identifier: Mahmood, Shaikh Asif  (2012) Modeling and Characterization of X-ray Image Detectors.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The flat-panel image detectors capture an X-ray image electronically, and enable a smooth clinical transition to digital radiography by replacing traditional film/cassette based system. They provide excellent X-ray images and have been commercialized for different X-ray imaging modalities. However, there still remain significant scientific challenges in these detectors associated with dark current and ghosting which constitute critical performance requirements for modalities such as digital fluoroscopy. This doctoral dissertation involves both experimental characterization and physics-based theoretical modelling of time and bias dependent dark current behaviour and X-ray induced change in sensitivity (ghosting) in X-ray imaging detectors.  The theoretical investigations are based on the physics of the individual phenomenon and a systematic solution of physical equations in the photoconductor layer; (i) semiconductor continuity equations (ii) Poisson’s equation, and (iii) trapping rate equations. The theoretical model has been validated with the measured and published experimental results.

The developed dark current model has been applied to a-Se and poly-HgI2 based detectors (direct conversion detectors), and a-Si:H p-i-n photodiode (indirect conversion detectors). The validation of the model with the experimental results determines the physical mechanisms responsible for the dark current in X-ray imaging detectors. The dark current analysis also unveils the important material parameters such as trap center concentrations in the blocking layers, trap depths, and effective barrier heights for injecting carriers. The analysis is important for optimization of the dark current consistent with having good transport properties which can ultimately improve the dynamic range of the detector.

The physical mechanisms of sensitivity reduction (ghosting) and its recovery has been investigated by exposing a-Se detector at high dose and then monitoring the recovery process under (i) resting the samples (natural recovery), (ii) reversing the bias polarity and magnitude, and (iii) shining light. The continuous monitoring of the sensitivity as a function of exposure and time reveals the ghosting mechanisms in a-Se mammography detectors. This research finds a faster sensitivity recovery by reversing the bias during the natural recovery process. The sensitivity recovery mechanisms (e.g., recombination between trapped and oppositely charged free carrier, trapping of oppositely charged free carriers, or relaxation of trap centers) have been qualitatively investigated by validating the simulation results with the experimental data. The ghost removal mechanisms and techniques are important to improve the image quality which can ultimately lead to the reduction of the patient exposure consistent with better diagnosis for different X-ray imaging modalities.


identifier: Duan, Lian  (2012) Western Influences on Contemporary Chinese Art Education: Two Case Studies of Responses from Chinese Academics and College Students to Modern Western Art Theory.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract:
This study examines the question of how 20th-century Western art theory has influenced contemporary Chinese art education at the college level, focusing specifically on the problems of misreading, namely, mistranslation and misinterpretation. For this purpose, I offer two case studies: an analysis of my interviews with some Chinese academics, including art theorists and translators, and an analysis of Chinese college students’ essays responding to my lectures on visual culture.

The two case studies shed light on some basic questions: (1) What are the misreadings due to the cultural differences between China and the West? (2) Why and how have these misreadings happened? (3) Are there purposeful misreadings? (4) If yes, why and how? (5) And what is the possible significance of such misreadings to Chinese and Western art education?

Answering the above questions, two types of misreadings are identified. One is unintentional, such as mistranslation due to language and cultural barriers, while the other one is intentional or purposeful manipulation. In the two case studies, I examine the purposeful misreading of Western art theory, and demonstrate that it is the Chinese way to localize Western art theory for Chinese use. This claim is supported by the findings from my analyses of the interviews and Chinese students’ essays.

In this dissertation I suggest that the problem of purposeful misreading of modern Western art theory is caused by the traditional Chinese culture of respect for senior academics and the contemporary Chinese practice of localizing Western theory. The ingrained culture of respect for senior academics makes it difficult for junior academics to question and challenge the works of their superiors. Additionally, the Chinese academics tend to appropriate Western concepts and theories by making them accommodate Chinese values and the grand narrative of Chinese culture.


identifier: Chalut, Jennifer A  (2012) The Characterization of the Magdalene in the Gospels according to John, Thomas, Philip and Mary.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The recent interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene in pop culture has seemingly generated a fascination in studying the Magdalene academically. As a figure who is negatively and often wrongly characterized as a sinner, a prostitute and sexual partner to Jesus, the Magdalene is also a significant literary character who symbolizes the power of the feminine and the feminine right to salvation. Using both diachronic and synchronic methodologies we can begin to understand the power and influence of the Magdalene in both the canonical gospels and other Christian texts at Nag Hammadi. The character of the Magdalene is examined in the Gospels according to John, Thomas, Philip and Mary where her character advances the plot and aids the reader in understanding the theological message of each gospel. Within these selected texts, the relationship that the Magdalene has with Jesus and the competition that exists between Mary and Peter is emphasized. The texts are examined using a gender-critical approach to illustrate the role that gender and sex play in the development, as well as in the reception of the text. Using a combination of diachronic, synchronic as well as a gender-critical approach we are able to understand how the Magdalene highlights the unity in Christ and gives empowerment to female literary characters.


identifier: Hajdu, Maya  (2012) Fragmented Memories in the Graphic Novel: Miriam Katin, Bernice Eisenstein, and Miriam Libicki.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis examines a unique niche of North American art: autobiographical comics by Jewish women. From the perspective of memory studies, the main goal of this research is to present a framework for analyzing graphic novels. Artists Miriam Katin, Bernice Eisenstein, and Miriam Libicki present the spectator/reader with distinct and widely varying possibilities for the graphic medium with their memoirs, We Are on Our Own, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, and Jobnik! An American Girl’s Adventure’s in the Israeli Army, respectively. Several avenues are explored in relation to these works, including the question of how memory is visualized through text and image, trauma and fragmentation, issues of self-representation, narrativity, and time. At a deeper level, there is also a consideration of the diverse roles and meanings of remembrances in the visual arts. The purpose of this research is not to create an overarching statement about comic books or memory, but rather to unravel their immense complexity and richness using theories from a wide range of disciplines, including memory studies, narratology, Jewish cultural studies, feminist studies, and oral history.


identifier: Uzzal, Md. Rajib Ul Alam  (2012) Analysis of a Three-Dimensional Railway Vehicle-Track System and Development of a Smart Wheelset.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

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abstract:
Wheel flats are the sources of high magnitude impact forces at the wheel-rail interface, which can induce high levels of local stresses leading to fatigue damage, and failure of various vehicle and track components. With demands for increased load and speed, the issue of wheel flats and a strategy for effective maintenance and in-time replacement of defective wheels has become an important concern for heavy haul operators. A comprehensive coupled vehicle-track model is thus required in order to predict the impact forces and the resulting component stresses in the presence of wheel flats.
This study presents the dynamic response of an Euler- Bernoulli beam supported on two-parameter Pasternak foundation subjected to moving load as well as moving mass. Dynamic responses of the beam in terms of normalized deflection and bending moment have been investigated for different velocity ratios under moving load and moving mass conditions. The effect of moving load velocity on dynamic deflection and bending moment responses of the beam have been investigated. The effect of foundation parameters such as, stiffness and shear modulus on dynamic deflection and bending moment responses have also been investigated for both moving load and moving mass at constant speeds.
This dissertation research concerns about modeling of a three-dimensional railway vehicle- track model that can accurately predict the wheel-rail interactions in the presence of wheel defects. This study presents a three-dimensional track system model using two Timoshenko beams supported on discrete elastic supports, where the sleepers are considered as rigid masses, and the rail pad and ballast as spring-damper elements. The vehicle system is modeled as a three-dimensional 17- DOF lumped mass model comprising a full car body, two bogies and four wheelsets. The railway track is modeled as a pair of three-dimensional flexible beams that considers two parallel Timoshenko beams periodically supported by lumped masses representing the sleepers.
The wheel-rail contact is modeled using nonlinear Hertzian contact theory. The developed model is validated with the existing measured data and analytical solutions available in literature. The nonlinear model is then employed to investigate the wheel-rail impact forces that arise in the wheel-rail interface due to the presence of single as well as multiple wheel flats.
The effects of single and multiple wheel flats on the responses of vehicle and track components in terms of displacements and acceleration responses are investigated for both defective wheel and the flat-free wheel. The characteristics of the bounce, pitch and roll motions of the bogie due to a single wheel flat are also investigated. The study shows that nonlinear railpad and ballast model gives better prediction of the wheel-rail impact force than that of the linear model when compared with the experimental data. The results clearly show that presence of wheel flat within the same wheelset has significant effect on the impact force, displacement and acceleration responses of that wheelset.
This study further presents the modeling of a MEMS based accelerometer in order to detect the presence of a wheel flat in the railway vehicle. The proposed accelerometer can survive in a dynamic shock environment with acceleration up to ±150g. Simulations of the accelerometer are performed under various operating conditions in order to determine the optimum configuration.


identifier: Gauzer, Gene A.  (2012) Perception, Truth and Christ as the Causal Exemplar: A Metaphysical and Ontological Speculation of the Human Soul.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The thesis is a systematic study comparing the ordinary human soul to the human soul of Jesus Christ as the model. Since the time of the pre-Chalcedon controversies, the tension arising from the relation of the human being of Jesus with the divine Being of the Son of God is the subject of intense debates. One aspect of the debate questions the relation of the human soul of the historic Jesus with his pre-resurrected human flesh and his resurrected body. In answer to this tension, the thesis claims that the divine Christ and his human soul enact an essential unity with the ordinary human soul. The thesis develops a Thomistic definition of the human soul and argues that Jesus’ human soul is the causal exemplar of the ordinary human soul.


identifier: Siriapaipant, Nathida  (2012) The associations between depressive rumination subtypes and dysphoria: Implications for depression.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Depressive rumination is repetitive thought about one’s depressive symptoms,
their causes, meanings, and potential consequences. Research has shown that depressive rumination is associated with dysphoria. Depressive rumination has been shown to consist of subtypes, with some subtypes being potentially less adaptive than others. Research using the Rumination on Sadness Scale (Conway, Csank, Holm, & Blake, 2000) has identified two rumination subtypes: meaning searching and repetitive thinking. Meaning searching reflects one’s attempt to understand and find meaning in one’s sadness, whereas repetitive thinking reflects repetitiveness and uncontrollability of one’s thoughts on one’s sadness. Two hypotheses were made. First, repetitive thinking, but not meaning searching, was hypothesized to lead to more dysphoria over time. Second, it was hypothesized that meaning searching would lead to more repetitive thinking, and repetitive thinking would lead to more meaning searching over time. Participants in this 2-year longitudinal study were 349 older adults who had recently retired. The findings did not support the first hypothesis. In contrast, findings indicated that dysphoria may lead to more repetitive thinking. As for the second hypothesis, meaning searching predicted increased repetitive thinking, and repetitive thinking led to more meaning searching a year later although these associations were not strong. These findings emerged when taking into account several factors related to dysphoria and depressive rumination, including neuroticism, control beliefs, age, and gender. Based on these findings, it can be argued that depressive rumination might be more suitably conceptualized as a symptom of depression rather than a process that leads to more depression.


identifier: Shikder, Md Abdul Adud  (2011) Advance Temperature Modeling of Solar PV.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Advance Temperature Modeling of Solar PV
Md Abdul Adud Shikder
The low electrical efficiency of the mono-crystalline silicon photovoltaic module is a major drawback that reduces the competitiveness of solar photovoltaic power generation. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the improved efficiency by cooling of the mono-crystalline solar photovoltaic module with the prevailing winds in rural areas. The effect of the prevailing winds was determined by measuring the temperature of the mono-crystalline solar photovoltaic module using an advanced thermal model of the flat plate collector. The surface azimuth of the module is adjusted to minimize the angle between the prevailing wind and module surface to obtain optimum cooling for maximum output power. An analytical relationship between wind speed, wind direction, and panel surface azimuth is developed to achieve maximum output. It is observed in the thermal model that for a wind speed variance of 4 m/s, the efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon solar module increased by 22.9%. Experiments had been carried out in the Concordia solar simulator laboratory where 2.2% variation were found between calculated and experiment results for output power and efficiency. The experiment also validated the temperature variation in different solar cells within the module, which causes a loss in open circuit voltage and output power.


identifier: Beaudoin, Alexandre  (2012) Parallel Algorithms for Rendering Large 3D Models on a Graphics Cluster.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
We address the problem of distributing rendering computations for real-time display of very complex three dimensional (3D) scenes using a graphics cluster.  The rendering of 3D scenes is increasingly being carried out using at least two different programs on the graphics processing unit (GPU): a vertex shader program for vertex (geometry) processing, and a fragment shader program for pixel (colour) processing.  With fragment shader programs becoming more and more time consuming, distributing load solely based on geometry -- as is done in most contemporary systems -- can cause significant load imbalance and redundant work.

In this thesis we propose a number of parallel rendering algorithms which divide the traditional cluster rendering pipeline into two different phases: one which primarily concerns itself over vertex operations to generate depth information, and a second which primarily concerns itself over fragment operations.  By performing communication between these two phases, each node can perform fewer fragment operations with little overhead over traditional cluster rendering algorithms.  We also propose a number of load-balancing algorithms which utilize the information gained earlier in the pipeline to improve the management of GPU resources.  The techniques are implemented on a graphics cluster and experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in rendering performance.


identifier: Cory, Lindsay Ann  (2012) AgoraPHILIA: A Place for Assembly in Square Viger, Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Square Viger was designed as an opulent and lush Victorian park in the mid- nineteenth century for the use of nearby wealthy residents. The park had trees lining promenades, benches, fountains, and a glass greenhouse. Over time, the influx of industry brought more working class citizens to the Ville-Marie borough and pushed the bourgeoisie to other areas in the early twentieth century. Historians of Montreal’s built environment mark this change in demographic as the decline of the park. Since then the park has undergone drastic redevelopment due to changes in transportation infrastructure. Sculptor Charles Daudelin (1920-2001) redesigned the site and built the Agora in 1983, but his designs were met with animosity from the media and the public the site was intended for.
Using archival research, interviews with artists, and site analysis, this thesis investigates the Agora’s appropriation by homeless groups and individuals and the artistic interventions the site has also incurred. Square Viger is a telling example of Montreal’s push for modernization but is also an indication of the large-scale redevelopment projects that have taken place on the island. In March 2012, Square Viger has been defined as a threatened emblematic site by Heritage Montreal and its redevelopment looms in the very near future. With this redevelopment, I believe the social-cultural and design heritage of the site and the Agora will be forgotten. With this research, I present a methodologically inclusive investigation into this fraught public space and its values as a space for appropriation, community, and artistic practice.


identifier: Zeytunlu, Alper Serhat  (2012) Two-Dimensional Face Recognition Algorithms in the Frequency Domain.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
Two-Dimensional Face Recognition Algorithms
in the Frequency Domain

Alper Serhat Zeytunlu

The importance of security, law-enforcement and identity verification has necessitated the development of automated stable, fast and highly accurate algorithms for human recognition. Face recognition is one of the most popular techniques used for these purposes. Face recognition algorithms are performed on very large size of datasets obtained under various challenging conditions. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a widely used technique for face recognition. However, it has major drawbacks of (i) losing the image details due to the transformation of two-dimensional face images into one-dimensional vectors, (ii) having a large time complexity due to the use of a large size covariance matrix and (iii) suffering from the adverse effect of intra-class pose variations resulting in reduced recognition accuracy. To overcome the problem of intra-class pose variations, Fourier magnitudes have been used for feature extraction in the PCA algorithm giving rise to the so called FM-PCA algorithm. However, the time complexity of this algorithm is even higher. On the other hand, to address the other two drawbacks of the PCA algorithm, two-dimensional PCA (2DPCA) algorithms have been proposed.
This thesis is concerned with developing 2DPCA algorithms that incorporate the advantages of FM-PCA in improving the accuracy and that of 2DPCA algorithms in improving the accuracy as well as the time complexity. Towards this goal, 2DPCA algorithms, referred to as the FM-r2DPCA and FM-(2D)2PCA algorithms, that use Fourier-magnitudes rather than the raw pixel values, are first developed. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of using the Fourier-magnitudes in providing higher recognition accuracy over their spatial domain counterparts. Next, by taking advantage of the energy compaction property of the Fourier-magnitudes, the proposed algorithms are further developed to significantly reduce their computational complexities with little loss in the recognition accuracy. Simulation results are provided to validate this claim.


identifier: Ngamwattana, Onn-anong  (2012) An examination of relations between daily work-nonwork boundary strength, daily events and emotions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
ABSTRACT
An examination of relations between daily work-nonwork boundary strength, daily events and emotions
Onn-anong Ngamwattana
As individuals engage in multiple social roles (e.g. employee and parent), an understanding of how individuals manage and maintain boundaries between roles has become critical.  To respond to this issue, this research focuses on boundary strength (at work and at home) by examining the relations between boundary strength in one domain and daily events in the other and the relations between boundary strength and daily emotions. A 7-day diary study was conducted; data were collected from a sample of 102 employed parents.  Consistent with hypotheses, boundary strength in one domain was weaker on days when negative events occurred in the other. In contrast to predictions, boundary strength at home was found to be weaker, rather than stronger, on days when positive work events occurred. No support was found for relations between boundary strength at work and positive nonwork events. In line with hypotheses, negative correlations were found between boundary strengths (at work and at home) and negative emotions and a positive correlation was found between boundary strength at work and positive emotions, although significant results were not found for all days. No support was found for relations between boundary strength at home and positive emotions. The findings open avenues for research to further investigate antecedents of boundary strength, as well as the link between daily emotions and boundary strength. The findings also provide further support for the cross-domain relations between individuals’ work and personal lives.


identifier: Peng, Duo  (2011) Web Application Framework in Erasmus.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Web Application Framework in Erasmus

abstract:
This thesis introduces a new framework in Erasmus which is specially designed for web application.
Erasmus, as a typical process oriented language, developed by Peter Grogono at Concordia University, Canada and Brian Shearing at The Software Factory, UK, is based on communicating processes. Erasmus can easily and clearly depict multi-process scenarios based on new concepts: protocol, port, cell and processes.
In this thesis, we gave detail of the language Erasmus and explained the new concepts: Cell, Process, Protocol and Port which is introduced by Erasmus. Then, we introduced the Broker which is a proxy to communicate between the processes on different machines and listen for HTTP requests. Next, we depicted the architecture and the resource management of the Erasmus Web application including database access and dynamic process creating. At the end, we gave an example of a simple web application with simple Erasmus language and with an Erasmus MVC framework.
As a conclusion, Erasmus is a potential excellent Web development language which can improves the performance of the web services and also helps developers to be more productive in developing web applications.


identifier: Connelly, Adrienne  (2012) Mapping The Atlas Group Archive.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Mapping The Atlas Group Archive

abstract: This thesis explores Walid Raad’s The Atlas Group, a fictional foundation started in Beirut in 1999. The study takes the video document Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (English Version)_#17 and 31 (2001) as a case study to examine Raad’s two contradictory claims about his project: first that the documents in his archive should be considered as hysterical symptoms and second that the project examines the limits of what is sayable and thinkable in relation to the Lebanese civil war(1975-1991). Drawing on the writings of Sigmund Freud and Cathy Caruth, section one considers psychoanalytic conceptions of hysteria as a response to unprocessed traumatic experience. The second section looks at the exclusionary Orientalist discourse of the “Western hostage crisis,” constituted in part by the captivity memoirs published by American hostages held in Beirut in the 1980s, and considers how Raad’s video constitutes what Jacques Rancière terms an act of political subjectivization whereby Bachar’s speech becomes intelligible. The third section looks at these issues in direct relation to the archive and the Iran-contra affair. This thesis argues that The Atlas Group archive is not hysterical, rather the documents are examples of the symbolization of trauma, which is a necessary part of healing, and that through the project, Raad demonstrates the potential of archives as both metaphor and model for contemporary artists interested in engaging with issues of history, memory, and politics.


identifier: Wallace, Tasha  (2012) Trouble with Trust – Can Trust be a Problem in the Auditing Context?  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Professionals are expected to act in the best interest of those dependent on their expertise. Unfortunately, they may not always be able to do this because of cognitive or emotional biases or economic incentives which may lead them to act in their own self interest.  Auditors are required by professional standards to be skeptical and base their assessment on audit evidence. Trust “...characterized by a cognitive “leap” beyond the expectations that reason and experience alone would warrant...” (Lewis & Weigert, 1985, p 970) is unacceptable as evidence. While auditor’s trust of clients should be irrelevant to audit decisions, there is mixed evidence on whether professionalism overcomes such biases. The research objective is to assess whether auditing professionals are influenced by their trust of clients. Five preparatory studies developed the case, a video and other experimental materials. In a 2x2 experiment, I manipulated the behaviors of the management of the firm being audited as low or high ability (competence or expertise in their field) and low or high benevolence (positive orientation towards the auditor) to create a low trustworthiness scenario, a high trustworthiness scenario and two moderate trustworthiness scenarios. I randomly assigned 26 experienced auditors to these four experimental conditions. I assessed how much the trustworthiness of their client affected their trust and their assessment of the risk of a material misstatement. I found that client trustworthiness marginally affected auditor’s trust of the client and that it had no effect on the auditor’s assessment of the risk. I assessed whether trust of the client and the risk affected a decision about the range of acceptable figures which, in turn, affects the extent of audit testing. I found that as trust increased, the extent of the audit testing was reduced. This suggests that experienced auditors may be unable to prevent trust from affecting their audit decisions. Unexpectedly, I also found that as the risk of a material misstatement increased, the extent of audit testing decreased. Both these findings were supported by qualitative analyses that also indicate auditors do not always follow their professional standards and base their audit on risk and evidence.


identifier: Tlalka, Stephany  (2012) “Know more, know now”: a structural analysis of the re-design of CBC News, 2009-2011.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis addresses the manner in which the re-design of CBC's English news service in 2009 is shaped by the broadcaster's interrelations with the journalistic, political, and economic fields. It draws on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of field theory to analyze how changes to the CBC's structure of journalistic production alters the distribution of capitals (cultural, economic, symbolic) the broadcaster possesses, and subsequently, the strategies the CBC employs to pursue its particular stakes as a public broadcaster in the journalistic field. This thesis claims that the latest round of CBC News re-structuring, into a “content company” or integrated news operation, reflects the CBC's new strategy as a public broadcaster to offer on-demand content and be interactive with audiences, as encapsulated in the re-design motto, “know more, know now” (CBC, 2009h). Further, this articulation of the CBC's renewed role functions to disavow the increased political and economic pressures on the broadcaster to be financially efficient with mandated funds and generate revenues to fund expanding operations. Thus, the CBC's articulation of its new public broadcasting role during the 2009 re-design demonstrates how the CBC refracts demands from external fields into its 'prism of interests' by balancing mandated objectives with external demands (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, p. 19).
	The first part draws on three moments of structural transformation at the CBC since its inception in order to illustrate how the CBC, from the outset, has participated in multiple fields and its structural changes reflect that throughout its history. The second part maps out the structural changes to news production in the 2009 re-design by drawing on CBC, government, and related documents in order to show how official articulations of the re-design function to disavow political and economic pressures the broadcaster is attempting to refract into its mandate. The final part employs a case study to analyze how the “content company” news structure operates during a large-scale Canadian news event, the death of Jack Layton, including how interactive and on-demand elements are incorporated into news production.


identifier: Li, Zhe  (2012) An Analysis of Post-Acquisition Target CEOs’ Employment and Its Influences to Future Performance of Acquirer Firms.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
We shed new light on two questions. The first question is why some target CEOs are hired by the acquirer firms while others would depart after the acquisitions, more exactly, what characteristics of the target firms or target CEOs themselves would make them stay in or depart from the acquirer firms. The second question is about the influence of the hired target CEOs in the post-acquisition performance of the acquirer firms.
       To answer the first question, we use a logistic regression to test the variables that might influence the target CEOs’ employment in the acquirer firms. We find that target CEOs are more likely to be hired by acquirer firms in the following cases: (1) the target firm has better pre-acquisition performance (2) the target CEO has stronger control over the target firm (3) the target CEO has more work experience (4) the method of payment is stock.
        For the second question, we estimate a multivariate OLS regression with two dummy variables reflecting how long target CEOs work in the acquirer firm after the acquisitions, together with other pre-acquisition target/acquirer firm performance variables. Two measures of acquirer firms’ performance are also used in the model: a market-based measure (buy & hold market-adjusted return) and an accounting-based measure (industry adjusted return on asset). Our findings are as following: (1) Pre-acquisition target and acquirer firms’ performance (especially the target firms’ performance) have more significant and positive influence on the second-year post-acquisition performance of the acquirer firms. (2) The hired target CEOs will negatively influence the first-year post-acquisition performance of the acquirer firms. (3) The target CEOs hired by acquirer firms for at least two years will significantly improve the second-year post-acquisition performance of the acquirer firms and this positive effect might continue to the third year.


identifier: Trivisonno, Melissa  (2012) What Makes a Good Coach? Examining the Antecedents of Autonomy-Supportive Behaviors.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Various sport associations employ coaches to shape the environment that children and youth experience. Specifically, a coach’s style of interaction often directly or indirectly influences youth participation and motivation. While research suggests that adopting autonomy-supportive coaching behaviors enhance children and youth well-being and promote overall healthy development, not every coach uses this particular coaching strategy. The present study therefore sought to examine the determinants of coaches’ autonomy-supportive behaviors. The constructs under investigation included ego-involvement, coaching efficacy, perceived athlete competence, and pressure. Data were collected from 100 coaches who currently coach an individual or team sport within the Montreal region. The results demonstrated that motivation efficacy, a sub-factor within coaching efficacy, and perceived athlete competence were positively related to coaches’ autonomy-supportive behaviors. The findings present important implications for practitioners regarding training and development opportunities. In addition, suggestions are provided for managers to superimpose the model on the supervisor-employee relationship.


identifier: Huang, Xiang  (2012) Changing the Way Students Learn in Physics Gateway Courses.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Under the umbrella of physics educational research, scholars are looking at teaching physics using different methods: philosophy of science, epistemology, or hermeneutics. In each approach it is found that it is essential to create a constructive teaching and learning environment for students to learn actively. When students’ ways of acquiring knowledge change from being conveyed by authority to constructing their own understanding, their role changes from being a passive acceptor to being a more active constructor.
Research shows that only helping students to change from their personal views of concepts to scientific conceptions is not enough and does not contribute much to students’ science learning. To develop a scientific mindset in science courses also requires a change in attitude from a view that study in science is a matter of solving problems using an independent set of tools, classified according to problem type, to a view that a science subject consists of a web of interconnected concepts. Elby pointed out that students’ epistemological beliefs in physics will affect how they approach physics courses. This means that we need a more holistic theory to focus not only on subject content, but also on students’ scientific reasoning and epistemological beliefs.
iv
In this dissertation, a set of activities is applied in Physics gateway courses to create a constructive environment. Through these activities we hope to help students to gradually become aware of a constructive procedure of learning. The effectiveness of these activities is examined in terms of helping students change their ways of learning and epistemological beliefs.


identifier: Abbasi, Naeem  (2012) Formal Reliability Analysis using Higher-order Logic Theorem Proving.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Traditional techniques used in the reliability analysis of engineering systems have limitations. Paper-and-pencil based analysis is prone to human error and simulation based techniques cannot be computationally one hundred percent accurate.

An alternative to these two traditional approaches is modeling and analysis of reliability of systems using formal methods based techniques such as probabilistic theorem proving. Probabilistic theorem proving using higher-order logic can be used for modeling and analysis of reliability of engineering systems provided a certain reasoning infrastructure is developed. The developed infrastructure can include random variables, their probabilistic and statistical properties, and basic reliability theory concepts such as survival and hazard functions. This thesis describes state-of-the-art research in reliability analysis using theorem proving. It also describes the main contributions of this thesis which include: the formalization of statistical properties of continuous random variables, the formalization of multiple continuous random variables and the formalization of the basic notions of reliability that can be applied to single and multiple component systems. Engineering applications of the formalization are presented that illustrate the usefulness of our formalization infrastructure. These applications include reliability analysis of electronic system components such as a capacitor and an underground power transmission cable. We also present the reliability analysis of an automobile transmission using our higher-order logic formalization.

To the best of our knowledge, for the very first time, the use of theorem proving based infrastructure enables formal reliability analysis of engineering systems that is computationally one hundred percent accurate and sound. The analysis is performed using real and true random variables. We show that the results presented in this thesis are general and can be applied to many reliability engineering problems.


identifier: Molina, Talia  (2012) La interacción castellano-quechua: hacia una comprensión lingüística, ideológica y cultural del fenómeno de “imposición” del castellano del Perú.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In recent decades, research has provided new insights on the phenomenon of language change, use and appreciation, revealing the degree of complexity that characterizes the social context in which the phenomenon evolves. This study intends to complement and relativize these investigations to demonstrate that the Quechua-Spanish language shift requires a cultural and ideological perspective, where the preference for Spanish by Quechua native speakers is also manifested as a resistance factor. For this purpose, we have focused on two key issues: first, the importance of addressing the linguistic variation known as castellano andino, or Andean Spanish. Then, through a text from the sixteenth century by Guaman Poma de Ayala and a series of short stories from the twentieth century by José María Arguedas, we demonstrate how Spanish has been used ideologically and instrumentally to preserve the Quechua language and to not allow its extinction.


identifier: Tetrault Sirsly, Carol-Ann  (2012) Corporate Social Actions and Reputation: From Doing Good to Looking Good.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
While corporate social responsibility (CSR) has garnered the attention of scholars over the past three decades, most attention has been focused on a link to financial performance.  Grounded in stakeholder theory and a resource-based view of the firm considering the cospecialized intangible assets of CSR and reputation, this research explores the evolution of corporate social actions and firm reputation over time. We draw on data from the KLD database on corporate social actions and concerns, and on the Fortune most-admired company database to examine the relationship between corporate social behaviour and reputation over time.
	In the thesis, we argue that starting with the broad premise that any corporate social action or gesture can initially enhance corporate reputation, the firm is then both encouraged and also expected to go further.  Accordingly, we propose subsequent actions are needed to meet stakeholder expectations to be able to improve or at least sustain firm reputation.  We find that over the timeframe of our study that corporate social actions do experience the predicted  positive linear growth.
	Drawing on a sample of 285 major US firms and a 2002-2006 time frame to provide a 1425 firm  year panel, we find corporate social actions to be strongly related to corporate reputation, while the change in corporate social actions also predicts a change in corporate reputation.  We also found support for the hypothesis that corporate social actions directed to technical stakeholders have the most significant impact on firm reputation.  We do not however find the expected influence of  concerns over corporate social actions directed to institutional stakeholders on firm reputation, leading to the intriguing question:  why not?
	We provide detailed illustrations with five of the sampled firms and interpret their CSR-reputation relationships.  These findings expand our understanding of the effect of the change over time in corporate social actions and the ensuing effect on corporate reputation.  We extend the applicability of our findings to management, discuss limitations and propose future research directions.


identifier: Shahmir, Arman  (2012) Characterization of apparent mass of human body seated on rigid and elastic seats under vertical vibration.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Characterization of biodynamic responses of seated body exposed to whole-body vibration forms an essential basis for understanding of mechanical-equivalent properties of the body and potential injury mechanisms, and developments in frequency-weightings and enhanced design tools for the coupled human-seat system. Such responses are strongly dependent upon human anthropometric, gender, sitting posture and vibration condition in a highly complex and coupled manner, while only limited knowledge exists on effects of these factors. Furthermore, such responses are mostly evaluated for body on a rigid seat due to complexities associated with measurement of forces developed at an elastic human-seat interface under vibration. An elastic seat greatly alters human-seat interface contact force and contact area. The biodynamic responses with an elastic seat are thus expected to differ. This dissertation research concerns with development of a methodology for measurement of apparent mass (APMS) responses of human body seated on an elastic seat and exposed to vertical vibration.  A force-sensing resistive pressure measurement system was initially used to capture responses of 58 human subjects (31 male and 27 female) seated on a rigid seat with and without a vertical back support, and exposed to three different magnitudes of broad band random vibration in the 0.5 to 20 Hz range (overall rms acceleration = 0.25, 0.50 and 0.75 m/s2).  The APMS responses were also obtained using the conventional force plate. The responses acquired from the force plate were thoroughly analyzed to study effects of gender, and mass-related (body mass, body mass index, body fat, lean body mass), stature-related (standing height, sitting height, C7-height) and build-related (buttock circumference, contact area) anthropometric dimensions. The results showed strong coupling between the gender and the body mass, while a strong correlation of the peak APMS was evident with body mass, body mass index, body fat and hip circumference. The data were subsequently grouped within three different body mass ranges in order to decouple the effect. The gender effect was observed in the vicinity of secondary peak where female subjects revealed higher APMS magnitude, while the male subjects showed relatively higher primary peak frequency than females. Comparisons of APMS responses with those derived from the pressure sensing mat revealed large differences.  APMS magnitudes derived from the pressure sensing mat were considerably lower than those obtained from the conventionally used force plate in the entire frequency range. The differences were attributed to low resolution of the sensor and limited acquisition rate of the hardware. A correction function was subsequently derived from the ratio of response functions obtained from the two measurement systems, which revealed nearly linear decreasing trend with frequency. The application of correction functions resulted in comparable responses from the two measurement systems. It was then hypothesized that the proposed correction function, mostly attributed to limited acquisition rate, would be equally applicable for cushion seats. Subsequent measurements were performed to derive APMS of subjects seated on a cushion seat. Comparisons of APMS magnitudes obtained for the cushion seat with those obtained with the rigid seat revealed that response magnitudes and the primary resonance frequency of subjects when seated on a cushion seat are generally lower. The effects of selected anthropometric factors, sitting posture and vibration magnitudes, however, were very similar to those observed for the rigid seat.


identifier: Alawneh, Lu'ay  (2012) Techniques To Facilitate the Understanding of Inter-process Communication Traces.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
High Performance Computing (HPC) systems play an important role in today’s heavily digitized world, which is in a constant demand for higher speed of calculation and performance. HPC applications are used in multiple domains such as telecommunication, health, scientific research, and more.  With the emergence of multi-core and cloud computing platforms, the   HPC paradigm is quickly becoming the design of choice of many service providers.
HPC systems are also known to be complex to debug and analyze due to the large number of processes they involve and the way these processes communicate with each other to perform specific tasks. As a result, software engineers must spend extensive amount of time understanding the complex interactions among a system’s processes. This is usually done through the analysis of execution traces generated from running the system at hand. Traces, however, are very difficult to work with due to the overwhelming size of typical traces. The objective of this research is to present a set of techniques that facilitates the understanding of the behaviour of HPC applications through the analysis of system traces.
The first technique consists of building an exchange format called MTF (MPI Trace Format) for representing and exchanging traces generated from HPC applications based on the MPI (Message Passing Interface) standard, which is a de facto standard for inter-process communication for high performance computing systems. The design of MTF is validated against well-known requirements for a standard exchange format.
The second technique aims to facilitate the understanding of large traces of inter-process communication by automatically extracting communication patterns that characterize their main behaviour. Two algorithms are presented. The first one permits the recognition of repeating patterns in traces of MPI (Message Passing Interaction) applications whereas the second algorithm searches if a given communication pattern occurs in a trace. Both algorithms are based on the n-gram extraction technique used in natural language processing.
Finally, we developed a technique to abstract MPI traces by detecting the different execution phases in a program based on concepts from information theory. Using this approach, software engineers can examine the trace as a sequence of high-level computational phases instead of a mere flow of low-level events.
The techniques presented in this thesis have been tested on traces generated from real HPC programs. The results from several case studies demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of our techniques.


identifier: Leconte, Marie  (2012) Traduire A. M. Klein : les poèmes oubliés de l'époque de la « Chaise berçante ».  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Résumé

Abraham Moses Klein, poète juif anglophone de Montréal, traite de la thématique canadienne-française dans son recueil emblématique intitulé The Rocking Chair and Other Poems, qui fut publié en 1948 et traduit en 2006. Douze poèmes tirés de l’œuvre complète de Klein ne figurent toutefois pas dans cet ouvrage même s’ils semblent aborder le même thème. Mon mémoire contient la traduction de ces douze poèmes, suivie d’un commentaire critique, où sont abordées les notions d'hybridité, de bilinguisme littéraire, d'historicité et de dialogue entre les cultures.

Abstract

In his collection The Rocking Chair and Other Poems, published in 1948 and translated in 2006, Abraham Moses Klein, an Anglophone Jewish poet from Montreal, assembles a series of poems that center on the French Canadian theme. However, twelve additional poems, taken from his complete works, are absent from this collection even though they seem to deal with this same theme. This thesis presents the translation of these twelve poems and a commentary that broaches the concepts of hybridity, literary bilingualism, historical temporality and dialogue between cultures.


identifier: Luo, Yuhang  (2012) Efficiency Study of Sybil Attack on P2P Botnets.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Abstract
Efficiency Study of Sybil Attack on P2P Botnets
Yuhang Luo
The main objective of this thesis is to modeling and analysis of Kademlia based
Botnets in order to study the efficiency of Sybil attack on such botnets.
We start by researching the structure of Kademlia and specially its look-up procedure,
i.e. the process how a node find a desired target node in the Botnet. For the simplicity
of analysis, two assumptions are made: a) node ID space is full filled; b) a Sybil node
replies a fake triple when it is queried.With these assumptions, the probability jumping
functions and jumping matrices are derived. By adding the distribution of Sybil
nodes, we obtain the probability that target nodes are found successfully(Psuccess).
We then show numerical results of the distribution of Psuccess with different system
parameters. From the results, we can obtain some insight on how the parameters
affect the efficiency of Sybil attack. Among all these parameters, we find that �,
which is known as the number of nodes the initial node requries, is the key parameter
of Kademlia based botnet. We also discuss how the triples a node keeps for every
distance (k) and the total number of nodes in botnet (n) will affect Psuccess.
Based on our model and numerical results, we will draw some conclusions on how to
make P2P botnet more robust or more vulnerable in facing Sybil attacking.


identifier: Scherzer, Rachel  (2012) Curriculum Reform Coverage in The Montreal Gazette: A Content Analysis of Two Phases of Implementation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In 2000, the province of Quebec launched a substantial curriculum reform combining a "back to basics" approach with progressive principles that drew some initial approval in the media. During its implementation, however, the reform became an increasingly contentious topic, culminating in the education minister publicly suggesting it was a failure less than a decade later. In order to identify and evaluate the leading sources of discord, this study looked at opinion statements about the curriculum reform appearing in The Montreal Gazette, and compared findings with the literature on educational change as well as key planning and policy documents. It found that discourse about the reform in The Gazette was largely negative in the years leading up to implementation at the elementary level, and pessimism intensified ahead of the later implementation at the secondary level, as did misinformation about the reform's principles and practices. Furthermore, many of the contested aspects were anticipated by the literature. At minimum, improved communication and collaboration seems necessary in order to nurture the dissemination of the new philosophy of education and the pedagogical practices it entails, and to prevent the reform from falling victim to premature perceptions that it has altogether failed.


identifier: Li, Jianxiong  (2012) Inspection Plan for Dependent Multi-Characteristic Components with Multi-Classifications.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this research, a mathematical model is developed for inspecting multicharacteristic components with multi-classifications in a multistage production system. The characteristics’ defective rates are statistically dependent. The output of the model is an optimized inspection plan. The plan minimizes the total cost per accepted component. A heuristic algorithm is proposed in solving the problem with optimized solutions. The developed model and proposed heuristic algorithm are demonstrated using an example from a medical equipment manufacturing system. The data used in the example are realistic but hypothetical. The model can be modified for solving similar problems in other applications.


identifier: Al-bayati, Zaid  (2012) Design and Verification of Clock Domain Crossing Interfaces.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The clock distribution network is an essential component in every synchronous digital system. The design of this network is becoming an increasingly sophisticated and difficult task due to the increasing logic capacity of chips and due to the fact that this network has to reach out to each and every memory element in the chip. Multiclock domain circuits with Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) interfaces are emerging
as an alternative to circuits with a global clock. The design of CDC interfaces is a challenging task due to the difficulty of dealing with two possibly unrelated clock
domains and the possibility of propagating metastability into the communicating blocks making CDC interfaces difficult to design and verify. In this work, we present
a hybrid FIFO-asynchronous method for constructing robust CDC interfaces. This method avoids the shortcomings of previous interfaces and provides reliable transfer
of data and control signals between different clock domains. A complete design is proposed, fully implemented using 90nm TSMC CMOS technology, and simulated using SPICE. Extensive simulations confirmed the robustness of the interface at different temperatures, different workloads, and varying frequency ratios. The reported implementation provides a maximum throughput of 606 Mitems/s. Moreover, we
also address the challenging task of the verification of CDC interfaces. Most RTL simulation tools available today are incapable of simulating these interfaces. In this
thesis, we present a framework for the formal verification of CDC interfaces. The framework explicitly models metastability by taking advantage of the unique features
of probabilistic model checking. The framework is applied to common CDC interfaces by verifying them using the PRISM model checker.


identifier: Dunne, Erin  (2012) Functional Disability and Depressive Symptoms in Older Adulthood: The Role of General Goal Adjustment Capacities and Specific Goal Adjustment Strategies.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Functional disability is a common age-related problem that has deleterious effects on the well-being of the elderly population. Such disabilities can contribute to a loss of perceived control and autonomy by impeding older adults’ ability to accomplish both daily goals (i.e., activities of daily living [ADLs]), and other longer-term life pursuits. However, theory and research also suggest that older individuals may avoid the negative consequences of functional disability if they engage in the adaptive self-regulation of unattainable goals. The present studies investigate the role of goal adjustment capacities in the management of functional disability, and identify pathways through which goal adjustment capacities can influence well-being.

Study 1 consists of a longitudinal investigation into the associations between older adults’ goal disengagement and goal reengagement capacities, functional disability, and depressive symptoms among 135 community-dwelling older adults. Using four waves of data, results showed that six-year increases in depressive symptoms were predicted by poor goal disengagement capacities and high levels of functional disability. Moreover, the impact of goal disengagement on depressive symptomatology was particularly strong among participants with functional disability. These findings indicate that goal disengagement can buffer the association between functional disability and increases in depressive symptomatology over time.

Study 2 investigates the specific goal adjustment processes involved in the adjustment to ADL-related goals that are constrained by functional disability. This study first developed and validated the Activities of Daily Living – Goal Adjustment Scale among 135 community-dwelling older adults, with and without functional disability. Factor analyses identified two separate factors as psychological disengagement and compensatory reengagement, and the scale exhibited good internal consistency and validity among older adults with functional disability. The second part of the study found that these specific ADL-related goal adjustment strategies mediated the cross-sectional relationships between general goal adjustment capacities (i.e., goal disengagement and goal reengagement) and depressive symptoms in this population. These findings suggest that general tendencies to adjust to unattainable goals can exert both direct and indirect effects on depressive symptoms through the specific regulation of ADL-related problems.

Overall, these findings contribute to the literature on pathways to successful aging. Findings on the adaptive role of goal adjustment in the management of functional disability are discussed in the context of developmental theories and adaptive self-regulation.


identifier: Donar (née Szeto), Ann  (2012) Toward a Holistic Undergraduate Curricular Model in Design Thinking.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This dissertation explores the emerging subject of Design Thinking amidst the increasingly accelerating evolution of the subject. As the term design thinking is becoming more popular and is being taught in diverse disciplines in higher education, both in and beyond the traditional realms of design such as graphic design, a question arises as to what exactly it is and how it could or should be taught. This dissertation combines reflective practice and action research to contribute to the understanding and subsequent proposal of a holistic approach in the teaching of Design Thinking.

A review of literature published on the subject from the 1980s onwards brought forth some common themes and concerns that have been addressed, initially from the disciplines of engineering and architecture, and later on in product development and business. In the course of the reflective journey, the guiding vision of using design to create a better future for mankind took shape. Reflecting on and combining themes and strategies found in literature, a number of selected ideas were refined to be implemented in a pilot teaching project.

The selected ideas were organized and integrated in the planning and implementation of the pilot course, a 200-level course in Design Thinking offered in a trans-disciplinary, technology-oriented undergraduate program. Within the context of action research, data was collected throughout the course, including personal observations and notes, assignments, tests, discussion forums, surveys and evaluations. The data was then analyzed and reflected upon.

Since the pilot teaching project in the fall term of 2009, the subject of Design Thinking has burgeoned, resulting in a significant number of publications stemming simultaneously from isolated disciplines within the course of a year. New insights gained from this literature, along with the findings gathered from the pilot teaching project, converged to furnish suggestions for potential future directions in practice and research.

This dissertation is illustrated with 18 sample slides used in the pilot course, 45 artworks collected from students, 6 tables and 1 diagram.


identifier: Barradas, Miguel Iván  (2012) Horizontes hispánicos en l'écriture transmigrante de Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Over the past seventeen years, an increasing number of authors from Hispanic backgrounds and affiliations have made an outstanding contribution to l’écriture transmigrante, an artistic expression that continues to be developed in Quebec as a diversification of l’écriture migrante, the literary movement that has brought together some of the most celebrated immigrant writers in Canada, such as Régine Robin and Dany Laferrière. Involved in the incessant process of transculturation that shapes the contemporary Canadian artistic world, such creators have gone beyond the borders of language and ethnicity, rendering their cultural identities into the imagery of a multicultural territory that redefines the sense of geopoetics in North America: the island of Montreal. Thus, through their intimate and evocative writings, authors such as Alejandro Saravia and Mauricio Segura have narrated la montrealité in an unique way that henceforth we can call hispanomontrealesa.


identifier: Gaston, Lise  (2012) Praise of Ruin.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Praise of Ruin

abstract: My project interrogates linguistic and visual representations of landscape and of the body, examining the tension of encountering the “natural” through a proscribed set of cultural and aesthetic expectations. The implicit discourse that informs these poems is the picturesque, the eighteenth-century aesthetic movement that situated itself alongside categories of the beautiful and sublime, and determined how artists and tourists viewed and evaluated landscape. In conversation with the major theorists of this aesthetic, my poems question the role of the modern viewing subject in unfamiliar or encountered landscapes and in scenes of contemporary environmental decay. Each section applies a loose framework of representation to diverse landscapes of the river, the coast, the city, and the “bonescape” of the body. The first section challenges the picturesque's privileging of ruin as an aesthetic imposed by the viewer on the landscape; the second section uses the frame of the convex mirror as a technology of sight that renders the view unified and contained; the third shows how the body invites and resists narratives of medicalization as it performs its own decay; finally, the poems in the last section move toward a coastal landscape, pushing up against the aural demands of the listening subject and of the land itself. In dialogue with historical and cultural acts of writing and seeing, the speakers of the poems attempt to establish a subjective position within nature while acknowledging their lack of solid ground: voicing a desire for the possibility of home within conditions of homelessness.


identifier: Yadav, Rajeev  (2012) Automatic Detection and Classification of Neural Signals in Epilepsy.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The success of an epilepsy treatment, such as resective surgery, relies heavily on the accurate identification and localization of the brain regions involved in epilepsy for which patients undergo continuous intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) monitoring. The prolonged EEG recordings are screened for two main biomarkers of epilepsy: seizures and interictal spikes. Visual screening and quantitation of these two biomarkers in voluminous EEG recordings is highly subjective, labor-intensive, tiresome and expensive. This thesis focuses on developing new techniques to detect and classify these events in the EEG to aid the review of prolonged intracranial EEG recordings.

It has been observed in the literature that reliable seizure detection can be made by quantifying the evolution of seizure EEG waveforms. This thesis presents three new computationally simple non-patient-specific (NPS) seizure detection systems that quantify the temporal evolution of seizure EEG. The first method is based on the frequency-weighted-energy, the second method on quantifying the EEG waveform sharpness, while the third method mimics EEG experts. The performance of these new methods is compared with that of three state-of-the-art NPS seizure detection systems. The results show that the proposed systems outperform these state-of-the-art systems.

Epilepsy therapies are individualized for numerous reasons, and patient-specific (PS) seizure detection techniques are needed not only in the pre-surgical evaluation of prolonged EEG recordings, but also in the emerging neuro-responsive therapies. This thesis proposes a new model-based PS seizure detection system that requires only the knowledge of a template seizure pattern to derive the seizure model consisting of a set of basis functions necessary to utilize the statistically optimal null filters (SONF) for the detection of the subsequent seizures. The results of the performance evaluation show that the proposed system provides improved results compared to the clinically-used PS system.

Quantitative analysis of the second biomarker, interictal spikes, may help in the understanding of epileptogenesis, and to identify new epileptic biomarkers and new therapies. However, such an analysis is still done manually in most of the epilepsy centers. This thesis presents an unsupervised spike sorting system that does not require a priori knowledge of the complete spike data.


identifier: Sears, Shannon  (2012) Birth Controlled: Reproductive Choice among Female Graduate Students in Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Reproduction has been studied extensively in anthropology, yet scholars have focused predominantly on menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth—events which take place for a limited duration (a matter of hours, days, or months) each time a woman experiences them. The reproductive cycle, on the other hand, continues essentially unabated for decades of a woman’s life. It is this largely unexplored area of women’s lived experience, and the contraceptive choices women make with regard to their ongoing fertility, that are addressed in the course of this thesis. Research was conducted through a variety of methods. First, multiple virtual and physical sites of information were examined, including websites, television advertisements, and published materials related to sexual health. Second, three medical professionals and a number of volunteers were interviewed about their perspectives and practices toward sexual education and reproductive health. Third, the methods and activities of a university sexual education volunteer group were observed and analyzed. Finally, eleven women were interviewed regarding their sexual education, history of contraceptive usage, and their perceptions of their fertility and birth control options. Ten of these women also participated in a brief contraceptive questionnaire. This thesis considers the ways that contraception is part of a system that not only provides reproductive power to women, but paradoxically contributes to ignorance of female biological processes, governs birth control choices, and manages women’s fertility. By exploring this system alongside women’s understandings and experiences, I examine the complicated ways that women are, in fact, controlling their reproduction.


identifier: Salam, Adil  (2012) Lean Accounting: Measuring Target Costs.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

title: Lean Accounting: Measuring Target Costs

abstract: Aerospace is very important to the Canadian economy, with over 80,000 employees; generating over $20 billion dollars in revenue. However, the industry is facing many challenges. With the economic downturn, sales have been decreasing. Competition is growing with emerging countries entering the market, with the aid of government subsidies, as well as lower costs of production. Companies are struggling to stay competitive, and they are adopting various practices to deliver value to their customers. The principles of lean manufacturing strive to do just that, and while enjoying much success in production environments, lean principles have been found to be applicable in other areas of the enterprise, including accounting. This thesis presents the notion of target costing for new products, which is one of the pillars of lean accounting.  In comparison to traditional costing of products, where the desired profit is added to the cost required to develop the product, target costing is ‘lean’ in the sense that it puts the focus on creating value for the customer by setting the price of the product based on the cost.  A number of methods exist for determining target costs, however, the accuracy of such methods are critical. In this thesis, various types of target cost models are developed and compared to one another in terms of their accuracy. The models are based on parametric models, neural networks and data envelopment analysis. The models are then applied to predict the cost of commodities at a major Canadian aerospace company.


identifier: Pirzadeh Tabari, Heidar  (2012) Trace Abstraction Framework and Techniques.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Understanding the behavioural aspects of software systems can help in a variety of software engineering tasks such as debugging, feature enhancement, performance analysis, and security.
Software behaviour is typically represented in the form of execution traces. Traces, however, have historically been difficult to analyze due to the overwhelming size of typical traces. Trace analysis, more particularly trace abstraction and simplification, techniques have emerged to overcome the challenges of working with large traces. Existing traces analysis tools rely on some sort of visualization techniques to help software engineers make sense of trace content. Many of these techniques have been studied and found to be limited in many ways.
In this thesis, we present a novel approach for trace analysis inspired by the way the human brain and perception systems operate. The idea is to mimic the psychological processes that have been developed over the years to explain how our perception system deals with huge volume of visual data. We show how similar mechanisms can be applied to the abstraction and simplification of large traces.
As part of this framework, we present a novel trace analysis technique that automatically divides the content of a large trace, generated from execution of a target system, into meaningful segments that correspond to the system’s main execution phases such as initializing variables, performing a specific computation, etc.
We also propose a trace sampling technique that not only reduces the size of a trace but also results in a sampled trace that is representative of the original trace by ensuring that the desired characteristics of an execution are distributed similarly in both the sampled and the original trace. Our approach is based on stratified sampling and uses the concept of execution phases as strata.
Finally, we propose an approach to automatically identify the most relevant trace components of each execution phases. This approach also enables an efficient representation of the flow of phases by detecting redundant phases using a cosine similarity metric.
The techniques presented in this thesis have been validated by applying to a variety of target systems. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of our methods.


identifier: Nicholson, Amanda  (2012) Perceptions of the Peer Evaluation System: Relation with Social Loafing Behaviours.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: An interesting stream of research, which is growing in popularity, attempts to understand the role of social loafing in the successful outcome of group work. The purpose of this thesis was to contribute to this stream of research by exploring the relationship between perceptions of a peer evaluation system and social loafing behaviours. The peer evaluation system was measured in two ways; both the team member’s level of awareness of the system and his or her level of perceived importance of the system. This thesis also examined one personality trait in particular; self-monitoring orientation. Through a study conducted among 394 undergraduate students who used the peer evaluation system, results revealed that both a student’s level of evaluation awareness and level of perceived importance of the system were unrelated to  his or her work quality. Self-monitoring did not have any effect on the relationship between any of the main variables. The correlational design, subject group and certain external factors are some of the limitations in the study. More extensive research effort is called for to distinguish the different effects and consequences of perceptions of peer evaluations.


identifier: Foshag, Daniel  (2012) Structural and Functional Studies on IroB: A Pathogen-Associated C-glycosyltransferase.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Bacterial iron acquisition by the means of enterobactin (ENT) is constrained in mammalian hosts due to ENT-binding proteins such as siderocalin and serum albumin. To evade sequestration by these proteins, ENT can be modified by the C glycosyltransferase IroB, which is located in the iroA locus of Salmonella and certain extraintestinal E. coli strains such as uropathogenic E. coli CFT073. The glycosylation of ENT has been reported to be a bacterial evasion mechanism to restore the iron scavenging ability of ENT in the presence of mammalian ENT-binding proteins by the installation of a steric impediment.
The C glycosyltransferase IroB catalyses the transfer of a glucose moiety to the DHB subunit of ENT under formation of a C-C bond between the anomeric C1 of the glucose moiety and the C5 of the 2,3-DHB subunit of ENT. The formation of mono-, di- and triglycosylated Ent (MGE/DGE/TGE) products where observed in vitro. The formation of a C-C bond is remarkable because of its chemical stability and resilience against enzymatic degradation.
In this M.Sc. thesis, we initially identified the iroB gene product in the iroA harbouring E. coli strain Nissle 1917 on transcriptional and translational level and expressed and purified IroB recombinant. Then, we investigated the mechanism of the C-C bond formation catalysed by IroB in vitro. Based on the hypothesis that deprotonation of the catechol 2 hydroxyl renders the catechol C5 para to the 2-hydroxyl nucleophilic, the C-C bond would then be formed in a general SN2 reaction between the attacking nucleophile and the anomeric carbon of glucose, which is further facilitated by the excellent phosphate leaving group of the UDP-glucose donor. By the means of homology modelling and superposition strategies, we were able to identify the binding sites of the glycosyl donor UDP-glucose and the glycosyl acceptor ENT and to locate residues that could potentially act as base catalysts to increase the phenolate anionic character of the 2,3-DHB subunit during catalysis.
We established an activity assay for IroB, separated products arising from IroB activity by reversed phase chromatography and compared so the activity of wild-type IroB and several variants. Additionally, all variants were characterized biophysically, mainly to confirm that the structural integrity was not impaired by mutations. Ultimately, our results enable us to propose a mechanism for C-glycosylation of IroB that is consistent with other glycosyltransferases found in nature.


identifier: Islam, Md. Asadul  (2012) The Design and Implementation of OMA RESTful Location Services in Wireless Sensor Environments.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) RESTful location services are standard RESTful Web services for terminal location. They are location technology-independent and enable applications’ portability and interoperability. Wireless sensors are electronic devices that can sense context: space, environment and physiology. Location is a key element of space context information. Wireless sensors can sense location with a level of accuracy that most other technologies cannot provide, which has made them the technology of choice for several applications. This thesis is about the design and implementation of OMA RESTful location services in wireless sensor environments for improved accuracy. A novel architecture is proposed. The architectural components and operational procedures are defined and implemented. The proof of concept prototype has been realized, along with the measurements for a preliminary performance evaluation. Several lessons were learned. For instance, it is possible to map location information for each of the OMA services to the sensor-based location information. However, using geographic coordinates (i.e. geographic latitude, longitude and altitude) to describe terminal location does not match with the fine-grained location accuracy provided by WSNs.


identifier: Holloway, Anne F.  (2012) The Journal of Eliza Calkins White: A View of Mid-nineteenth Century Rural Life in Quebec's Eastern Townships.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Eliza Calkins White and family moved from Vermont to the Townships in the late 1830s.  Her journal, written sporadically between 1852 and 1874, offers a rare opportunity to examine the daily details of a world that has received little attention from historians, that of farm life in the borderland of southern Quebec.  This thesis endeavours to convey a picture of that life as voiced by Eliza through the journal, while addressing its contents in terms of the questions debated in contemporary historical scholarship about the farm economy.
After a brief consideration of texts focussed on the Eastern Townships, this thesis first looks at the literatures that discuss the history, content, form and historical value of diaries and journals.  The following chapters widen out like concentric circles to examine the content of Eliza's journal within the context of rural historiography.  They evaluate the role of the women members of the family in the strategies of the farm economy, and the extent to which farm production in this particular time and place was geared towards the market.  This journal shows women both in the farm economy as producers and in the marketplace as negotiators.  Moreover, the products that were largely the result of women's labour that were sold or traded in the local market were an essential contribution to the stability of the family economy.  Without such journals the work of women such as Eliza and her daughters and the intricacies of farm life would remain invisible.


identifier: Martineau, Eric  (2012) A Typology of Crowdsourcing Participation Styles.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In the recent years, numerous attempts have been made to successfully incorporate crowdsourcing into organizational workflow. With crowdsourcing, the lines between producers and consumers have become blurred as consumers actively participate in the value creation process by volunteering their skills for the producer’s benefit. While the popularity of this phenomenon increases, guidelines for building a successful crowdsourcing program have yet to be developed. The goal of this thesis is to uncover motivations of those who participate in crowdsourcing and provide recommendations for managers to better implement crowdsourcing projects.
This research builds upon the virtual community literature as well as prosumption. Additionally, the group membership theory is used to explain the interactions between crowdsourcing participants. By conducting in-depth interviews supplemented with netnography, participants in crowdsourcing were clustered into a four-fold typology. Motivations between groups differ. Members of first group, communals, incorporate the crowdsourcing community’s group based identity into their social self. Furthermore, they develop cultural and social capital through prosumption. Members of the second group, utilizers, hone their skills through participation, thus creating cultural capital. Members of the third group, aspirers, do not create content, but rather participate in the selection of content. They aspire to be perceived as a “stereotypical” member of the first two groups. The final group, lurkers, is composed of individuals who participate in crowdsourcing solely by browsing. The thesis is concluded with recommendations and guidelines for managers.


identifier: Lee, Crystal  (2012) Specialty Retailers as Cultural Intermediaries: A Social Analysis of the Retail Store Owner.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Retail stores are recognized as important economic institutions in Western cities. They are heavily depended on for the goods and services they provide. As consumers in today’s market have developed a greater interest in the symbolic meaning of goods and services, this suggests that the retailer’s impact can be felt beyond the economic sphere. This thesis attempts to understand the social impact of specialty retail store owners. By primarily drawing connections between the specialty retailer’s work and that of the cultural intermediary, the store owner is identified as a social agent and the social aspects of their occupational activities are suggested. The concepts of taste and subculture are important in this analysis as the retailers in this study hinge their activities on supporting a specific taste which is recognized as subcultural. The discussion of both concepts expose their central role in the organization and formation of social groups and offer points of reference with which to guide an analysis of the specialty retailers. Three case studies are conducted and compared. Based on the data gained through interviews, observations, and textual analyses, an assessment of the stores’ specialized goods, their presentation, and the retailers’ activities are made. What is confirmed is the retailers’ role as cultural intermediaries and their ability to support the social negotiations of their consumers. Through their  work as cultural intermediaries, the influence they make on individuals can be seen as also impacting social relations and the overall social structure.


identifier: Khosravifar, Babak  (2012) Trust and Reputation in Multi-Agent Systems.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Multi-Agent systems (MAS) are artificial societies populated with
distributed autonomous agents that are intelligent and rational.
These self-independent agents are capable of independent decision
making towards their predefined goals. These goals might be common
between agents or unique for an agent. Agents may cooperate with
one another to facilitate their progresses. One of the fundamental
challenges in such settings is that agents do not have a full
knowledge over the environment and regarding their decision making
processes, they might need to request other agents for a piece of
information or service. The crucial issues are then how to rely on
the information provided by other agents, how to consider the
collected data, and how to select appropriate agents to ask for
the required information. There are some proposals addressing how
an agent can rely on other agents and how an agent can compute the
overall opinion about a particular agent. In this context, the
trust value reflects the extent to which agents can rely on other
agents and the reputation value represents public opinion about a
particular agent. Existing approaches for reliable information
propagation fail to capture the dynamic relationships between
agents and their influence on further decision making process.
Therefore, these models fail to adapt agents to frequent
environment changes. In general, a well-founded trust and
reputation system that prevents malicious acts that are emerged by
selfish agents is required for multi-agent systems. We propose a
trust mechanism that measures and analyzes the reliability of
agents cooperating with one another. This mechanism concentrates
on the key attributes of the related agents and their
relationships. We also measure and analyze the public reputation
of agents in large-scale environments utilizing a sound reputation
mechanism. In this mechanism, we aim at maintaining a public
reputation assessment in which the public actions of agents are
accurately under analysis. On top of the theoretical analysis, we
experimentally validate our trust and reputation approaches
through different simulations. Our preliminary results show that
our approach outperforms current frameworks in providing accurate
credibility measurements and maintaining accurate trust and
reputation mechanisms.


identifier: Hefter, Helen  (2012) The Acquisition of /s/ + Consonant Onset Clusters: A Longitudinal Study.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The purpose of this research was to establish a developmental path for the acquisition of word-initial homorganic /s/ + consonant clusters (#sC), namely /st-/, /sn-/, and /sl-/ and, consequently, to determine which two hypotheses (one based on input frequency and one on sonority markedness) would better account for the path of #sC acquisition observed in the speech of one English speaking child between the ages of 2;3 and 3;10. The developmental path of #sC clusters was charted longitudinally using a triangulation of methodologies: (1) controlled (audio recorded) elicitations of pseudo-words (via finger-puppet interactions and role-playing involving fictitious characters whose names start with #sC; e.g., Sleed, Snib, Steeg), (2) recordings of child-directed speech (representing the input to which the child is exposed), and (3) a language observation journal. The results from the input corpus showed that, despite the significantly high rate of the SSP-violating #sC cluster (i.e., /st-/) in the speech surrounding the child, input frequency did not provide a satisfactory explanation for the sequence of acquisition, contrary to what a frequency-based account predicts (e.g., Bybee, 2001). Rather, the evidence provided by both the puppet elicitation task and the observation journal suggests a correlation between the order of #sC acquisition and the predictions made by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP: Clements, 1991). Implications for the advancement of research on the acquisition of syllable structure are also discussed.


identifier: Lazerman, Lexx L.  (2012) A Theoretical Cognitive Construct of a 3D Embodied Agent: VAL, the Virtual Autonomous Learner.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The cognitive sciences have always educated educators by providing a pedagogical framework as a guide. However, the standard cognitive sciences are being challenged by a new paradigm, embodied cognition, in which learning is part of a dynamical system.  In this paradigm, virtual embodiment (VE) is the new artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis is an application of VE, introducing an approach to developing a virtual 3D agent that has the potential to achieve “strong AI” status. I believe such agents can mature into AI educators. And that the development of a great AI educator starts with the development of a humble AI child. My methodological approach is a metasynthesis of a broad range of disciplines and consists of (1) the use of empirical research to ground my ideas, (2) the integration of dissimilar research to construct new ideas, and (3) the use of thought experiments to uncover the fundamental nature of learning within an embodiment paradigm. As a result, this thesis introduces a virtual 3D agent, the virtual autonomous learner (VAL), along with key elements of its ecological construct. With an embodied cognitive perspective, VAL seeks to find its own affordance and that of its environment. I conclude that (1) the construct for VAL needs to accommodate different cognitive architectures if we are to make full use of its methodology; (2) a rigorous virtual curriculum must be developed, and efficient pedagogical tools should be designed and developed to implement this curriculum; and (3) an educational perspective is paramount for this project.


identifier: Boezio, Alessandra  (2012) I’m Too Sexy (Exciting, Sophisticated, and Sincere) For My Brands: Menstrual Cycle Effects on Attitudes Toward Brand Personalities.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Abstract

I’m Too Sexy (Exciting, Sophisticated, and Sincere) For My Brands: Menstrual Cycle Effects on Attitudes Toward Brand Personalities

Alessandra Boezio

Hormonal changes across women’s menstrual cycles are a determinant factor in the types of goods women will consume. During the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle women are more likely to spend money on clothing and beautification products. Conversely, in the luteal (non fertile) phase, women will consume more food and home related products (Durante et al., 2011; Saad and Stenstrom, 2012). The objective of this thesis is to extend past the research on menstrual cycle effects in a consumer setting and explore the relationship between menstrual cycle and brand personalities. It is posited that women will exhibit greater (lower) preferences for brands signalling ‘sexy’, ‘exciting’ and ‘sophisticated’ traits on fertile (luteal) days with a greater (lower) preference for ‘sincere’ brands on luteal (fertile) days.  This relationship between menstrual cycle phase (fertile or luteal) and brand personalities is expected to be moderated by the specific individual differences of the participants, namely, with regards to relationship status, brand loyalty, and the participants’ propensity to engage in brand signalling. Although no main effects of menstrual cycle on brand preferences were found, the current research found a link between menstrual cycle phase, trait brand signalling, and preferences for certain brand traits (‘sophisticated’ and ‘exciting’). Also, an association between menstrual cycle phase, relationship status, and preferences for ‘sexy’ brands was discovered. This paper is the first of its kind to explore how hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle influence brand preferences within a given product category. The findings from this paper contribute to both the evolutionary consumption and brand personality research streams.


identifier: Arbour, Deidre  (2012) Students' Understanding of Real, Rational, and Irrational Numbers.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis presents a study of the understanding of real, rational, and irrational numbers by 30 fourth semester college science students in the Montreal region.  The written answers to a set of seven questions were analyzed to determine the students’ interpretations of mathematical signs according to C. S. Peirce’s classifications and to describe their modes of thought according to Vygotsky’s theory of concept development.  From these interpretations, we are able to reconstruct a facsimile of what the students’ concept images are as they pertain to the sets in question.  Finding the concept images to be idiosyncratic and rarely in agreement with what conventional mathematics holds to be true, we examine the way the number systems are approached in school and in the field of mathematics and use this, along with the analyses, to make pedagogical recommendations.


identifier: Sine, Jaime-Brett  (2012) Reshaping Tradition: Linking Continuity, Change, and Formline Design in Contemporary Northwest Coast First Nations Art.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis explores contemporary artistic production by First Nations artists along the Northwest Coast of Canada. Focus is given to an exploration of the choices made by a growing number of emerging artists who are challenging conventions recognized as the visual language of Aboriginal artists of this region, namely formline design. Two Northwest Coast First Nations artists are my focus: Sonny Assu and Shawn Hunt. A complex intersection between tradition and contemporaneity is revealed in the work of Assu and Hunt. An exploration into the artistic practices of these two contemporary artists leads to an important question: why does formline continue to circulate in contemporary Northwest Coast First Nations art and what meaning(s) does it convey in the present moment? This thesis seeks to uncover how Assu and Hunt manipulate and challenge Northwest Coast aesthetic conventions, raising questions regarding how Native art of this region is defined, interpreted, and valued. Attention will also be given to the work of historical and established Northwest Coast First Nations artists who have set artistic precedents and greatly influenced this emerging generation of artists. Discussion will include Charles Edenshaw, Bill Reid, Robert Davidson, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Assu and Hunt push aesthetic boundaries, challenging the notion that formline design circulates within a historical context that does not allow room for innovation. This thesis highlights artists who are mastering and manipulating “traditional” aesthetics in a journey to achieve balance between an articulation of Aboriginal traditions and community belonging, and expressions of individual ingenuity and voice.


identifier: Portanier, Ronald  (2012) The Lost Art of Naval Decoration in 18th Century French Canada.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: French Canada embarked upon a naval ship building programme between 1738 and 1759 to provide warships for induction into the French navy. Archival records mention the construction of these warships and naval dispatches report on their exploits. These warships were adorned with sculptures made by Canadian sculptors. However, the ephemeral quality of these sculptures and scarce documentation about their aesthetic appearance has resulted in an absence of scholarship on their artistic merit. The sculptures that adorned these ships were unique for every ship, with each sculpture made for the space it was meant to fill and to accommodate its viewing point. Hence, inquiring about the sculptures that adorned the warships built in French Canada requires acknowledging the type of ship they were intended for, their surrounding architectural space, and the perception they were meant to convey. This thesis reviews these three essential elements relative to the naval sculpture practiced by the Canadian sculptors of French Canada in an attempt to discover this lost art.


identifier: Heydari, Mohammad  (2012) A Full Bayes Approach to Road Safety: Hierarchical Poisson Mixture Models, Variance Function Characterization, and Prior Specification.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Road safety is a major concern of every department of transportation. Allocating resources to improve safety requires the identification of hazardous sites (hotspots) and the assessment of safety countermeasures. For such tasks, reliable safety performance functions are noteworthy to predict collisions, prioritize improvements, and capture countermeasure effectiveness for overall road network management.
In this thesis, a case study from New Brunswick was used. Bayesian statistics were mainly applied in analyses by introducing Poisson mixture models in a hierarchical fashion. Poisson and Poisson mixture models were compared. Different characterizations of variance functions were verified. In a novel approach, the inverse of variance in Poisson-Lognormal models was examined to vary across sites as a function of site characteristics. In addition, accidents were analyzed by severity. Hierarchical Poisson-Gamma models presented the best fit. Traffic flow was the most influential factor in variance functions. Models with random variance structure provided the best fit, followed by those varying as a function of site characteristics. The interaction between precipitation and density of horizontal curves was statistically significant only for injury-fatality accidents - these contributing factors weren’t significant when considered separately.
Additionally, the effect of prior specifications in hierarchical Poisson-Gamma models was examined adopting a case study and a data simulation framework. Results showed that informative priors, especially for the inverse dispersion parameter, improve the accuracy of parameter estimates. Data with low sample mean and small sample size were dramatically affected by prior specification. However, hotspot identification and goodness-of-fit were not very sensitive to prior choice.