporting survivors is key to their healing (Ahrens, 2006; Ahrens et al., 2007; Ullman & Filipas, 2001), and that the presence of high quality support services on campus is associated with a greater likelihood that survivors will maintain academic performance and seek out healthy coping mechanisms (Campbell et al., 2001). However, university-funded support services – especially those that target sexual violence specifically – are not widely-established, and thus are a new entity on many university campuses. Due to the steady increase of university corporatization since 2008/2009, the financial resources necessary for implementing such services are often either nonexistent or allocated elsewhere (Newson & Polster, 2015). Consequently, very little research has examined the support side of sexual violence, and no prior research – to my knowledge – has been conducted on on-campus support. Yet, there is a great deal of insight to be gained from the experiences of those who professionally support survivors of sexual violence. This thesis helps to fill that dearth in the literature by drawing on the results of a qualitative research project involving auto-ethnographic participant observation, and interviews with social workers and volunteers working in Concordia University’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre.


identifier: Siddappa, Kavana  (2019) A Predictive Model for Scaffolding Manhours in Heavy Industrial Construction Projects: An application of machine learning.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In cold countries like Canada, modular construction is widely adopted in heavy industrial construction projects due to weather uncertainties. To facilitate the construction processes, the temporary structures, especially scaffolding, are essential since it provides easy access for workers to carry out construction activities at different levels of the height and also ensures the safety of laborers. As indirect costs of projects, the scaffolding is estimated by 15-40% of project costs. Furthermore, according to the increase in the size of the projects, the scaffolding uses a larger amount of resources than estimated ones, which may cause budget overrun and schedule delay. However, due to the lack of systematic and scientific models to estimate scaffolding productivity, the heavy industrial company has difficulty to plan and allocate the resources for scaffold activities before construction. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a predictive model to estimate scaffolding productivity based on the historical scaffolding data of a heavy industrial project. The proposed model is developed based on the following steps: (i) identifying the key parameters (e.g. specific trades, work type, different scaffold methods, task times spent using scaffolds, and weights of the scaffolds) that influence the scaffolding manhours and project productivity; and (ii) developing the predictive models for scaffold manhours using machine learning algorithms including  multiple linear regression, decision tree regression, random forest regression and artificial neural networks(ANN) . The accuracy of models have been measured with evaluation metrics which are mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) and the R squared value. The findings reveal up to 90% accuracy for ANN models.


identifier: Amir Jabbari, Amirali  (2019) Assessing the sensitivity of Canadian hydro and wind power production potentials to climate variability and change.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Increasing population, limiting fossil fuels, along with looming effects of climate change and environmental degradation have forced the energy industry to look for alternative energy sources, most particularly from renewable resources, including wind, solar and hydro. Among these, hydropower is the dominant renewable energy source in Canada in terms of production, with enormous potential for further growths due to large water availability. Wind power also constitutes the fastest growing renewable energy source in Canada during the recent past. Both hydro and wind power productions are largely dependent on local and regional climate conditions. As a result, climate variability and change can greatly affect their availability in time and space. This study aims at providing a first-hand analyses of the sensitivity of hydropower and wind energy to climate variability and change across Canadian regions using a suite of statistical techniques and inference approaches. More specifically for hydropower production, trends in effective climate variables along with the dependencies and causalities of these variables with monthly hydropower production is assessed. These analyses lead to the development of a set of predictive statistical models, with which the expected future monthly hydropower production can be projected in light of the existing trends in effective climate variables across Canadian political jurisdiction. For wind energy, the dependency between temperature and wind speed is explored at the local scale with a greater goal of understanding how gradual changes in temperature during the recent past has resulted into trends in wind speed across different time scales and/or Canadian regions. Our results show that Canada has become warmer, slightly wetter with more contribution from rain than snow, and less windy. In addition, provincial monthly hydropower productions demonstrate strong dependence with effective climate variables, however the sign and magnitude of such dependencies are subject to spatial and temporal differences. Our results show that depending on the province, climate variables in a given time step can cause changes in the hydropower production between up to 20 months ahead. The sensitivity analyses made by developed predictive models also show that continuation of the existing trends in climate variables can cause some changes in the expected annual pattern of hydropower production across Canadian providences and territories, which are more intense during the warmer seasons. Although net effect of climate change over the entire Canadian landmass is suggested to be positive, there are significant seasonal and regional losses in hydropower production, for instance in Alberta and British Columbia. With respect to the wind speed, negative trends in wind speed were found for most of the stations throughout the country. Although during the same period, positive trends are also observed in temperature, it is shown that in majority of cases there is no significant dependency between local temperature and wind speed; yet, it should be noted that this, to some extent, is governed by the threshold used to account for the significance of the dependency. Considering stations that are shown significant dependency between the local temperature and wind speed, the negative influences of increasing local temperature on the local wind speed are quantified across northern, western, eastern and Atlantic Canada. Our results provides a fresh look at the future of hydro and wind energy productions in Canada under climate variability and change, which have enormous implications to natural resource management. The statistical frameworks developed due to the
course of this thesis can be used in other parts of the globe, where data support is available, to address the sensitivity of hydropower and wind energy to climate variability and change.


identifier: Giacosa, Chiara  (2019) White Matter Plasticity in Dancers and Musicians.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation examined training-related brain plasticity by comparing white matter (WM) structure between dancers and musicians and relating the structural changes to dance and music abilities. We focused on the primary motor pathways, to identify potential structural differences between whole-body dance training
and specific-effector music training.

To this purpose, highly trained dancers and musicians, matched for years of training, were tested on a novel dance imitation task, melody discrimination, and rhythm reproduction.  Participants were scanned using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). WM was analyzed at a whole-brain level in Study 1, using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Study 2 used probabilistic tractography to examine the descending motor pathways from the hand, leg, trunk and head regions.  In Study 1, dancers showed increased diffusivity and reduced anisotropy in comparison to musicians in regions including the descending motor
pathways, the superior longitudinal fasciculus and the corpus callosum, predominantly in the right hemisphere. Consistent with this, in Study 2, dancers had increased diffusivity and greater volume in all portions of the right descending motor pathways, whereas musicians had increased anisotropy, especially in the right hand and trunk/arm tracts. Importantly, in both studies, DTI metrics were positively related with dance and negatively with melody performance. In Study 2, DTI metrics also were negatively associated with age of training start, indicating a direct relation between the structural changes observed and training.

Our findings indicate that different types of long-term training have distinct effects on brain structure. In particular, dance training, which engages the
whole body, appears to enhance connectivity among a broad range of cortical
regions, possibly by increasing axonal diameter and the heterogeneity of fiber
orientation. In contrast, music training seems to increase the coherence and
packing of the connections linked to the trained effector(s).

This dissertation is novel in comparing brain structure between two groups of highly trained performers and in examining multiple DTI metrics concurrently. Further, in Study 2, we developed a novel methodology to segregate the motor cortex into regions corresponding to four main body parts, which could be used by other researchers interested in motor connectivity.


identifier: Finbloom, Aaron  (2019) Talking to Transform - Aesthetic Experiments in Conversational Inquiry.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation is an investigation into conversation practices of transformative inquiry examples of which lie across philosophical, therapeutic, spiritual and pedagogical disciplines and include: Socratic dialogue, Community of Philosophical Inquiry, Philosophy for Children, Psychodrama, Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating practices, Quaker Meetings, confessionals, dialogic pedagogies. My central claims are that these practices contain linguistic and paralinguistic techniques which: 1) perform functions of transformative inquiry 2) can perform these functions apart from the institutions, communities and ideologies typically tied to these techniques 3) can be aesthetically re-combined and re-deployed within artistic formats to expand the scope of these performative functions.

I begin this study by a close investigation of a singular practice – Socratic dialogue – arguing how it was a live, performative practice which relied on techniques of questioning, clarifications, brachylogia, facilitation and role-play, and showing how these techniques moved in and out of play through interlocutory negotiations of power, desire and investment. The focus widens as I create a glossary of conversational techniques of transformative inquiry drawn from dozens of conversation practices. This glossary arranges techniques by their linguistic, paralinguistic and non-linguistic functions and analyzes how each technique performs transformative inquiry through the following variables: noticing, affective and conceptual clarity, opening and closing, expressivity, and focus. What follows is an analysis of Tino Sehgal’s This Progress which draws on the performative functions of the glossary to show how a contemporary work of art can utilize conversation techniques of transformative inquiry. I then conduct a more systematic analysis of how artworks can utilize techniques of transformative inquiry by examining: how conversation is deployed in artworks, how semantic determinacy or indeterminacy is negotiated, how determinate aspects can be notated or scored, questions of audienceship and witnessing, and how the transformative inquiry itself changes when conducted within a work of art. This leads into an extended study of my own art practice of developing conversation pieces for transformative inquiry, a practice which expands the reflexivity and reflectivity of transformative inquiry itself. I conclude with a brief investigation into how my own practice is para and pata-philosophical by examining key concepts of philosophical inquiry – expertise, techne, poiesis, eidos, immanence, logos, repetition.


identifier: Mohammadi, Alireza ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5008-5776 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5008-5776>  (2019) Effective, Comfortable, and Sustainable Railway Systems: Decision Models for Optimal Asset Management and Scenarios Analysis.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Millions of passengers worldwide rely on a fast, competitive, and reliable transit system for daily transportation. The American infrastructure report card 2017 assigned a level “D-” to the USA’s transit sector that means “poor” condition. The Canadian report card in 2016 assigned a grade of “Fair” to fixed assets (e.g. stations and tunnels) of the transport system; this indicates that such assets “require attention”. Meanwhile, 25% of such fixed assets were ranked in poor and very poor condition. In periods of 2016 – 2018, the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) has invested the amount of C$2.2 billion, or 78% of its total capital expenditure for metro system maintenance and upgrading. Extensive deterioration of already aged metro systems in North America complicates managing the network while coping with the increased demand and the corresponding need to plan for capital upgrades with a restricted annual budget. Effective planning to rehabilitate existing assets and expand new ones while respecting constraints is key to the success of transit-oriented strategies. However, without a comprehensive multi-criteria decision-making procedure, it is impossible to achieve the optimal actions at the right time within the given budget. The main objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive model for managing urban railways, such as the metro, that supports strategic decisions to maintain the highest level of convenience, safety, comfort and reliability in the metropolitan area. To overcome the gaps found in the literature, these proposed steps should be used:
Step I: Developing an understanding of convenience with special concentration on the level of service from the passenger’s perspective. The idea is to model, quantitatively and practically, aspects relevant to the user convenience for transit vehicle’s comfort. Step II: Development of a decision-making model to mimic the operation of the transit systems capturing indirect impacts such as human development and sustainability. Step III: Development of an optimization model to analyze investment scenarios for the upgrade and expansion of the railway network, while up-keeping the existing operation at acceptable levels of service, guiding policies, and respecting budget limitation. This includes the relationships between the transit system and human development issues, addressing fighting poverty; supporting accessibility to health, education and job centers; and encouraging the modal shift away from the automobiles.
The proposed models could also be used by public transit systems such as Tramway, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Light Rail Transit (LRT), traditional buses and metro to guide planning for their maintenance, upgrade and expansion to achieve higher levels of convenience and reliability encouraging transit ridership.


identifier: Lee, Sumin  (2019) Early Childhood Teachers' Perspectives of Outdoor and Nature Play in Seoul, South Korea and Montreal, Canada.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This qualitative study explores educators’ perspectives of outdoor and nature play in Seoul, South Korea and Montreal, Canada. The study was divided into two parts, focusing on the research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of existing forest schools and settings in Seoul, South Korea and Montreal, Canada?, and (2) What are the perspectives and beliefs of the teachers in these settings in terms of the benefits and challenges of forest schools? Observational data were gathered from visits to six outdoor play settings in Seoul and four outdoor settings in Montreal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 educators at these sites: seven educators from Seoul and four educators from Montreal.
	This study describes each setting’s unique characteristics. Findings from educator interviews suggest that there are more similarities than differences in perceived benefits and challenges on outdoor and nature play between the two countries. In analyzing the Canadian and Korean observations/interviews, six subthemes were found in terms of benefits: (1) Accessibility, (2) Children’s ability/development, (3) Meeting children’s needs, (4) Pedagogy, (5) Positive support, and (6) Teacher’s growth. Five subthemes were found in both cities in terms of challenges: (1) Accessibility, (2) Weather, (3) Safety, (4) Negative condition, and (5) Teacher. The current research conveys valuable implications for educators interested in forest schools in that it compares two international cities and includes diverse participants within the field of education.


identifier: Fanaei, Seyedeh-Sara  (2019) Performance measurement, forecasting and optimization models for construction projects.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Performance evaluation facilitates tracking and controlling project progress. Project control consists of two main steps: measurement and decision-making. In the measurement step, key performance indicators (KPIs) are designed to evaluate a project’s different aspects and are used as a thermometer to determine the health status of the project. In the decision-making step project performance is forecasted and analyzed to support needed management actions. While considerable work is available on the quantitative performance of projects, less attention is directed to qualitative performance. This research presents a framework for qualitative measurement, prediction, and optimization of construction project performance to enhance the progress reporting process and to support management in taking corrective actions, if needed. The framework has three newly developed models; KPI prediction model, performance indicator (PI) prediction model and performance optimization model (POM). The framework is developed for performance measurement, prediction, and optimization of construction projects based on six selected KPIs (cost, time, quality, safety, client satisfaction, and project team satisfaction). The selection is based on the results of a questionnaire and the literature review. Qualitative data of KPIs was collected from 119 construction projects and were then utilized in the development of the three models.
The first model maps the KPIs of three critical project stages to the whole project KPIs, based on soft computing methods. Three different soft computing techniques are studied for this purpose and their results are compared: the neuro-fuzzy technique, using Fuzzy C-means algorithm (FCM), and subtractive clustering, and artificial neural networks (ANN). The neuro-fuzzy model is developed for predicting the KPIs of the next stages of a project. The second model used the forecasted results of the first model to generate a single composite PI expressing the health status of the project. The relative weight of each KPI used in calculating the project PI is determined using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Genetic Algorithm (GA).
Performance Optimization Model (POM) is the third model. It is used for selecting suitable corrective actions considering the project status expressed by the six KPIs stated above. The developed model can be applied in the initial and middle stage of the project to assist owners in the improvement of the overall project PI and in the improvement of individual KPIs. Different possible modes are considered for project activities based on different ways, referee to here as modes, for resource allocation, execution methods, and/or choice of different materials. GA is applied to choose among different activity modes and optimize project performance using POM. The number of activities and their modes are flexible and do not have any limitations. MATLAB software is used for developing the models in this research. The developed framework and its three models are expected to assist owners and their agents in managing their project effectively.
Validation was conducted by using the data from 16 real projects to confirm the model’s effectiveness and to compare the results of the soft computing techniques. These results indicate that a neuro-fuzzy technique using subtractive clustering performs better than both the neuro-fuzzy technique with FCM and ANN in predicting project KPIs. The  automated framework employs a set of performance indicators to evaluate, predict, and optimize the construction project’s performance, qualitatively. It applies different soft computing techniques and compares their results to choose the best technique. The developed framework can be used in construction projects to help decision-makers evaluate and improve the performance of their projects.


identifier: Taylor, Chalsley  (2019) East-Ending.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: East-Ending

abstract: After losing her lucrative position at a marketing firm, 31-year-old Geneva is forced  to move in temporarily with her mother, June, an exacting eighth-grade teacher and first-generation Canadian living in Scarborough. Neither mother nor daughter cope well with the arrangement. The return draws Geneva back within the orbit of her large, estranged Trinidadian family. Cousin Fran, older by two years and now a mother herself, appears to have replaced Geneva in June’s day-to-day life. Embittered by the termination, Geneva resents having to return to Scarborough. With nicknames like “Scarberia” and “Scarbage,” its status among her peers is dismal at best— it is said to lack arts, culture, and possibilities. She finds herself increasingly ill-equipped to deal with the familial and cultural expectations she faces both at home and in her professional life.�


identifier: Gupta, Ankita  (2019) Development of an LC-MS assay for putative biomarkers of anaphylaxis: urinary 11β-prostaglandinF2α and leukotrieneE4.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Anaphylaxis is a hypersensitivity reaction that is rapid in onset and can be fatal. In recent years there has been a concerning increase in anaphylactic cases worldwide. Due to the limitations of currently used biomarkers of anaphylaxis such as narrow time collection window for blood and/or poor applicability to food-induced anaphylaxis, there is a need to assess new biomarkers of anaphylaxis. Urinary 11β-prostaglandinF2α (11β-PGF2α) and leukotrieneE4 (LTE4) were recently proposed as possible new biomarkers of anaphylaxis. However, these studies relied on immunoassay-based methods, which may not be able to distinguish all isomers, and small cohorts, thus requiring more rigorous follow-up studies. The objective of this project was to develop and validate a highly selective ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time of flight (UHPLC-QTOF) method for the accurate analysis of urinary 11β-PGF2α and LTE4.
C18 reversed-phase chromatography was used for the separation of isomers.  Mobile phase A was 0.02% acetic acid in water and mobile phase B was 0.02% acetic acid in acetonitrile/iso-propanol (90:10). The isocratic flow and shallow gradient of mobile phase B gave a baseline separation of PGF isomers and LTE4 isomers, respectively. Both positive and negative electrospray ionization (ESI) were tested for the ionization of LTE4. Negative ESI was selected based on the signal-to-noise ratio, which was 7x higher in negative ESI than positive ESI.
Solid phase extraction (SPE) was selected for sample preparation to achieve sufficient enrichment to enable the measurement of low endogenous levels of these two putative biomarkers. Three different SPE sorbents were tested for recovery of 11β-PGF2α and LTE4: mixed-mode strong anion-exchange, mixed-mode weak anion-exchange and reversed-phase C18. C18 SPE was selected for the sample preparation based on the analyte recovery and minimum extraction of interferences. Separate SPE elution of 11β-PGF2α and LTE4 was chosen as the best strategy to minimize background signal and improve the limits of detection of LTE4. A forced degradation study of LTE4 showed that LTE4 is not stable at a pH below 4 and hence strict control of pH was required throughout the procedure. The use of 6 μL of 30% glycerol in method (v/v) improved the method precision by reducing analyte losses in non-specific adsorption.
11β-PGF2α is also excreted as glucuronic acid conjugate in urine. Hence, to quantitate total endogenous 11β-PGF2α concentrations in urine, β-glucuronidase enzyme hydrolysis was used.
The method was validated for accuracy, precision, linearity, recovery, matrix effects and stability. The validation was performed using deuterated internal standards as surrogate analytes since both 11β-PGF2α and LTE4 are present endogenously. Intra-day accuracy for ranged from 90-111% and 86-108% for 11β-PGF2α-d4 and LTE4-d5, respectively.  The method showed good intra-day precision (% RSD = 4.0-7.4% and % RSD = 6.8-14.9% for 11β-PGF2α-d4 and LTE4-d5 respectively). The method was linear from 9.8-5000 pg/mL concentration of both analytes. Inter-day accuracies were 91-100% (% RSD = 4.2-8.4%) for 11β-PGF2α-d4 and 93-113% (% RSD = 4.9-8.8%) for LTE4-d5. The lower limit of quantitation of both analytes was 15 pg/mL. The recoveries were 92-95% and 77-83% and the matrix effects were 83-88% and 99-115% for 11β-PGF2α-d4 and LTE4-d5, respectively in pooled urine from six different individuals. Recovery and matrix effects were also evaluated in nine individual urine lots. The 11β-PGF2α-d4 recovery ranged from 70-116% and LTE4-d5 recovery ranged from 61-99% across nine urine lots. Matrix effects for 11β-PGF2α-d4 ranged from 69-106% and matrix effects for LTE4-d5 ranged from 87-126% across nine urine lots, suggesting that slight matrix effects were present in individual samples as compared to matrix effects in pooled urine. 11β-PGF2α-d4 was stable for up to three freeze-thaw cycles whereas LTE4 was stable only up to one freeze-thaw cycle indicating that urine samples should be aliquoted and free-thaw cycles should be avoided for LTE4 quantitation. Both analytes were stable in the freezer for up to three-week period.
Overall, this novel validated and highly selective LC-MS method for urinary 11β-PGF2α and LTE4 can be used for anaphylaxis biomarker analysis in clinical studies and addresses some of the key shortcomings in other LC-MS assays reported in literature such as low LTE4 recovery and lack of data on isomer separation.


identifier: Fortin-Simpson, Jeffrey ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2190-4351 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2190-4351>  (2019) Effect of Thickness and Ply Orientation on the Flexural Bending Behaviour of Thick Composite Laminates.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The growing trend of fibre reinforced composite laminates in highly loaded structural applications has created a need for better analytical tools to provide quick estimates of predicted laminate performance, faster computational tools for more detailed laminate analysis, and more experimental data for validation of higher order theories. The production of experimental data requires significant capital investment. As such, the majority of research being conducted is focused on developing higher order theories and reducing computational effort to be able to more accurately simulate composite laminates in various load cases. However, due to the lack of available experimental data, the theoretical research being conducted is most often validated against the 3D elasticity theory, which itself is very computationally intensive, albeit highly accurate. One example of a highly loaded composite structure with a thick cross-section is a helicopter’s main rotor yoke. Industry experience has determined that the thick section of such a laminate is the most critical, especially around the area of load introduction due to a bolted joint connection. This study aims to provide reliable experimental data against which a higher-order monodimensional beam theory is compared, and that can be used to validate other higher order theories. Rectangular laminates of 20, 40, 60, and 80 unidirectional layers along with 80 cross-ply layers are tested in quasi-static cantilever bending at 5 mm/min, where the fixed end of the laminate is clamped between steel plates and the loaded end is clamped between the cylindrical faces a cantilever loading fixture. Laminates of 80 unidirectional layers are also tested in cantilever bending where the loaded end is also clamped between steel plates to represent a bolted connection at both ends of the specimen.  Digital image correlation and strain gauges were used to collect surface strain measurements which were used to validate a fully parametric ANSYS model that could predict failure based on Hashin failure criteria. The train data showed that digital image correlation is a valid technique for full-field surface strain measurement up to very high displacement and strain levels. The load-displacement data was compared to higher-order monodimensional beam theory calculations and showed the limitations of this theory as specimen thickness increased, as well as the accuracy it can provide for thinner laminates, even when including secondary bonded components such as buffer pads. A simplified method for using the monodimensional beam theory is presented for the quick calculation of the shear correction coefficient of a [0/90]Ωs laminate, where Ω can be any integer. The failure displacements of each specimen configuration are charted against laminate thickness to illustrate the size effect, which is the principle of decreasing component strength with increasing thickness, as it relates to composite plates in bending.


identifier: McTaggart, Alicia  (2019) Towards Controlling the Growth of Silica-carbonate and Vaterite Microstructures.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Spurred by lessons learnt from the ability of nature to “design” biominerals with a high degree of control over their shape, size, mineral phase and hierarchical assembly over multiple length scales, a multitude of bottom-up research strategies have been geared towards developing self-assembled inorganic materials. The self-assembly route could lead to materials with novel functionality and complexity for applications in fields such as photonics, electronics and photovoltaics. Of particular interest in our labs are biomimetic 3D nanocrystalline composite materials, characterized by long-range orientational order and highly curved surfaces.  These composite materials can be synthesized from the coupled reaction of the carbonates of barium, strontium and aragonite-type calcium carbonate with silica in alkaline (pH ca. 10–12) environments under the influence of atmospheric CO2. It has been shown that the complexity of these microstructures can be enhanced under dynamic reaction-diffusion conditions. To replicate this approach, we aim to characterize the effect of changes in solution conditions (i.e. pH, CO2 concentration and temperature) on the growth, structural morphology and the hierarchical organization of silica-carbonate biomorphs. The interaction between the organic and inorganic components of biological systems leads to some of the most beautiful (and often chiral) patterns seen in nature, as demonstrated by snail shells and the chiral narwhal tusk. Attempts to control the handedness of the helices during their formation involved the use of enantiomerically pure amino acids at the molecular level and chiral vaterite crystal templates at the mesoscale, to break the symmetry towards helices of a single handedness. Finally, we aim to show how the size and predominant morphologies of silica-carbonate microstructures was tuned as a function of concentration of Chicago Sky Blue (CSB; a sulphonated azo dye) in addition to its method of incorporation in the crystallization solution. This research also provides indirect evidence for accelerated growth rates of the microstructures from solutions containing dye as demonstrated by an increase in size relative to control experiments without dye during a growth period of 1.5–2 hours. Light and scanning electron microscopies were the principal tools used for the characterization of the as-formed biomorphs.


identifier: Boone, Chloe  (2019) ᐧᐄᒑᐦᑐᐧᐃᓐᐦ, ᐊᔨᒥᐧᐃᓐ, ᑭᔮ ᐊᔅᒌ: ᐋᐧᐄ ᔮᔨᒋᑳᐱᐧᐃᐦᑖᑭᓂᐧᐃᒡ ᐊᔨᒥᐧᐃᓐ ᐊᓂᑖ ᐧᐄᒥᓂᒌᐦᒡ Relationships, Language, and the Land: Language Revitalisation in the Cree Community of Wemindji, Eeyou Istchee.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Indigenous languages, lands, and cultures are inextricably linked, and language is critical for cultural retention and transmission, individual and community well-being, and identity. While Indigenous languages worldwide risk being lost, language activists are emerging from communities to protect their ancestral languages, heritages, and connections to land. In Canada, approximately 70 Indigenous languages are spoken today; however, the Cree dialect continuum is one of only three expected to endure. The legacy of Canadian residential schools and other colonial practices have had lasting impacts on the relationships to language and land
of many Eeyouch (Eastern Cree people). In response, the Eeyou (Eastern Cree) community of Wemindji launched the Cree Literacy for Wemindji Adults program (CLWA) in 2017. In this manuscript-based master’s thesis, undertaken at the invitation of the community and Community Council, I explore the intimate relationships between iiyiyuuayimuwin (Eastern Cree language) and ischii, and the implications of language reclamation for miyupimaatisiiun (Eeyou community and individual well-being), as shared with me by community members. In the first of two manuscripts, I demonstrate how dispossession caused by colonial encroachment and neocolonial extractivism has caused these relationships to weaken, and explore community responses to these impacts over several generations. In my second manuscript, co-author and Wemindji Language coordinator and Cree language teacher, Theresa Kakabat-Georgekish and I explore the impacts of the process of language reclamation on CLWA participants’ and
community well-being and sense of cultural identity.