title: Two Political Worlds? Reconsidering Vertical Party Integration In Canada: Evidence From Ontario

abstract:
The accepted view of contemporary federal-provincial party relations in Canada is one of independence, distance, and separation. Rather than creating vertical linkages that bridge the federal and provincial jurisdictions, parties are said to have created “two political worlds”, each separate and distinct from the other. The primary purpose of this study is to challenge, or at the very least question, this conventional wisdom about Canadian politics: do parties truly inhabit two political worlds? This is particularly relevant given that there has been very little research on the subject of party integration in the last two decades. Emphasizing the informal, the human, and the local aspects of vertical party integration, this study demonstrates the considerable linkages that exist between federal and provincial parties in Ontario. The analysis presented here reveals a number of important multi-level connections including overlapping personnel, the provision of campaign endorsements, shared campaign teams, the sharing of party resources, and joint social activities and policy discussions in the inter-election period.
There is, however, considerable inter-party variation. Therefore, the second purpose of this study is to explain differences among parties. Not all parties respond to multi-level governance in the same way, and it is important to uncover the factors that lead to greater levels of cooperation and collaboration. In doing so, the study evaluates two possible explanations (one based on shared and consistent ideology and another based on formal organizational interconnectedness). While the organizational view tends to dominate the literature, this study demonstrates that organizationally truncated parties (those that operate only at a single level) can establish strong and meaningful multi-level linkages in the absence of any formal organizational connections if they have a coherent ideology that spans the federal and provincial realms. This coherent ideology helps to build informal norms of cooperation and collaboration and encourages individuals to participate for the same party at both levels.


title: The "Resort" Studio: An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Residential Recording Studio

abstract: Residential recording studios began to emerge in the 1960s. They were located in remote areas, featured onsite living accommodations, state-of-the-art technology, and recreational amenities. The “resort” studio conceptualizes the function and use of these studios as alternative workspaces. In this thesis, three case studies illuminate their development, ownership, and operation, and their intersection of work and living spaces in isolation. Resort studios were marked by diversity, but featured consistent design and working conditions. By combining the workplace and living space in relaxed atmospheres, resort studios blurred the distinction between work and leisure. However, their isolation from distractions created a concentrated creative work environment. The resort studio highlights music production as a social process beyond an industrial context, and draws attention to the confusion around musicians’ work as play. This thesis situates the resort studio within the continuum of studio configurations to contribute to a more complete version of studio history.


title: A Feminist Evaluation of Victim Services of Leeds and Grenville's Youth Program with a View to Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls

abstract: This dissertation utilizes feminist theory to examine Victim Services of Leeds and Grenville’s Youth Program, violence against women and girls, and prevention and intervention programs for youth. The study includes both quantitative and qualitative elements, and focuses social self-efficacy and social connectedness. The standardized measures used for the quantitative study were Muris’ (2001) Social Self-Efficacy Scale and Lee and Robbins’ (1995) Social Connectedness Scale. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data involved identifying meaning units and categories, then themes. The Randomized Control Trial finds that participation in the Summer Youth Program was not significantly associated with changes in participants’ social self-efficacy or social connectedness, according to the scales used. The qualitative study found, however, that the experiences of both youth and service providers who’d had some involvement with the Youth Program were reported to result in increased social self-efficacy and social connectedness, as well as leading to some recommendations.


title: Three Essays on Stock Exchange Demutualization and Mergers

abstract:
The increased competition in the stock exchange industry, intensified by globalization and technological advancements, has motivated a number of changes in the stock exchange industry including demutualization and mergers. This thesis studies stock exchange demutualization and mergers in three separate but related essays. Essay one investigates the stock market and product market effects of stock exchange mergers, which have been facilitated by demutualization. We find that shareholders of targets and shareholders of the combined exchanges realize significant positive abnormal returns. Additionally, we find that shareholders of competitors from countries in the same geographical region and competitors at the same stage of development also realize significant abnormal returns. We also find that on the product market, the merging exchanges increase their market share and experience reductions in bid-ask spreads while rivals experience decreased market share and increased bid-ask spreads. We contend that stock exchange mergers have resulted in significant wealth creation on the stock market and substantial value creation on the product market for the merging entities.
Essay two examines the market quality implications of stock exchange demutualization. We find that exchanges undertaking demutualization (especially developed stock exchanges) achieve significant reductions in transaction costs and volatility. Although the demutualized exchanges see improvements in market quality, a controlled group of mutual rival stock exchanges have experienced increases in spreads and volatility in the post-demutualization period, and have, as a result, seen deterioration in market quality. Essay three explores the market power consequences of stock exchange mergers. We find that stock exchange mergers have not resulted in the exercise of market power. Instead, the mergers have led to efficiency gains for the merging exchanges and efficiency losses for rivals. Our findings are insensitive to several robustness checks.


title: Exploring Fictional Scenarios of Pervasive Computing to Identify Meaningful Gestures for Intuitive Interactions

abstract: Technological advances in pervasive computing have expanded the possibilities of seamless interactions between people and technology through the use of gestures. However, gesture-based interactions challenge designers who need to understand people’s preferences when dealing with technology-enabled environments. Limitations of current technologies complicate the exploration of gesture-based interactions. This research examines fictional scenarios of possible futures for pervasive computing intending to identify opportunities for gestures that can replace traditional inputs. The examination of future technologies through fiction and centred on users' preferences contributes to understanding the potential of interactions focused on body movement and grounded in users’ context. Applying gestures that reflect people’s preferences may lead to the design of intuitive interactions. This study reveals a correlation between gestures observed in fiction and those generated by users. It also reveals issues and opportunities for improving gesture-based interactions.


title: Tsilhqot'in Nation v British Columbia: Aboriginal Title, Indigenous Resurgence, and the Politics of Recognition

abstract: This thesis situates Tsilhqot’in Nation v British Columbia, 2014 within the discourse of the politics of recognition and argues that Tsilqhot’in is a limited victory. Tsilhqot'in altered the test for Aboriginal title to include semi-nomadic Indigenous lifestyles; in doing so, it provides leverage to Indigenous groups that could have never acquired Aboriginal title with the common law’s previous intensive use of land criteria. However, Tsilhqot’in does not completely alter the structures of settler-colonialism’s law by dismantling its hierarchical and assimilative nature. The Supreme Court established a test to infringe Aboriginal title and reaffirmed the Crown’s unjustified sovereignty over Indigenous peoples. Perhaps the courtroom is not the space for finding justice. This thesis attempts to re-conceptualize the ideas about Indigenous resurgence, law and recognition through the use of critical discourse and Indigenous politics.


title: Heterogeneity of Violent Offenders and the Implications for Correctional Treatment: A Descriptive Profile and Examination of Treatment-Related Outcomes and Executive Cognitive Functioning in Reactive and Instrumental Violent Offenders

abstract: Purpose: By merging neuropsychological theory and practice with forensic correctional tenets, the goal of the current thesis was to explore the profile of treatment-related outcomes and executive cognitive functioning (ECF) among reactive violent offenders and instrumental violent offenders. Method: Three studies were conducted to examine the following key areas: 1) the prevalence and profile of reactive and instrumental violent offenders in terms of demographic characteristics, offence types, static risk, criminogenic needs, and psychometric measures assessing constructs related to aggression (n = 395); 2) an examination of treatment-related variables, such as readiness to change, program completion rates, and release outcomes across violent offender subtypes; and 3) an examination of ECF in reactive and instrumental violent and nonviolent offenders (n = 171). Results: In terms of profile results, violent offender subtypes were differentiated regarding the severity of violence, degree of provocation, familiarity with victim, type of substance used, and emotional state during the incident. With respect to treatment outcomes, reactive violent offenders were more likely to drop out of correctional treatment; however, they had lower rates of return to custody relative to instrumental violent offenders. ECF was differentially related to offender subtypes; specifically, reactive violent offenders were more deficient relative to nonviolent offenders. Conclusion: Many of the findings are preliminary, and as such, further replication is required. Given the differential results related to substance abuse, assessment of risk, program outcomes, and ECF, differential treatment programs for violent offenders are an important direction to consider in future program development.


title: Do You See What Eye See: The Effect of Psychopathic Traits on Memory and Attention to Emotional Images

abstract: Numerous studies have found a central/peripheral trade-off in memory for negative stimuli. This pattern is supported by eye-tracking studies showing more frequent fixations on central rather than peripheral details. One study has examined this in relation to psychopathy and found that psychopaths equally remembered central and peripheral details for negative stimuli (Christianson et al., 1996). The present study investigated the relationship between psychopathy, the central/peripheral trade-off, and eye-tracking patterns. Eye movements of 68 undergraduates scoring high or low in psychopathy were tracked while viewing emotional images. Memory for these images was subsequently tested. A central/peripheral trade-off existed only for the positive and neutral image. Eye-tracking patterns were unrelated to memory. There was no effect of psychopathy on memory, however differences in eye fixation count and duration emerged between psychopathy groups with the positive image. Results suggest that the relationship between attention and memory is more complicated than previously believed.


title: Investigation of the Effects of Make-up Air on Atrium Smoke Conditions

abstract:
An atrium creates an attractive environment in luxurious buildings, shopping centers and prestigious hotels. Most atria have a large space, designed to provide a visual and special appeal. One of the main concerns in designing an atrium is related to fire safety and smoke movement thorough the atrium in the event of fire. As the atrium interconnects several floors, the smoke layer may descend to a level that endangers occupants on upper floors.
Protecting people from the adverse effects of smoke in the event of fire is a major concern of building codes. There are several guidelines available regarding the design of smoke management systems in atria such as NFPA 92B and the ASHRAE/SFPE publication, Handbook of Smoke Control Engineering. In this study, in addition to running full-scale tests of atrium fires, CFD modelling has been conducted to investigate the effects of make-up air on the smoke layer height including the effects of make-up air velocity, opening arrangement and air flow direction.
A reduction factor correlation is proposed based on the results of full-scale experiments to consider the impact of make-up air velocity, opening arrangement and air flow direction on the smoke layer height in an atrium equipped with mechanical smoke management system.


title: Bearing Capacity of Multilayer-deposited In-line Flocculated Oil Sand Tailings

abstract:
Oil sands tailings exhibit poor consolidation and settling behavior when conventional deposition techniques are used; therefore tailings management is a great challenge in the oil sands mining industry. The objectives of this research were to gain an in-depth understanding of the dewatering behavior of polymer-amended mature fine tailings (MFT) deposits, and to study the bearing capacity of these tailings. Polymer-amendment is one of many technologies being investigated in the oil sands industry.
Polymer-amended MFT that imitates field samples was generated and both, thin (0.30m) and thick (0.50m) multi-layer deposition dry box tests were performed. The dry box testing to studied how dewatering behaviors progress as layers are dried and more layers are added, and how cracking influences the evaporation rates. Shear strength and plate load tests were performed to determine undrained shear strength; and bearing capacity respectively between the additions of each new layer for each dry box test.


title: In the Right (Wrong?) Place at the Right Time: A Plausibility Probe of Ziad Munson's Process of Mobilisation, with Violent and Non-violent Evidence.

abstract: This paper is a plausibility probe of Ziad Munson’s theory of activist mobilisation, testing its relevance first to non-violent activist mobilisation and then to mobilisation into terroristic violence. As well, a case study of the Canadian terrorist group “Direct Action” is presented. Using both semi-structured interviews and extant research to provide data, Munson’s mobilisation process was tested to determine if its further use, particularly by counterterrorism practitioners, is warranted. Munson’s mobilisation process was found to be relevant to both non-violent activist mobilisation as well as mobilisation into political violence and terrorism. Suggestions are offered for further research.


title: An Examination of Developmental Cascades of Risk from Childhood to Adulthood

abstract: A robust body of research connects both antisocial behaviour and low self-control in childhood to a number of diverse problems in adulthood including antisocial and criminal behaviour, poor employment, mental health problems, and poor health (Caspi, Wright, Moffitt, & Silva, 1998; Champion, Goodall, & Rutter, 1995; Masten et al., 2010; Kosterman et al., 2010; Moffitt, Caspi, Harrington, & Milne, 2002; Moffitt et al., 2011; Wiesner et al., 2003). Although a significant body of research has identified a large number of risk and protective factors related to antisocial and criminal behaviour, we still lack an understanding of the developmental chain and causal mechanisms that lead to antisocial behaviour and related problems (Day, Wanklyn, & Yessine, 2014; Frick, 2012). The current study applied developmental cascade analysis to examine competing theoretical models regarding the mechanisms that connect parenting, self-control, antisocial behaviour, academic success and internalizing problems from ages 8 to 32. Data included 411 boys from the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development study (CSDD). Results indicated the relationships between parenting, self-control, antisocial behaviour, and academic success are multidirectional. Parenting impacted antisocial behaviour and antisocial behaviour also impacted parenting from childhood into adolescence. Additionally, the study also found antisocial behaviour impacted self-control whereas there was only limited evidence for self-control impacting antisocial behaviour. While prior research has reported robust associations between self-control and antisocial behaviour (e.g., Pratt & Cullen, 2000), little research has tested potential bidirectional relationships. These results have important implications for theories such as the general theory of crime (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). Results examining life success at age 32 reported that the relationship between antisocial behaviour at age 14 and antisocial lifestyle at age 32 varied across two measures of self-control: impulsivity and daring. These results suggest that considering different aspects or dimensions of self-control on antisocial behaviour are important.


title: Temperature-Dependent Fracture Toughness Evaluation of WC-10Co4Cr Coating/1018 Low Carbon Steel Substrate System

abstract: The temperature-dependent fracture toughness of WC-10Co4Cr coating/1018 low carbon steel substrate, which is a brittle coating/ductile substrate system, is evaluated at microscopic level with two types of models developed in terms of the Arrhenius type equation and rate controlling theory, utilizing indentation test data, in this research. One is based on the crystal structures of individual phases in the composite coating, the other considers the microcrack formation in the coating/substrate system under indentation loading.


title: Evaluation of Heat Pump Water Heater Performance and Optimization Strategies In Cold Climates

abstract: This thesis investigates the feasibility of innovative domestic hot water technology. A heat pump water heater was instrumented and installed to test Canadian Standards Association standard CSA-F379.1 draw profiles under various set-point conditions while drawing heat from the surrounding indoor space at the evaporator of the heat pump. The results of simulations indicated that the operating costs for HPWH units in basement installations would not be heavily affected by the local climate, but instead strongly dependent on local utility cost ratios between electricity and heating fuel. It was found that minimal and similar set-points between the heat pump and booster heater, as well as a utility ratio near the nominal coefficient of performance, would provide the best cost performance for HPWH units.


title: Ecologies of Change: Violence Against Women Prevention, Feminist Public Sociology, and Social Media

abstract:
This dissertation is a study of violence against women (VAW) prevention, feminist public sociology, and social media. In the past decade, many sociologists have been working to debate and operationalize Michael Burawoy’s call “For Public Sociology”, which challenges academics to engage beyond the university to effect social change. At the same time that Burawoy’s program has garnered much sociological attention, social media have become a central site of mass communication and core component of the public sphere more broadly. This research explores two questions through surveys and in-depth interviews as well as my own experiences with public sociology: (1) how do people working on VAW prevention use and experience social media? And (2) what is the role of feminist public sociology in preventing VAW?
My findings explore the benefits and challenges of social media for VAW prevention work and argue that these processes should be understood through the ecological model of VAW prevention that is widely used in offline prevention work. I find that participants primarily use Facebook and Twitter, and that their activities cluster around four broad goals: (1) information transmission to existing and new audiences; (2) conversational activism: shaping narratives around VAW; (3) feminism: shaping their own feminist identity as well as online feminism more broadly; and (4) preventing online VAW (e.g. online sexual harassment), a new form of VAW prevention that has garnered recent advocacy and emerging academic work.
My research contributes four theoretical conclusions to discussions of public sociology, of feminism, and of VAW prevention: first, converging disciplines and roles in social media means that there is a more pronounced need for knowledge translation to achieve social and institutional transformation. Second, VAW prevention in social media reveals a rapidly reflexive, increasingly intersectional feminism that prioritizes experiential knowledge and conversational activism online. Third, this feminism is incompatible with Burawoy’s original four-part framework for sociology but can be reconciled using community-based scholarship principles and emerging feminist work. Finally, the emerging category of online sexual violence encapsulates emerging re-understandings of feminism, gender, and violence by presenting us with a present-day cyborg problem where offline/online dichotomies are increasingly obsolete.


title: Assessing Composite and Fibre Metal Laminate Materials for Automotive Applications Through Impact and Quasi-Static Indentation Testing

abstract: Automakers can conform to pressures of increasing gas mileage and reducing CO2 emissions through weight reduction of vehicles with the use of composite and fibre metal laminate (FML) materials. An important safety equivalency characteristic of these lightweight materials that must be studied is their impact resistance compared to that of traditionally used automotive materials; steel and aluminum. Low-velocity impact (LVI) and quasi-static indentation (QSI) testing was conducted on thin composite and FML panels to assess their applicability in impact prone automotive components. To aide in the impact assessment of the lightweight materials a novel approach was developed to determine the strain and visible damage evolution within specimens through the use of digital imaging correlation (DIC) technology in quasi-static indentation tests. Simulating dynamic impact events with quasi-static loads was also evaluated and its limitations were discussed.


title: Influence of Mach Number on Profile Loss of Axial-Flow Turbine Blades

abstract: The current profile loss prediction methods for axial turbine blades predict a monotonic increase in profile losses at outlet Mach numbers above 1.0. However, linear cascade testing in the literature has revealed a more complex behaviour. An objective of this investigation was to help clarify the flow features that are most influential on the profile losses in the transonic and supersonic regimes. Four linear cascades of turbine blades were investigated both experimentally and computationally. Linear cascade measurements were carried out using the High Speed Wind Tunnel (HSWT) at Carleton University. It was found that the base pressure was strongly linked to the profile losses in the transonic and supersonic regimes. The position of the trailing edge shock impingement on the adjacent blade and its associated effect on the boundary layer were also found to influence the profile losses.


title: Flips and Spanners

abstract:
In this thesis, we study two different graph problems.
The first problem revolves around geometric spanners. Here, we have a set of points in the plane and we want to connect them with straight line segments, such that there is a path between each pair of points and these paths do not require large detours. If we achieve this, the resulting graph is called a spanner. We focus our attention on two graphs (the ϴ-graph and Yao-graph) that are constructed by connecting each point with its nearest neighbour in a number of cones. Although this construction is very straight-forward, it has proven challenging to fully determine the properties of the resulting graphs. We show that if the construction uses 5 cones, the resulting graphs are still spanners. This was the only number of cones for which this question remained unanswered. We also present a routing strategy (a way to decide where to go next, based only on our current location, its direct neighbourhood, and our destination) on the half-ϴ6-graph, a variant of the graph with 6 cones. We show that our routing strategy avoids large detours: it finds a path whose length is at most a constant factor from the straight-line distance between the endpoints. Moreover, we show that this routing strategy is optimal.
In the second part, we turn our attention to flips in triangulations. A flip is a simple operation that transforms one triangulation into another. It turns out that with enough flips, we can transform any triangulation into any other. But how many flips is enough? We present an improved upper bound of 5.2n - 33.6 on the maximum flip distance between any pair of triangulations with n vertices. Along the way, we prove matching lower bounds on each step in the current algorithm, including a tight bound of (3n - 9)/5 flips needed to make a triangulation 4-connected. In addition, we prove tight ϴ(n log n) bounds on the number of flips required in several settings where the edges have unique labels.


title: Conceptualization and Operationalization of Delay: Development and Validation of the Multifaceted Measure of Academic Procrastination and the Delay Questionnaire

abstract: Current procrastination measures fail to capture the multidimensional nature of procrastination behaviour and the multifaceted nature of procrastination problems, calling into question their use in evaluating procrastination in intervention research and clinical settings. Current measures also fail to differentiate procrastination from other forms of delay. These shortcomings have limited our theoretical understanding of delay in general and procrastination in particular. To address these problems, two sets of measures, the Multifaceted Measure of Academic Procrastination (MMAP) and the Delay Questionnaire (DQ), were developed in two parallel lines of multistage studies (N > 4000). In each line of research, a comprehensive approach to measurement development was followed to: (1) create items based on an initial theoretical model, (2) extensively evaluate the content of the definitions and items based on quantitative and qualitative data, (3) explore the factor structures and evaluate item functioning in order to reduce the number of items, and (4) confirm and refine the structure found in the exploratory analyses. The final structure of the MMAP consisted of four facets or separate scales: the Procrastination Behaviour Scale, the Negative Emotions Scale, the Perceived Negative Consequences Scale, and the Procrastination Duration Scale, which can be used separately or together. The final DQ consisted of six prototypes of delay: Irrational Delay/Anxious Procrastination, Hedonistic Delay/Hedonistic Procrastination, Inevitable Delay, Purposeful Delay, Arousal Delay, and Delay due to Emotional Problems. The extensive reliability analyses supported the reliability of the scales and subscales. Finally, after refining, establishing, and testing the new measures’ factor structures, the data from multiple surveys were gathered to provide evidence for the construct validity arguments for the new measures. Taken together, the findings support the validity of using various total scores including the severity of procrastination problems, duration of procrastination, procrastination behaviours measured by the MMAP, and prototypes and types of delay measured by the DQ. The validity studies also provided information regarding the prevalence of each form of delay and severe procrastination problems in student populations. The relations between procrastination and major personality factors, self-system variables as well as academic and health outcomes are discussed and compared with previous research findings.


title: Re:  Reading Ashley Smith: Critically Unpacking Government by Discursive Figures of Ashley as Girl Produced in the Smith Case

abstract: In this dissertation, I explore how Ashley Smith has become socially understood as a “case.” I perform a critical discourse analysis of figures of Ashley Smith as technologies of governance. I argue that the Smith case ought not to be read as a case of anomalous system failure but as an extreme, but foreseeable, result of the routine and everyday brutality of a society and bureaucracies’ necropolitical security apparatus. I map a chronological trajectory in which the “official story” of Inmate Smith gives way through the process of celebritization and sacralization of “Child Ashley” to a widely accepted understanding of Ashley Smith as a mislocated mental health subject: “Patient Smith.” This analysis reveals that seeming progressive turn to understanding her as a victim of a failed system of mental health leaves intact, and even reinforces, logics and systems of gender, security, risk, race thinking and exclusion that make her death and the death of other prisoners predictable. I demonstrate how the logics of risk, mental health and legal discourses in the juridical field intersected with discourses of the girl in ways that made alternative readings and Ashley Smith’s own narration of her story illegible and unwritable. Further, I argue that certain operating logics predetermine the labeling of properly constituted adolescent girls’ noncompliance as madness and adolescent boys’ noncompliance as criminality. This analysis further calls into question the foundations of the statistical discrepancy between criminal charge rates for adolescent boys and girls. This dissertation seeks to intervene in these intersecting governmental logics that write “girls in trouble with the law” in particularly damaging ways.


title: Score Tests for Testing Homogeneity of Recurrent Event Times Using Frailty Models

abstract:
This thesis presents an overview of frailty models in survival analysis for modelling unobserved heterogeneity in survival times. The frailty model is a generalization of Cox's proportional hazard model, where a shared unobserved quantity called frailty describes a positive correlation among the survival times. The frailty term describes the common risks, acting as a factor on the hazard function.
In this thesis, we investigate a score test based on the mixture of chi-square distributions for testing homogeneity of individuals in recurrent event data using a shared frailty model, which is equivalent to testing whether the variance component in a frailty model is zero.
Simulation studies are conducted to assess the empirical level and power of the score test under correctly specified and misspecified random effects, and to study the finite-sample properties in terms of biases and mean squared errors of the estimators


title: Homological Manifestations of Quantum Group Duality

abstract: The connection between amenability of a locally compact group G and injectivity of its group von Neumann algebra L(G) has been studied by many of the world's leading operator algebraists for decades. In this work we clarify this connection by showing the equivalence between amenability of G and 1-injectivity of L(G) as an operator module of the Fourier algebra A(G). In fact, we prove a corresponding result for all locally compact quantum groups \G, establishing at the same time new homological manifestations of quantum group duality, and a novel tool for the development of abstract harmonic analysis on locally compact quantum groups. We give several applications of our general duality result, including a proof that closed quantum subgroups of amenable quantum groups are amenable, and a simplified proof that co-amenability and amenability of the dual are equivalent for compact quantum groups which avoids the use of modular theory, suggesting a potential avenue for generalization beyond the compact setting. We also introduce a notion of inner amenability for locally compact quantum groups and study its connection to relative injectivity, establishing further homological manifestations of duality which not only help to elucidate previously known results, but provide new approaches to open problems concerning the operator homology of A(G).


title: Regulation of Lactate Dehydrogenase and Glycerol-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase in Mammalian Hibernation

abstract: Hibernation is a winter survival strategy for many small mammals. Animals sink into deep torpor, body temperature falls to near 0°C and physiological functions are strongly suppressed. Enzymes are the catalysts of metabolic pathways in cells and their appropriate control is critical to hibernation success. This thesis explores the properties and regulation of two key enzymes of carbohydrate metabolism (lactate dehydrogenase, LDH) and lipid metabolism (glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, G3PDH) purified from liver and skeletal muscle of ground squirrels (Urocitellus richardsonii). The studies showed that changes in pH, temperature, and inhibitors play roles in regulating these enzymes between euthermic and torpid states. Furthermore, protein phosphorylation proved to be a significant regulatory mechanism, producing a reduced activity state of skeletal muscle LDH and increased activity state of G3PDH in both skeletal muscle and liver during torpor. Overall, these studies showed that multiple mechanisms of enzyme regulation contribute to reorganizing fuel metabolism during hibernation.


title: Use of Retinal Explants to Examine the Effect of Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor on Neurite Growth

abstract: Adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS) neurons fail to regenerate after injury. Both the extracellular environment and the intrinsic growth state of neurons affect their ability to regenerate. The cytokine granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), known to promote cell survival, may also activate cellular growth programs. In this thesis, the effect of GM-CSF on CNS neurite growth was investigated. The retina, an easily accessible region of the CNS, was examined. Pieces of retinal tissue – retinal explants – were maintained in culture and varying doses of GM-CSF were applied. The growth of retinal ganglion cells (RGC) neurites was quantified. The results indicated that GM-CSF enhanced lengthy neurite growth in embryonic mouse retinal explants. The retinal explantation technique optimized in this study could be used to test the role of potential agents in growth-promotion. Ultimately, long-distance neuronal regeneration is critical in functional recovery after neural injury.


title: Impartial Intersection Restriction Games

abstract: Intersection restriction games are games played on hypergraphs in which options for a player are restricted based on previous play via some intersection property. This paper focuses on two games within this class: Arc-Kayles and a Triple Packing game. Arc-Kayles is a game where, on their turn, players remove an edge and all adjacent edges from a graph. Together, players are forming a maximal matching. The Triple Packing game is a combinatorial design game where players are choosing triples such that no two triples chosen share a pair. Both games are played under normal play. We give new results for Arc-Kayles played on a special star graph and the wheel graph as well as partial results for the Triple Packing game played on the complete graph.


title: Exploring the Neuroplastic and Antidepressant-Like Effects of Erythropoietin

abstract: A growing body of evidence implies that depression may arise in part through a deregulation of neuroplasticity, and novel antidepressants have shown therapeutic potential by exerting neurogenic and neuroplastic effects. The hematopoietic cytokine erythropoietin (EPO) has shown antidepressant potential with an ability to regulate neuroplastic and cognitive-behavioral outcomes. This research sought to further the knowledge of the antidepressant potential of EPO through cellular and behavioral outcomes. In Exp 1, effects of 2 week EPO administration on chronically stressed rodents (an animal model of depression) was observed by the forced swim test (FST) and doublecortin immunohistochemistry for immature granule cells. In Exp. 2, whether acute EPO administration has the potential to synergize with an SSRI was analyzed using the FST. This research showed no effect of EPO on cellular or behavioral outcomes, suggesting a necessity for further studies of this paradigm utilizing alternative models or methods to those used here.


title: Utility-Based Packet Scheduling and Resource Allocation Algorithms with Heterogeneous Traffic for Wireless OFDMA Networks

abstract:
The focus of this dissertation is on studying various packet scheduling and resource block (RB) allocation algorithms, for a variety of flow requirements, heterogeneous traffic, and architecture, in wireless OFDMA networks.
In the second chapter, we investigate packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithms for realtime (RT) and non-realtime (NRT) packet-switched flows. We start by specifying different quality-of-service (QoS)-requirements for RT \& NRT flows and present different packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithms (including known cores and novel cores) based on the bit-rate driven utilities and the delay driven disutilities. We, then, summarize the machinery for attaining different fairness and QoS-requirements in a pair of classification tables (including a novel intuitive decomposition).
When considering RT and NRT flows together, the commonly-used approach is the one based on performing two sequential algorithms of RT and NRT flows. This approach cannot exploit the potent existent multiuser diversity, in wireless OFDMA networks. In the third chapter, we propose a novel unified disutility minimization, in a common pool of RBs. Since the packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithms have taken place for RT and NRT flows from a common pool of RBs (without static priority separation), the overall spectral efficiency is increased. The novel formulations are used to devise computationally-efficient packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithm that surpass baseline algorithms. We also develop a novel general model for input-output bit-rate behaviour in packet scheduling and RB allocation of the heterogeneous traffic. This model sheds light on identifying different input load regions and understanding of the system in a simple intuitive manner.
When it comes to providing very high bit-rate coverage, wireless networks require cost-effective radio access network (RAN) devices, such as multiuser enabled amplify-and-forward (AF) relays, with proper fair packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithms. These relays are cost-effective, simpler to implement, and introduce less delay in comparison to other relay based routers. In the fourth chapter, we develop novel fair packet scheduling and RB allocation algorithms in this kind of OFDMA based AF relays.
Finally, we discuss a number of interesting research topics, as future directions, in the last chapter.


title: Attitudes, Associates, and Romantic Relationships: Validating the Measure of Criminal Attitudes and Associates (MCAA) in a Sample of Male and Female Adolescent Offenders

abstract: Existing measures of criminal attitudes and associates have rarely been tested with samples of female offenders or incorporated gender-informed variables. The study examined the reliability and validity of the Measure of Criminal Attitudes and Associates with 312 adolescent offenders (102 females, 210 males). Additionally, the study examined whether the predictive validity of the Criminal Friend Index could be enhanced by incorporating two gender-informed variables. Results show that the MCAA is reliable for males (α = .65 to .91) and females (α = .62 to .89). and that the CFI component of the MCAA predicts reconvictions for males (AUC = .64) but not females (AUC = .53), but the total attitude score predicted for both genders (males, AUC = .61; females, AUC = .70). However, incorporating gender-informed variables into the CFI did not improve predictive accuracy. The need to develop gender-informed measures from the ground-up for female offenders is discussed.


title: Fast Demand Control in Smart Grid Communications with User-in-the-Loop (UIL) Method

abstract: Recently, household energy consumption has been highly increasing, although there is a decrease in the source of energy. Consequently, the base price of electricity has been rising. Thus, there are a variety of approaches to save electricity costs. One proposed approach is the User-in-the Loop (UIL) method, in which the consumers are given satisfactory incentives (for instance decreasing the base price of the electricity) to postpone their demand until low peak hours. To investigate the effectiveness of UIL, both control models are examined under three types of pricing. Additionally, we propose the dynamic pricing model, in which the base price of the electricity is updated every 5 minutes based on a feedback message received from users. As a result of this study, we found that there is an inverse relationship between the number of users and the efficiency of UIL with the dynamic pricing model.


title: A Wearable Computer Vision System for Measuring Shoe Position and Orientation

abstract: This thesis presents, as a component of the BalanceAid project, the initial design and prototype of a self-contained wearable system capable of measuring the relative position and orientation of the wearer's shoes. This system is the first published work to use two shoe mounted cameras to measure the position and orientation of the shoes during the entire gait cycle in real time and using entirely on-board processing. The system consists of a camera, eight LED markers, and a single board computer mounted to each shoe. All of the data processing is performed on the shoe mounted computers providing a 6 DoF coordinate system transformation from one shoe to the other at a rate of 15 Hz. Using 6 healthy subjects, experiments were performed to characterize the performance of the system. The system's measurements were compared to those of an accurate commercially available system.


title: Visual Feedback to Perform Bend Gestures on Flexible Displays

abstract: Bend gestures offer a rich interaction language for flexible displays due to their large degrees of freedom. However, without an understandable visual feedback system, working with such interaction could be a difficult challenge for users. In this thesis, we have developed three visual feedback systems by using feedforward and feedback mechanisms with the goal of guiding users to correctly perform bend gestures on a handheld flexible display. Additionally, we have conducted an experiment containing two tasks, which, using a flexible prototype, evaluate the usefulness of our visual feedback designs. Our results suggested that users could perform sets of bend gestures faster when the visual feedbacks appear at the exact location of the bend gesture instead of always at a fixed location on the screen.we found that, while feedforward improved users’ performance, using feedback had a negative effect. Finally, we propose a set of design guidelines for designing visual feedback systems.


title: Times, They Are a Changin': An Examination of Congruent Temporal Appraisals for Self and the Romantic Partner

abstract: As time passes, people change. Change can affect relationships in many ways. I explored trajectories of expected change through time for people evaluating themselves or their romantic partner. Individuals perceive and predict change for their partners in similar ways as for themselves, expecting improvement from the present to the future (Study 1 and 2). I next explored how expected change for the self and for the partner in relation to one another affect relationships. Two partners might change congruently or change at different rates, in different ways. Predicting discrepant change was linked to lower relationship quality and less personal happiness compared to predicting no change or congruent change, both in correlational (Study 3 and 4) and primed designs (Study 5). Across studies, change expectations seemed most linked to outcomes when examined generally rather than in specific domains (Study 3-5). Growth can benefit relationships when it occurs congruently with one’s partner.


title: Cost-Effective Net-Zero Energy Houses Through Optimization

abstract: Development of net-zero energy house (NZEH) optimization has resulted in NZEHs with much lower building costs. However, a viable pathway to cost-effective NZEHs has not yet been made evident. This study uses the Non-domination Sorting Genetic Algorithm II with active Pareto-archiving (aNSGA-II) and Iterated Sequential Search (ISS) algorithms connected with EnergyPlus to perform energy and cost optimizations on seventeen scenarios to determine how NZEHs can become more cost-effective and what is necessary to make them as or more cost-effective than code-built houses. Three house types are optimized in Ottawa, Ontario: a single detached house, an end unit townhouse and a middle unit townhouse. This research finds that a single detached NZEH can be cost-effective if occupant engagement is pursued, if the price of solar photovoltaics decreases to $1.434/W installed, and if the construction costs are similar to that of a large-scale developer.


title: A Cultural Approach to Foreign Policy Analysis: The Role of Political Ideologies in Shaping Israeli Policy Toward the Peace Process

abstract: Why was Israeli policy toward the peace process in the 1990s conflicted, inconsistent and even erratic? This study suggests that in order to understand Israeli foreign policy, we must analyze the country’s domestic political movements. The dissertation takes a theoretically informed approach, which seeks to ‘bring back’ ideology to cultural frameworks of foreign policy analysis, to examine the Israeli case. The study argues that the political movements within Israel interpreted and reacted differently to the regional and global developments of the 1980s and early 1990s. These various perspectives were due to the fact that the ideologies of these movements were constructed in relation and opposition to each other, and as a result they differed on what it meant to be “Israeli,” as well as what they considered the “national interest.” Both the rise and the fall of the peace process should be seen as part of a larger ideological struggle between the Labor movement on the one hand and the religious and revisionist Zionist movements on the other, each of which sought to redefine Zionism and Israel in its own image and according to its own ideology. Israel’s drive to peace in the early nineteen nineties was the result of the interaction between a new liberal Zionist ideology of the Labor movement and regional and global developments. In contrast the religious Zionist movement saw the peace process as part of the “Hellenization” of Israeli state and society and the abortion of the “divine redemptive process.” The revisionists also opposed the peace process based on the movement’s ideology that portrayed Israel as an isolated and vulnerable nation, which could only rely on military power, rather than political agreements, against an “anti-Semitic” and hostile gentile world. The shifts in Israeli foreign policy in the nineteen nineties were thus the result of the confrontation between these contrasting worldviews.


title: Nurturing the Temporally Extended Self: Mental Imagery as an Intervention to Increase Future Self-Continuity and Reduce Academic Procrastination

abstract: I examined how mental imagery practice can increase future self-continuity to reduce academic procrastination. I hypothesized that participants would feel more connected to future self because of increases in vividness and empathy for that self. I also hypothesized that feeling more connected to future self would lead to less procrastination. Results revealed that both future self-continuity and empathic perspective taking were significantly higher for the mental imagery condition than the meditation condition. Furthermore, future self-continuity predicted decreases in procrastination. Latent growth analyses revealed that vividness of future self moderated change in future self-continuity, while empathic perspective taking moderated change in procrastination. Lastly, affective empathy mediated the relation between vividness and future self-continuity. I discuss why participants in both conditions experienced similar change across time. I also explain how the influence of empathic perspective taking on future self-continuity and procrastination is in line with evidence from the empathy literature.


title: The Acquisition and Expression of Remote Spatial Memories Formed During the Juvenile Period are Impaired by AMPAr Blockade

abstract: The current work investigated the effect of AMPAr blockade on the emergence and expression of spatial function and neural activity patterns in the brain. Pretraining administration of the AMPAr antagonist, NBQX, impaired acquisition of the platform location. Posttraining administration of NBQX had no effect on day-to-day performance. When given a probe test, saline groups across all conditions spent more time in the target quadrant. The pretraining and pretesting, but not the posttraining or pretraining/pretesting, 5 mg/kg NBQX group showed a preference for the target quadrant. Pretraining, posttraining, and pretaining/pretesting, but not pretesting, 10 mg/kg NBQX groups did not show a preference for the target quadrant. c-Fos labeling in the hippocampus reflected differences in probe performance while ACC c-Fos labeling reflected acquisition data. Results indicate that AMPAr activation is necessary for the acquisition and expression of remote spatial memories and that hippocampus activation is required for the expression of those memories.


title: Fast Adaptive Digital Pre-Distortion Scheme for Application in Cellular Base Station Power Amplifiers

abstract:
In a base station, the power amplifier (PA) experiences rapid fluctuations in behavior because of the varying power levels and bandwidth of its excitation signals. High peak-to-average power ratios and nonconstant envelopes of wideband signals impose stringent linear and efficiency requirements on the PA required for amplification.
It is necessary to design fast and noncomplex digital pre-distorters that are able to achieve and maintain acceptable linearization performance and compensate for the dynamic distortions generated by the PA. This thesis explores an adaptive DPD scheme using multiple models that combines a switching and a simple adaptation algorithm.
Experimental data are used in evaluating the proposed scheme. The multiple model scheme reduces the transient error response and requires a relatively small number of data samples for identification, switching and adaptation. The scheme is demonstrated to be fast, less complex, and capable of maintaining and achieving the linearity requirement of the PA.


title: Seeing Past the 'Post-9/11' Framing: The Long Rise of Anti-Islam Politics in the Netherlands

abstract: In the early 2000s, anti-Islam parties rose to unprecedented prominence in the Netherlands. Within the Dutch polity, the parties’ mainstream popularity is widely understood as a product of the post-9/11 climate; defined by “Islamist” terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, and concurrent political discourses on the “crisis” of multiculturalism. Researchers critical of this interpretation have analysed anti-Islam politics in the Netherlands as a product of the post-9/11 security climate. Yet framing anti-Islam politics as ‘post-9/11’, underestimates the long-term presence of anti-Islam politics and disguises systemic issues of minority discrimination that have long plagued Dutch society. In order to ‘see past’ the post-9/11 framing, this paper examines the history of anti-Islam politics within the broader historical context of the Dutch ‘multicultural myth’ and issues of including newcomers into Dutchness since 1945. The curious trend amongst Dutch politicians to circulate anti-Islam politics through independently released books/films is explored and its significance discussed.


title: The everyday health geographies of Bhutanese and Nepalese migrants in Ottawa: health, wellbeing and therapeutic networks

abstract: The health geographies of migrants have been little explored in geography, and there has been little effort to define health and wellbeing, especially among racialized peoples, in the literature. My research examined perceptions of health and wellbeing through semistructured interviews with Nepalese and Bhutanese migrants in Ottawa. I suggest these narratives of health, which capture premigration memories in postmigration contexts, should be seen by researchers as a form of health knowledges and lived experiences. This study also acknowledged issues with recruitment, addressing researcher self-esteem, as well as reflexivity in qualitative research. Overall, this study furthers research on the everyday health geographies of migrant groups in Canada, highlighting how health and wellbeing can be differently experienced.


title: Enhancement of Shaft Capacity of Cast-in-Place Piles Using a Hook System

abstract: This research investigates an innovative approach to improve the shaft bearing capacity of cast-in-place pile foundations by utilizing passive inclusions (Hooks) that will be mobilized if movement occurs in pile system. An extensive experimental program was developed to study the shaft bearing capacity of cast-in-place piles with and without hook system in soft clay and sand. First phase of the experiment was developed to investigate the effect of passive inclusion on pile-soil interface shear strength behaviour, employing a modified direct shear test apparatus. The interface strength obtained for pile-soil specimens was found to significantly increase when passive inclusions were implemented. Residual friction angle for concrete-sand interface increased from 22 degrees to 29.5 degrees when two hook elements were used at the pile-soil interface. The pile-clay adhesion was also increased from 19 kPa to 34 kPa.


title: Impacts of retrogressive permafrost thaw slumps on aquatic systems in the Peel Plateau, Northwest Territories, Canada

abstract: Along the slopes of the Richardson Mountains, west of the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the stratigraphies of two lakes with large retrogressive thaw slumps within their catchments are examined using paleolimnological techniques. The lacustrine geomorphological impacts of current thaw activity are examined, as well as the past occurrence of large-scale thermokarst disturbances. Sediment stratigraphies from the larger lake suggest repeated erosion through time. The sediment stratigraphy from the smaller lake records ~55 cm of deposition due to thaw slump activity in the past 20 – 40 years. Aside from the recent thaw slump activity recorded in the smaller lake basin, neither system provided discernable evidence of long-term, ancient slump activity. The difference in the magnitude of impacts of the two systems is primarily attributed to catchment area to lake area and disturbance area to lake area ratios.


title: Remainders of Loss: Memorialization Beyond the Funeral

abstract: For my dissertation, I conducted thirty-one semi-structured qualitative interviews with individuals who experienced the loss of a friend or loved one, and who helped to organize a funeral. The intention of my research was to give individuals a chance to share what they found meaningful and important about their experiences during this time. Doing so led me to develop the concept of remainders. The remainders represent the everyday memorialization practices that people perform after the funeral. They are the by-products of the funeral, the types of actions people tend to perform on their own post-funeral, but they are also the emotional or social ‘leftovers’ that remain after the funeral. By examining first-hand accounts of attempts to memorialize, this dissertation contributes to a sociological study of memorialization by exploring the ongoing ways that people incorporate death or loss in their lives and the meaning that they give to the practices they perform. According to the findings of this research, the contemporary practice of memorialization is a complex and messy process that extends beyond the funeral due to the emotions that come with a loss and remain well past the funeral.


title: Circulating Texts: Challenging Zionist Myths Through Narratives of Creative Palestinian Resistance and Solidarity

abstract: Through (re)presentations in news media, art, pop culture as well as educational and other institutional contexts in addition to our own personal storytelling, stories shape how we make sense of our lives and what matters to us. Dominant stories of the imagined nation are told and retold often without question. But narratives which counter hegemonic storytelling also exist and continue to be passed on. Despite attempts at erasure and silencing in mainstream accounts and historiographies, contesting narratives which challenge oppressive ruling relations carry on. In this paper, I consider how narratives that expose and oppose dominant settler colonial myths are practices of creative resistance. Echoing Barbara Harlow (1987:7), I posit creative resistance not in opposition to, but alongside other forms of resistance such as armed struggle. Through this study, I theorize the concept of creative resistance against the logics and materiality of settler colonialism to examine three modes of narrative performance as political practice in the work of Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA)-Carleton as part of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Rafeef Ziadah’s spoken word, and performances by the Freedom Theatre project in Jenin, Palestine. In exploring the stories of these creative projects, this study conceives of narratives as sites of struggle that are significant in the telling of history and therefore crucial to resistance.


title: Real Time Autotuning for MapReduce on Hadoop/YARN

abstract:
Humanity entered the Big Data era passing through the zettabite mark at an exponential rate in just a few years. The Apache Hadoop is the most popular Big Data processing framework. However, Hadoop performance is highly dependent on chosen settings. An automatic tuner is a desirable solution. Existent off-line tuning approaches require multiple repetitive executions of the job in order to find optimal tuning settings and, hence, are not applicable to use in most cases.
The presented work introduces a novel real time autotuning approach. The resource management parameters are tuned between execution waves by a modular autotuner connected to Hadoop architecture through YARN. The developed autotuner effectively intercepts a resource request, modifies it according to a tuning algorithm and passes it to YARN Scheduler. Such an approach not only carries high practical and theoretical value, but also opens a new horizon in the Hadoop/YARN automatic tuning development.


title: Evaluation of Non-Imprinted Polymer Particles for Advanced Treatment of Water and Wastewater

abstract:
This research evaluated the use of non-imprinted polymers (NIP) for treatment of micropollutants and heavy metals. NIP were also compared to powdered activated carbon in competition with humic acid and wastewater. Lastly, conventional separation methods for suspended solids were evaluated for removal of NIP particles following treatment.
In Chapter 5, NIP were evaluated for removal of EDCs and pharmaceuticals from water and wastewater. NIP were highly effective at removing EDCs from single solute solutions, and were also able to remove EDCs from a 0.5 ppm mixture of five EDCs. They were able to remove 9 out of 12 of the pharmaceuticals to some degree from deionized water and 3 out of 7 of the pharmaceuticals measured in wastewater. Overall, NIP were effective for removal of EDCs, but further study is required to determine whether they can remove pharmaceuticals. In Chapter 6, NIP were shown to be very effective for removal of lead from both river water and wastewater, but less effective for other heavy metal ions. Chapter 7 investigated mechanisms of competition for non-imprinted polymers (NIP) and activated carbon with humic acid and wastewater. Experiments were conducted for single-solute adsorption of methylene blue dye, simultaneous adsorption with humic acid and wastewater, and pre-loading with humic acid and wastewater followed by adsorption of the dye. The only decrease observed was for simultaneous adsorption with humic acid for NIP (for a 90% confidence limit). Humic acid and wastewater increased adsorption for the activated carbon, Norit PAC 200, for pre-loading with humic acid and simultaneous exposure to wastewater. Adsorbed humic acid or NOM from wastewater may have increased the negative surface charge of the activated carbon and increased adsorption, cancelling out decreases due to competition. In Chapter 8, removal of NIP following treatment was investigated using conventional separation methods for suspended solids such as filtration, centrifugation, and ballasted flocculation. Centrifugation was the most effective, followed by filtration, and ballasted flocculation, but all three separation methods effectively removed NIP particles. The results of this thesis showed that NIP have strong potential for water and wastewater treatment.


title: Internet Location Verification:  Challenges and Solutions

abstract:
This thesis addresses the problem of verifying the geographic locations of Internet clients. First, we demonstrate how current state-of-the-art delay-based geolocation techniques are susceptible to evasion through delay manipulations. We found that delay-based techniques generally lack appropriate mechanisms to measure delays in an integrity-preserving manner. Upon analyzing the effect of several adversarial evasion strategies on three representative delay-based geolocation techniques, we found that these strategies combined with the ability of full delay manipulation can allow an adversary to (fraudulently) control the location returned by those geolocation techniques accurately.
Client Presence Verification (CPV) is then proposed as a delay-based technique to verify an assertion about a client's physical presence in a prescribed geographic region. Three verifiers geographically encapsulating a client's asserted location are used to corroborate that assertion by measuring delays between themselves and the client. CPV infers geographic distances from these delays and thus, using the smaller of the forward and reverse one-way delay between each verifier and the client is expected to result in a more accurate distance inference than conventional round-trip times. Accordingly, we devise a novel protocol for accurately estimating one-way delays between the client and the verifiers for CPV to use, taking into account that the client could manipulate the measurements to defeat the verification process.
CPV is evaluated through real-world experiments with legitimate clients (those truly present at where they asserted to be) modeled to use both wired and wireless access networks. Wired evaluation is done using the PlanetLab testbed, during which we examine various factors affecting CPV's efficacy. For wireless evaluation, we leverage the Internet delay information collected for wired clients from PlanetLab, and model additional delays representing the last-mile wireless link using delay distribution models studied in the literature.
Finally, we reinforce CPV against a (hypothetical) middlebox that an adversary specifically customizes to defeat CPV (i.e., assuming an adversary that is aware of how CPV operates). We propose to use a Proof-of-Work mechanism that allows CPV to impose constraints which effectively limit the number of clients (now adversaries) simultaneously colluding with that middlebox; beyond that number, CPV detects the middlebox.


title: Structured Forgetting and the Social Organization of Kidney Exchange in Ontario

abstract:
Theoretical resources regarding the creation of objects and orientations in ideology and material practice are drawn on to develop an original, theoretical account of organ transplantation. This analytical lens is then used to advance understanding of the social relations that enable and inhibit the exchange of kidneys for transplantation. The argument is that customary claims about how to increase organ donation, set within an altruism versus market framework, deflect attention from a significant variable: the legitimacy and limits of removing kidneys from their owners – in other words, alienability. Two sets of rules are revealed, with one set, the rules of altruism, requiring and eliciting public engagement, and the other set, the rules of alienability, being pushed by experts within their realm of authority. Both sets of rules demarcate boundary lines through a fundamental tension between recipients, intermediaries and donors that is demonstrated to be imbalanced by a recipient-centric orientation. As a result, public discourse is focused on a small set of variables and distanced from a far more complex set of dynamics predominantly emerging from the relationality of donors and recipients.
Seeing the deflection of attention challenges both the legitimacy of conventional wisdom about transplantation, especially as it informs public policy, and the common view of a complete distinction differentiating altruism from capitalist modes of body part exchange. It also raises new questions about persuasion and public knowledge that trouble altruism, and shows how efforts to alleviate the suffering of some, (potential) recipients, has largely unintentionally led to a structured forgetting of the suffering of others, (potential) donors. This is demonstrated for both deceased donation and living donation using a case study of one organ, the kidney, in one jurisdiction, Ontario, Canada, from 2000 to 2014, with a focus on donors and intermediaries.


title: The Eole of LRRK2 G2019S Mutation in Neuroinflammatory Processes and Its Relevance for Parkinson's Disease

abstract: Parkinson’s disease has been linked to a variety of environmental challenges involving both oxidative and inflammatory processes, however, genetics also clearly plays a role in these insults. The Gly-2019-Ser LRRK2 mutation is the most common mutation in both familial and sporadic Parkinson’s patients. Our current study investigates the interplay between the G2019S mutation and exposure to the bacterial endotoxin, lipopolysaccharide. In the current study mice were centrally infused with vehicle or LPS in order to determine whether an inflammatory insult would produce augmented pathology in G2019S mutant mice. LPS infusion into the SNc produced a trend towards reduction in SNc dopamine neurons in both G2019S mutants and WT animals. As expected LPS infusion also induced marked sickness behaviour and weight loss but the G2019S mutant mice showed a slower recovery. Overall, the present results do not support a major impact of G2019S LRRK2 mutation in increasing vulnerability to LPS insults.


title: An Integrated Machine Learning Approach to Optimize the Estimation of Preterm Birth

abstract:
This thesis describes a new methodology used in conjunction with artificial intelligence tools to create multiple models for prediction of preterm birth in obstetrical environments. The data mining approach integrates: Decision Trees (DTs), Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) - specifically a Feed Forward Back Propagation ANN, and Case Based Reasoning System (CBRS).
This work also introduces a 5by2 cross validation method, assesses two methods of attribute selection, and considers data prevalence (15% and 8.1%) in training and testing networks. Two databases were assessed from two countries: BORN (Canada) and PRAMS (USA).
Best BORN results used selection method 2, had sensitivities of 50.53%, 53.96%, specificities of 91.61%, 95.40%, and area under curves (AUC) of 0.7721, 0.7970 for Parous and Nulliparous cases respectively. Best PRAMS results used selection method 1, had sensitivities of 68.15%, 40.35%, specificities of 64.71%, 94.57%, and area under curves (AUC) of 0.8452, 0.7064 for Parous and Nulliparous cases respectively.


title: Anti-Establishment Radical Parties in 21st Century Europe

abstract: The current crisis in Europe is one that superimposed itself over an already existing political crisis - one, which due to the cartelization of existing political parties, Peter Mair (1995) famously referred to as a problem of democratic legitimacy in European political systems between those political parties that govern but no longer represent and those that claim to represent but do not govern. As established cartel-political parties have become complacent about their increasing disconnect with societal demands, the group of parties claiming to represent without governing has intensified its anti-elitist, anti-integrationist and anti-mainstream party message. Indeed many such parties, regardless of ideology (radical right but also radical-left), have surged during the past decade, including in the European Parliament elections of 2009 and especially 2014. The common features of these parties are: a) a radical non-centrist ideological stance (be it on the left or right, authoritarian or libertarian dimensions); b) a populist anti-establishment discourse, c) a commitment to representing specific societal classes; d) an aggressive discourse and behaviour towards political enemies, e) a commitment towards ‘restoring true democracy’ and f) a tendency to offer simplistic solutions to intricate societal issues. The question this dissertation asks is - what accounts for the rise of left-libertarian as well as right-wing authoritarian tribune parties within such a short period of time during the mid-2000s and early 2010s? I investigate this question through a comparative study of six EU member-states. I argue that both supply-side as well as demand-side factors point towards new anti-establishment parties in the European political arena flourishing due to the perceived presence and even strengthening of the cartel-party system established by mainstream centrist political parties. With respect to the financial crisis in particular, anti-establishment parties are not merely capitalizing on the negative effects of the economy, but also on dissatisfaction with mainstream established parties in general and their unanimous and unwavering commitment to economic orthodoxy and austerity.


title: Representations by Quaternary Quadratic Forms With Coefficients are 1,2,5 or 10

abstract: We determine explicit formulas for the number of representations of a positive integer n by the quaternary quadratic forms a_1x_1^2+a_2x_2^2+a_3x_3^2+a_4x_4^2, where a_1,a_2,a_3,a_4 in {1,2,5,10}. We use a modular form approach.


title: Representation by Quaternary Quadratic Forms whose Coefficients are 1, 2, 7 and 14

abstract: We determine explicit formulae for the number of representations of a positive integer n by the quaternary quadratic forms a_1x_1^2+a_2x_2^2+a_3x_3^2+a_4x_4^2, where a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4 in {1,2,7,14}. We use a modular form approach.


title: Evaluation of the AASHTO Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide:  an experimental and analytical investigation of the performance of flexible roads

abstract: The M-EPDG represents a significant attempt to change the approach to engineering design of road structures. It reflects a shift from total reliance on empirical methods to a combination of mechanistic and empirical methods. Three instrumented road sections were used to capture the impact of local conditions. The measurements indicated that opening roads prematurely to traffic, immediately after construction, may result in high stresses and strains causing excessive deformations in both the asphaltic and unbound layers. Further, controlled truck tests confirmed the vulnerability of roads to premature and excessive distresses under low speed traffic and frequent stopping. The mechanistic characterization of road materials in the laboratory showed that the dynamic modulus is capable of capturing the effect of binder grade, temperature and frequency on the behaviour of asphaltic materials. Moreover, the findings confirmed that the resilient modulus accurately reflects the state of unbound materials in terms of moisture and density changes. The evaluation of the M-EPDG and its ability to model and predict the behaviour observed in the field showed that it is sensitive to binder performance grades as well as to climatic zones. However, the M-EPDG showed limited sensitivity to the state of unbound materials where permanent deformation showed negligible changes between wet, dry, and optimum conditions. The M-EPDG predicted rutting performances reflecting sufficient sensitivity compared to the field performance at the three different sites. The model predictions and actual field results were in good agreement and the deviations were within the margin of error. However, the M-EPDG falls short of modeling the thermal cracking which is a prevalent cause of permanent deterioration in asphalt pavements in cold regions.


title: Fumonisin B1 Aptamer Optimization and Progress Towards Mycotoxin Nanoaptasensors

abstract: Fumonisin B1 (FB1) and ochratoxin A (OTA) are agriculturally important mycotoxins that have implications in human and animal health. Aptamers are short single-stranded oligonucleotides that can be used as molecular recognition elements for the sensitive and selective detection of mycotoxins. Aptamers for FB1 and OTA were screened using a novel DNase I footprinting assay to characterize their structure and in- solution affinity. Two minimal binding aptamers for FB1 were identified that retain high binding affinity in solution and to a bound target. Progress was made towards fluorescence turn-on and turn-off sensors for FB1, utilizing semiconductor quantum dots and fluorescein in conjunction with metallic- and carbon-based quenchers. A fluorescence nano-aptasensor was developed as a simple paper test, with the capacity to detect OTA with a limit of detection between 10 – 100 nM. Rapid, robust aptasensors for FB1 and OTA have promising applications for in-field screening of mycotoxin residues on crops.


title: A Tale of Two Flexibilities: Preschoolers' Developing Consecutive and Concurrent Cognitive Flexibility Skills

abstract:
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to think of something in more than one way. Research examining cognitive flexibility in 3- to 5-year-olds typically focuses on consecutive cognitive flexibility—the ability to consider several dimensions of a single stimulus one after another (e.g., sorting cards depicting blue boats and red rabbits by colour and then by shape). However, relatively little research examines preschoolers’ concurrent cognitive flexibility skills—their ability to coordinate several dimensions of a single stimulus simultaneously (e.g., understanding that a blue boat can be both blue and a boat at the same time). The current work focuses on emerging concurrent cognitive flexibility skills in preschoolers. In Study 1, though a structural differentiation between consecutive and concurrent cognitive flexibility was not supported, an exploration of the data suggested that these skills are affected differently by abstraction demands—whether children had to induce the relevant dimensions on their own or were told which dimensions to consider. In this study, 121 preschoolers (Mage = 48.12 months; SD = 5.37) received 6 different cognitive flexibility tasks.
Consistent with Jacques and Zelazo’s (2005) review, children found deductive tasks—tasks in which the experimenter provides all the information to the participants—easier than inductive tasks—tasks that required children to identify the relevant dimensions themselves—in the context of consecutive cognitive flexibility. In contrast, these children found inductive concurrent cognitive flexibility tasks easier than deductive concurrent cognitive flexibility tasks, indicating that abstraction demands affect children’s performance on these two cognitive flexibility skills differently. In Study 2, this finding was partially replicated using an experimental design: under certain conditions, 5-year-olds (N = 76) found concurrent cognitive flexibility easier in its deductive (unlabeled) version, as compared with its inductive (labeled) version. However, this was not the case for 4-year-olds (N = 84), or for another task measuring concurrent cognitive flexibility. These findings can be interpreted using the Attentional Inertia Account (e.g., Diamond, 2012; Kirkham, Cruess, & Diamond, 2003), which argues that the critical skill required to succeed in cognitive flexibility tasks is the ability to disengage from a previously relevant dimension.


title: Thinking Through the Future of Care: Elder People’s Understandings of, and Feelings About, Robotic Interventions in Elder Care

abstract: In the past several years interdisciplinary academic consideration has turned toward finding possible solutions to the increasing problem of unmet elder care requirements, one solution being the introduction of new robotic care technologies. This thesis addresses the future of elder care and the possibilities for change within the field of care - change that may no longer involve only human reorientation, but also non-human robotic transformation. It also focuses on the fact that there exists an unknown future of caring, one that will certainly involve some mainstream manifestation of the non-human care robot, and collaboration between socially and scientifically focused researchers. Drawing on original research involving interviews with elder people, the perspectives of a rarely consulted population are presented and the future of non-human care is found to be marked by uncertainty and fear but also by an unexpected sense of hope in the companionship of robots.


title: Methods for Analyzing Longitudinal Binary Data with Missing Responses

abstract: In this thesis, we explore different estimation methods for longitudinal data with binary responses and drop-outs. We also study the effect of incorrectly specifying the dependence structure or the drop-out mechanism. Although highly efficient, the traditional maximum likelihood (ML) method becomes complex when the number of responses increases, requiring intensive computation. Alternative methods such as generalized estimating equations (GEE) and weighted GEE had been proposed in the literature to overcome the limitation of the ML method. However, both estimators are known to be biased under non-ignorable drop-out mechanisms. The bivariate maximum pseudo likelihood is a pseudo likelihood method that takes into account the correlation between the current and baseline responses. Originally developed for non-monotone missing data, it was modified to be adapted for monotone drop-outs. We conduct a simlation study to assess the sensitivity of each method to model misspecifications in which a non-ignorable drop-out mechanism is our primary interest.


title: Development and Evaluation of Anti-Abrasion Polymer Coatings for Circulation Coins

abstract: The motivation behind this research is to provide anti-abrasion abilities in attempt to increase the life span of coins in circulation. Polyurethane, polytetrafluoroethylene, advanced liquid glass, standard liquid glass and silicon R-2180 are selected and applied onto brass plated blank coins (loonies) and their wear resistance is investigated. Following coating application using a spin coater, polyurethane, advanced liquid glass and silicon R-2180 show satisfactory visual appearance. Pin-on-disc wear test is conducted on coated brass blanks; both advanced liquid glass and polyurethane exhibit superior results when compared to silicon R-2180. An additional abrasion test was carried out using a tumbling machine. Periodic tumbling is carried out in increments of 5 hr for 25 hr to assess the wear resistance of the three candidate materials. Over all, advanced liquid glass maintains 40% of the coating after 25 hr of tumbling compared to only 20% and 5% for polyurethane and silicon R-2180, respectively.


title: Central America and El Salvador:  The History of Telecommunication Services, Regulation, and the Digital Divide

abstract: This thesis examines how El Salvador has addressed the digital divide against its own aims and against those of other Central American countries—Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras. It does this by, first, exploring the historical development of telecommunication services in the region from the mid-1800s to 2013. Second, drawing on literature and data from each country, as well as the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the World Bank, it evaluates how government policies have addressed the divide by examining the uptake of fixed-line, mobile phone, and internet services in the region. The evidence shows that sector liberalization in the region has yielded mixed results: while mobile phone services have expanded, fixed-line and internet services remain largely under-developed. Ultimately, this thesis finds that weak policymaking in El Salvador and the rest of the Central American countries—with the exception of Costa Rica—have led to unfulfilled universal service goals.


title: Neural Reuse:  A New Perspective on the Fusiform Face Area

abstract: The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that neural reuse provides greater explanatory value than modular perspectives on cognitive architecture. A case study of the Fusiform Face Area will be carried out, where I will use a neural reuse perspective to search for a ‘working’ that supports uses beyond that of face recognition.


title: Do You Stand By or Stand Up? Bystander Characteristics in Social Bullying and Cyberbullying

abstract: The aim of the current study was to investigate how moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy were related to bystander behaviour in social and cyberbullying. Four hundred and ninety-five emerging adults completed an online survey consisting of two measures of moral disengagement, a measure of defender self-efficacy and an adapted version of the Student Bystander Behaviour Scale. Regression analyses revealed that moral disengagement for the whole sample was positively associated with pro-bully behaviour and that defender self-efficacy was positively related to defender behaviour in both the social and cyberbullying contexts. The findings revealed that in order to better explain bystander behaviours, researchers should consider multiple cognitive mechanisms involved in bullying across various contexts. This study demonstrated the necessity of investigating social bullying and cyber bullying across various developmental periods and in turn may inform intervention efforts on how to encourage individuals to defend others when confronted with various forms of bullying


title: Spectrum Requirements for Interference-Free Wireless Mesh Networks

abstract:
In classical channel assignment (CA) in Multi-Radio Multi-Channel (MRMC) Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), the number of available frequency channels is assumed to be fixed. Two links that are within the interference range of each other could be assigned the same frequency channel, causing co-channel interference that degrades the network throughput. The objective of this research is to develop a realistic CA method that finds the smallest number of frequency channels required for interference-free communication among the mesh nodes (MNs) in order to achieve the maximum network throughput while maintaining fairness among the multiple network flows in a dynamic MRMC WMN.
As a first step towards achieving this objective, a novel CA method is developed, which ensures interference-free communication among the MNs based on the protocol interference model, and determines a small number of frequency channels required to achieve the maximum network throughput while maintaining fairness among the multiple network flows. Secondly, in order to develop a CA method using a realistic interference model, a novel and computationally simple method of building the conflict graph based on signal-to-interference ratio model with shadowing is developed.
Computationally simple and effective new heuristics are developed to find channel assignments from the conflict graph for the extended coloring problem with cumulative interference constraints. The heuristics are orders of magnitude faster than the exact solution method while consistently returning near-optimum results.
As a final step, the problem of co-channel interference in a dynamic WMN environment is addressed by using beamforming. The novel Linear Array Beamforming-based Channel Assignment (LAB-CA) method reduces the number of frequency channels required (NCR) and significantly outperforms the classical omni-directional antenna pattern-based channel assignment (OAP-CA) method in terms of NCR.
The beamforming-based CA framework is extended to incorporate heterogeneous MNs (i.e. nodes having differing numbers of radio interfaces). The LAB-CA method for heterogeneous MNs outperforms OAP-CA for heterogeneous MNs in terms of NCR in both sparse and dense mesh networks. It also provides a further significant reduction in NCR when the number of antennas in the linear antenna arrays of MNs is increased.


title: Change in North American mammal community structure under Cenozoic (-36 ma- present) climate change

abstract: Patterns of biodiversity emerge as a product of numerous drivers including species sorting along modern and ancient environmental gradients, long-term climate changes, speciation and extinction events, the formation and weathering of mountain ranges, and plate tectonics. The fossil record is a natural experiment that records faunal change under myriad long-term processes. My dissertation focuses on changes in North American mammal community structure under conditions of long-term climate change during the Cenozoic. I ask three primary questions: Are patterns of biodiversity sensitive to the processes of fossilization? When did the modern latitudinal diversity gradient emerge and were changes driven by climate? How has community composition changed as rates of extinction fluctuated under climate change? How can we best search for the proximate climatic drivers (i.e. changes in spatial climate patterns) of diversity changes? I show, through the development of a novel simulated fossilization method, that measuring latitudinal richness gradients in the fossil record is problematic when rates of species loss are high. However, estimating the magnitude of the latitudinal diversity gradient is improved with the use of β diversity as a metric (so called latitudinal turnover gradients). I also show that the late Cenozoic (36 Ma – present) North American mammal diversity gradient varied but neared modern magnitudes only during the late Miocene and late Pleistocene. From ~15 Ma – 0.01 Ma, hoofed mammals show a decline in relatedness of species in North American communities, reflecting the phylogenetically dispersed extinction of dicot specialists as the global climate cooled. I make direct comparisons of a-historical and historical approaches to studying biodiversity change and suggest that understanding the contribution of macroevolution is requisite to testing hypotheses on the formation of modern communities. I also address the need for a high resolution terrestrial paleoclimate record and show that stable oxygen isotopes from pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) enamel are excellent sources of data on seasonal changes in environmental waters. My dissertation is a critical step in answering “What factors have led to the emergence of communities as we know them today?” and understanding the role of climate change in shaping modern and ancient communities.


title: Taxonomic revision of four Nearctic Conopidae (Insecta: Diptera) genera with notes on all other Nearctic genera

abstract: Species concepts for Dalmannia, Robertsonomyia, Stylogaster and Zodion (Diptera: Conopidae) of the Nearctic [NE] region are reviewed or revised. Provided are descriptions of new species, with distributional, natural history, host data where available, preliminary phylogenetic analyses with pairwise distances, neighbour-joining and parsimony trees, and illustrated keys to species. Concepts for Zodion have been refined due to many new species: Z. alexanderi, Z. dawkinsi, Z. dillahuntyi, Z. harrisi, Z. hauseri, Z. hirsialiae, Z. hitchensi, Z. lisafyrea, Z. meigeni, Z. oharai. A new species of Stylogaster is also presented: S. beresfordi. The NE region is home to roughly 87 recognized species, listed in the Appendix. Synonyms of Z. fulvifrons Say, (Zodion bistria Walker, Zodion lativentre Graenicher, Zodion sayi Banks, Zodion obscurum Banks) have been synonymized under Zodion intermedium, Banks upon examination of dorsum and by comparing genitalia. An overview of other Nearctic genera (Myopa, Physocephela, Physoconops and Thecophora) is given.


title: Changes in Hippocampal Plasticity and HPA Axis Function Following Postnatal Exposure to Di(2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate in Rats

abstract: Phthalates are known to affect the development of regions within the hippocampus, however the mechanisms of these toxic effects are not well known. Stress is also known to have detrimental effects on the hippocampus. This study aimed to determine whether phthalates affect hippocampal development, and whether there is an associated activation of HPA axis. DEHP was injected in juvenile rats daily from PND 16 – PND 22. Brain tissue samples were analyzed by immunohistochemistry to quantify developing neurons. The Golgi – Cox Impregnation method was used for detailed morphological analyses. Blood samples were analyzed for corticosterone levels. The CA3 of males showed a decrease in the size of the area of basal dendrites at the middle and highest dose of DEHP treatment, while the DG of females showed a decrease in number of spines at the highest dose, and a decrease in the dendrite length at only the lowest dose.


title: Modeling of Residual Stress Fields and Their Effects on Fatigue Crack Growth

abstract: Fatigue Crack Growth (FCG) is a deleterious physical phenomenon in engineering materials, which is intensified by the presence of tensile Residual Stress Fields (RSF), while compressive RSF has been shown to delay the FCG phenomenon. However, several challenges make it difficult to fully incorporate the beneficial effects of compressive RSF into the design process in aerospace and other engineering industries. As such, this study is designed to understand and quantify the effects of RSF on the FCG phenomenon in thick aluminum alloy specimens. Experimental studies were conducted on specimens made of 7050-T7451 aluminum alloy in order to obtain the material properties required for a FCG model. In addition, FCG tests on Single-Edge Notched Tension (SENT) specimens with well-defined RSF were conducted for the verification of the FCG model. Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software (ABAQUS™) was used to simulate the FCG in RSF, and to analyze the redistribution of RSF due to FCG. ABAQUS was used first to introduce a RSF through a well-controlled four-point bending simulation, which was set as an initial condition to the FCG simulation. Several FCG test simulations were conducted to evaluate the crack closure and plastic wake effects on FCG. As part of these simulations, three test cases were considered: a large stress ratio (R = 0.7), a low stress ratio (R = 0.05) and a negative stress ratio (R = -1). For test case 1 (R = 0.7), the calculation of the FCG rate shows no indication of the crack growth retardation due to the presence of the compressive RSF. However, the FCG rate was retarded in the test cases with a low and a negative stress ratios (R = 0.05 and -1). The plastic deformation induced at the crack tip due to FCG decreased under a positive effect of the compressive RSF. In addition, the crack closure and plastic wake effects had a greater influence in the test case with a low stress ratio (R = 0.05), while their possible effects were not significant at R = 0.7 and -1, as demonstrated by the experimentally verified numerical model presented in this manuscript.


title: Functional interactions between TALE and lateral organ boundary transcription factors in regulation of flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana

abstract:
The transition from vegetative growth to flowering is an important change in the life cycle of a plant. Tight control over this switch ensures reproductive success. In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis), endogenous and environmental signals acting on the shoot apical meristem cause acquisition of inflorescence meristem fate. This results in new patterns of aerial development, seen as the transition from making leaves to the production of flowers. This process depends on two THREE-AMINO-ACID-LOOP-EXTENSION homeodomain transcription factors called PENNYWISE and POUND-FOOLISH. These factors maintain meristem activity essential for flowering by repressing a set of lateral organ boundary genes comprising BLADE-ON-PETIOLE1/2 and its downstream effectors: ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA HOMEOBOX GENE1 and KNOTTED1-LIKE FROM ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA6. Misexpression of this module in pny pnf apices blocks meristem competence to flower but the mechanism is unclear.
My thesis sheds light on regulatory interactions that define this module and block meristem competence to flower.


title: Truth and Laughter on the Seventeenth-Century Stage: Women's Voices in Early Venetian Opera

abstract: This thesis examines the musical and dramatic representation of female characters in two early Venetian operas: Cavalli's Ormindo (1644) and Cesti's Orontea (1656). Venetian opera is viewed through the lens of three theories of Bakhtin: 1) “polyphonic” or multiple voices; 2) “becoming” as openness to growth and change; and 3) serio-comic genres opposing authority through parody and satire. I argue that a Bakhtinian perspective provides a nuanced understanding of Venetian female characters' "voices" as conveyed in both libretti and music, in their private thoughts and public words. Both drama and music play critical roles in portraying female characters torn by inner conflicts in these operas. I argue that the strong yet flawed women who were the centrepieces of Venetian opera in its first two decades were characters with whom Venetian audience members could identify and played a role in keeping new possibilities for women alive in the social imaginary.


title: Art Working: An Institutional Ethnography of the Art World

abstract:
This institutional ethnography of the Canadian art world opens with visual artist Beth McCubbin saying, “It’s a serious issue in the visual art world how language—or writing—has now been squished on to it.” Her experience of disjuncture serves both as a point of entry for the investigation and a critical standpoint from which to explicate the institutional art regime. Responding to her experience, this study examines the conjunction between language and visual art in the work of artists, in the work of curators and in the wider art world. This inquiry brings into view an increasingly textually and institutionally coordinated art world.
Keywords: Canadian art, institutional ethnography, knowledge, work


title: Finite Length Analysis of Verifcation-Based Message Passing Algorithms in Compressed Sensing

abstract: Compressed sensing (CS) is a newly developed area in signal processing which generally aims at compressing sparse signals. The most challenging part of a CS problem can be the recovery process in which a signal will be reconstructed from its measurements. In this thesis, we address the finite length analysis of verification-based message-passing algorithms (VB MPAs), analytically. In contrary to asymptotic regime analysis, the finite length analysis is fairly an untouched problem. We begin the analysis by characterizing the problematic combinatorial structures, defined over the measurement graph of the CS system in which VB algorithms are trapped. Then, based on this characterization, we derive exact expressions for the average probability of error of a given ensemble of graphs, and also for a given individual graph. The analysis for the individual graph is also shown to be useful for the introduction and estimation of error floors in VB MPAs in CS.


title: Erotic Economics: Metaphysical Foundations in Three Platonic Dialogues

abstract: Reading the arguments of the Meno, the Republic, and the Symposium within their mytho-historical context, this thesis proposes that there is an essentially economic dimension to Plato’s moral and political thought. By articulating a fuller and more nuanced account of the role of property in achieving Platonic virtue, conceived of here as a kind of activity that is inherently practical in nature, this thesis suggests alternative resolutions to a number of philosophical problems, including the apparent oppositions between nature and convention, the body and the soul, the individual and the city, and the material and immaterial realms.