identifier: Fawcett, Dan  (2020) Shedding the Stigma: How Brand Extensions Can Work to De-Stigmatize Corporate Brands.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
There exists an abundance of marketing literature centred on how everyday brands can successfully execute brand extensions into new or similar categories to their parent brand. The majority of this research body focuses directly on the parent brand’s influence on the extension, such as how an extension benefits from being associated with a renowned brand, the emotional attachment from loyal consumers, and the immediate equity generated by consumer familiarity with the parent brand’s experience overall. A starting assumption of such work is the success of the parent brand. While this type of brand extension has received important attention, there is considerably less understanding of brand extensions from brands that are negatively evaluated, that launch extensions outside of their core category. In such cases, the brand extension may contradict or rival that of the parent’s core business. In effect, this is exactly the case when brands operating in stigmatized industries such as gambling, alcohol, or cigarettes attempt extensions into comparatively-more upstanding categories. Examples of such circumstances include that of oil companies pursuing greener or more sustainable products, or cigarette manufacturers offering reduced-harm or smoking cessation solutions under different brand extensions.
In response to environmental sustainability efforts, pro-health movements, and other social issues, stigmatized brands operating in the gambling, oil, or tobacco industries must evolve to stay relevant with increasingly critical consumers. Their actions are likely to be met with consumer scepticism, with the potential of the core stigma of their past and current operations transferring to comparatively virtuous commercial attempts, including that of a brand extension. Scant marketing literature exists to understand how consumers may evaluate virtuous or upstanding extensions by stigmatized brands. That is, an extension intended to rival or oppose the stigmatized category in which its parent-brand operates, and where its notoriety and stigma has principally been formed.
This research explores the complexities of comparatively virtuous brand extensions (CVBEs) by stigmatized parent-brands and examining how extant research on successful brand extensions applies in this scenario. Specifically, I examine the dynamics of commonly-accepted brand extension success drivers in the context of a stigmatized brand attempting comparatively virtuous extension. The drivers themselves range from material measures such as marketing support and retailer acceptance, to more perceptual measures that connect the parent brand to the extension such as degree of ‘fit’, authenticity perceptions, and parent brand conviction and experience. Extant literature suggests that successful brand extensions are heavily influenced by a downward influence of the successful and positively perceived parent brand on the extension. In the case of this study, given the stigma associated with the parent brand, one must assume that no positive association would be transferred, jeopardizing the success and consumer perception of any extension attempt. This relationship also builds on the concept of brand stigma and the role it plays on extensions by stigmatized brands.
By way of qualitative methods leveraging archival data, the findings show that the drivers of brand extension success based on the renown of the parent brand differ in the way they are represented for stigmatized brands and CVBEs. Most importantly, the relationship differs in the direction of the influence, where a CVBE viability depends on the influence it has on the parent brand. That is, how the extension’s positioning and overall marketing message is leveraged by the parent brand. This introduces a new relationship to our current understanding of brand extensions: an extension’s upward effect on the parent, with the study’s findings indicating such a brand extension can work as a vehicle to de-stigmatize the parent brand. This concept contrasts the extant literature which has mainly posited the downward influence of the parent brand on the extension.


identifier: Demers, Ebony Elizabeth  (2020) Effects of Short Term Exposure to Elevated Predation Risk on the Learning of a Novel Foraging Task in Female Trinidadian Guppies (Poecilia reticulata).  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: Predation pressure is an important selection pressure that shapes prey morphology, life history and behaviours. Long-term exposure to high predation risk is known to shape learning, but the effects of short-term exposure to high predation risk on learning are less understood. Short-term exposure to elevated predation risk (using conspecific alarm cues) induces neophobia, which can have direct survival benefits for prey. Neophobia is also naturally occurring in certain wild populations, and is known to shape foraging related learning. However, the effects of risk induced neophobia on foraging related learning are unknown. The aim of this thesis was to examine the effects of short-term exposure to elevated predation risk on the learning of a novel foraging task. I designed an experiment where wild caught Trinidadian guppies were exposed to different background levels of predation risk. They were subsequently trained to associate a food reward with a coloured object over 4 days, during which they received acute risk reinforcement stimuli. Results show that background risk had no effect on the learning of the novel foraging task. Both high and low predation risk treatments learned the foraging task equally well. However, while acute risk did constrain learning, it did not inhibit it. No evidence was found that the learned association could be generalized across contexts. However, a significant side bias in the data, where the right side of the tank was preferred over the left, prevented any firm conclusions. Future studies might disentangle the effects of short-term background risk and acute risk on the learning of a novel foraging task.


identifier: Gomez Rebollo, Israel  (2020) Thin-Suspended 2D Heterostructures: Deterministic Transfer and Tunable Graphene Light Absorption.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
We report a deterministic 2D material (2DM) transfer method to assemble any-stacking-order heterostructures incorporating suspended ultra-thin 2D materials, such as single (SLG) and bilayer graphene (BLG). This high-yield and facile transfer method will enable fabrication of 2DM heterostructures suited for nano-opto-electromechanical (NOEMS) studies, such as optical transducers where a small gate voltage moves a suspended 2DM to vastly enhance or suppress its exclusive light absorption. Our transfer procedure is based on a 3 dimensional (3D) nitrocellulose micro-stamp which can dry pick-up single and naked 2DMs (graphene, MoS2, and hBN) directly from a SiO2 substrate, and deterministically transfer them on substrates or suspend
them over trenches. Optical and Raman spectroscopy show that no significant defects and doping is introduced upon transfer, even in suspended SLG and BLG. The transferred area of ultra-thin 2D crystals ranges up to 600 μm2. The suspension procedure does not require critical point drying, and transfers ultra-thin 2DM areas
up to 15 μm2 with suspension heights down to 550 nm. Using this fabrication method, we assembled optical cavities able to accurately tune the Raman scattering intensity and exclusive light absorption on both on substrate and suspended BLG by factors of
19 and 4 respectively. This deterministic fabrication of heterostructures incorporating suspended 2DMs is likely to accelerate research in twistronics, straintronics and NOEMS.


identifier: Gorman, Nicole  (2020) Cultural bridging: an extension of cultural branding in the lingerie market by Savage X Fenty.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Cultural branding theory assumes that iconic brands are made by leapfrogging a cultural status quo and capitalizing on an opposing cultural discourse.. Brands position themselves by taking a stance against a dominant cultural narrative. This creates two types of cultural positioning on each side of an ideological divide. This present thesis examines how a brand like Savage X Fenty practices cultural branding by reconciling the two sides (rather than opposing them) and functionally bridging the ideological gap. The findings emerge from qualitative data analysis based on 625 pages of newspaper articles from 2005-2019, a netnography of lingerie brands over the course of a year, and the archives of Savage X Fenty’s social media presence. In doing so, two ideo-typical lingerie brands were conceptualized: the Bombshell and Body Positive brands. I contribute to the extent literature by showing how cultural branding can operate by bridging opposing cultural narratives, rather than taking a stance against a dominant narrative. I show how Savage X Fenty was able to reconcile the gap between these brands by blending their goal, offering products that covered and blended elements of the two brands and working with a wide variety of ambassadors. The brand’s founder, pop star Rihanna, served as a catalyst for the brand’s success. This brings in a human element to the existing literature on cultural branding in marketing. These results suggest there is a capability to capitalize on bridging cultural divides as well as creating iconic brands out of person-brands.


identifier: Mailhot Prévost, Samantha  (2020) Running out of time: Public opinions on degrowth in Montréal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: As every nation in the world continues its pursuit for everlasting economic growth, global temperatures are increasing at an alarming rate. For decades, scholars have warned about human impacts on the environment, cautioning us on our exhaustive use of resources and the implications of our seemingly innate need to grow economically. It has been asserted that economic growth is not sustainable, and its contraction is unavoidable due to natural limits, therefore any research on managing and prospering without growth is of great value. Degrowth has been put forth as an alternative paradigm, and as the movement is required to be democratic and collective, public opinions are crucial for its mobilization. Accordingly, public opinions on the matter need to be evaluated in order to assess the potential for implementing degrowth policies. Public opinion studies on degrowth are scarce, especially in North America. This study aims to contribute to the literature by assessing public opinions on degrowth in Montréal, by collecting data on support for 6 degrowth policy proposals (limiting trade distances and volume, creating a moratorium on new infrastructure, taxing resource use, progressive taxation, implementing a basic income and reducing work hours), and support for a societal degrowth transition. I find that the majority of respondents support 4 out of 6 policy proposals, and the majority also support a degrowth transition. This study shows Montréal to be a promising city for experimenting with degrowth politics. Establishing concrete strategies for its implementation that address public concerns could prove degrowth to be a promising avenue for achieving social-environmental sustainability.


identifier: Tannous, Karen  (2020) Exploring Piano Improvisation Experiences as a Music Therapist Self-Care Tool: A Heuristic Self-Inquiry.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This study investigated the student-researcher’s experiences of engaging in referential and non-referential piano improvisations as a tool for self-care. Moustakas’ heuristic inquiry (1990) provided a frame for the research process via the six heuristic stages. The data collected consisted of six piano improvisation recordings, of which three were referential and three non-referential, and their corresponding self-reflection journal entries. To gain more insight, reflections were added after listening back to each recorded improvisation. For data analysis, open, axial, and selective coding (Neuman, 2006) procedures were used to identify themes that emerged from the journal entries. Findings were organized into three main categories: (a) setting the tone for beginning; (b) trusting the researcher’s inner discourse; and (c) self-care and self-awareness. The creative synthesis consisted of a referential piano improvisation which revolved around the researcher’s experience of the whole process of this heuristic study. Implications for personal self-care and personal music therapy practice, as well as for practice of other music therapists, education, and research are discussed.


identifier: Deleau, Victor ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1968-7653 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1968-7653>  (2020) Visual Co-occurence Learning using Denoising Autoencoders.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Modern recommendation systems are leveraging the recent advances in deep neural networks to provide better recommendations. In addition to making accurate recommendations to users, we are interested in the recommendation of items that are complementary to a set of other items. More specifically, given a user query containing items from different categories, we seek to recommend one or more items from our inventory based on latent representations of their visual appearance. For this purpose, a denoising autoencoder (DAE) is used. The capacity of DAEs to remove the noise from corrupted inputs by predicting their corresponding uncorrupted counterparts is investigated. Used with the right corruption process, we show that they can be used as regular prediction models. Furthermore, we measure experimentally two of their specificities. The first is their capacity to predict any potentially missing variable from their inputs. The second is their ability to predict multiple missing variables at the same time given a limited amount of information at their disposal. Finally, we experiment with the use of DAEs to recommend fashion items that are jointly fashionable with a user query. Latent representations of items contained in the user query are being fed into a DAE to predict the latent representation of the ideal item to recommend. This ideal item is then matched to a real item from our inventory that we end up recommending to the user.


identifier: Chowdhury, Jamil  (2020) Analysis And Removal of Artifacts in Electroencephalographic Recordings using Microstate Analysis and Randomization Statistics.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a popular method to detect brain-neuron activities because
of its high temporal resolution. However, very often, various types of biological and non-biological signals contaminate EEG recordings. These non-neural signals create EEG-artifacts, which cause unintentional control in the brain-computer interface related applications and difficulty in the analysis and interpretation of EEG-data. While these artifacts corrupt and mask the underlying neural activity in general, the contaminated EEG data due to the contraction and expansion of the scalp-muscles are called electromyogram (EMG) artifacts. In particular, the frontalis and temporalis scalp-muscles seriously affect the EEG-signals ranging from 0-200 Hz frequency band. This thesis studies the most common EMG artifacts originating from these two brain regions. Its aim is to analyze and remove the EMG artifacts using microstate analysis and randomization statistics.

The thesis first presents a brief literature review of the EEG-artifacts, followed by the preprocessing and analysis of the EEG recordings using EEG signal-power analysis. The purpose of this analysis is to detect the EMG contaminated EEG data-segments or epochs due to frontalis and temporalis scalp muscles (EMG-artifacts). The preliminary step in this analysis includes the transformation of the EEG epochs into the frequency domain through discrete-Fourier transform. Then the signal-powers of the EEG epochs are calculated and compared to some threshold values. These threshold values are selected based on the mean signal-power amplitudes of the EEG-epochs of the highly contaminated EEG data channels representing the frontalis and temporalis brain regions.

Electric potentials from the frontalis and temporalis region of the brain project a set of spatial patterns on the scalp surface. These spatial patterns can be clustered into a set of representative maps called microstates. Using microstate analysis, the EMG-contaminated and non-contaminated EEG epochs, obtained from signal-power analysis are clustered into an optimal number of microstates. This number best explains the data variance of both groups of EEG epochs. The difference between these microstate features can be used to distinguish artifactual and pure EEG epochs. To find the significant-differences, we have calculated the feature-differences of these microstates after a random group-wise shuffling of the EEG epochs many times to generate a distribution of the feature-differences. The research hypothesis of this distribution is that the differences in features have occurred by chance. To reject this hypothesis, we compare the probability of this distribution to the difference in features obtained before group-wise random shuffling of the EEG epochs. This technique is called multivariate randomization statistics. It has a higher statistical power compared to classical statistics to find a statistically significant difference.

In this thesis, we analyze the EEG recordings of four subjects to detect the EMG artifacts by EEG signal-power analysis. We propose a method to remove EMG artifact from EEG recordings in two steps. In the first step, we cluster the EMG contaminated and non-contaminated EEG epochs obtained from signal-power analysis into ten optimal microstates and calculate three temporal features. In the second step, through randomization statistical analysis, we differentiate between the artifactual and pure EEG epochs and reconstruct the EMG-artifact free EEG data. Finally, we validate the proposed method by comparing it with independent component analysis (ICA), a signal processing technique for separating the additive sub-components of a multivariate signal. We have found that our proposed method gives similar results to that of ICA. Our research findings suggest that a combination of microstate analysis with randomization statistics be an effective-method in the removal of EMG-artifacts.


identifier: Mohammadian Bajgiran, Morvarid  (2020) Effects of Phase Composition and Microstructure on the Dielectric Strength of Thermally Sprayed Alumina Layer in Coating-Based Resistive Heating Systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

format: text text

abstract:
Heated surfaces are required in many applications ranging from home scientific equipment to home appliances. Conventional heating solutions mainly include utilization of coiled wire elements that are typically installed in the vicinity of the surfaces that require heating. However, based on the physical location and geometry of these conventional heating elements, they have limited performance and cannot achieve their maximum efficiency. Utilizing thermal spraying techniques is a possible approach that can circumvent some of the shortcomings of previous heating systems. Electrical heating elements can be directly deposited on surfaces as a possible way to overcome geometric limitations and minimize air gaps and thermal contact resistance between the heating system and the surface to be heated.

This thesis investigated the microstructure of various heating systems fabricated by using several thermal spraying techniques, namely, suspension plasma spraying (SPS), flame spraying (FS), high velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF), and air plasma spraying (APS). SPS and FS techniques were utilized to deposit alumina as an intermediary dielectric layer in metal-alumina composite heating element coatings. HVOF and APS processes were used for the fabrication of a nickel-20chromium (Ni-20Cr) metal heating element layer. The resultant microstructure and phase composition of the alumina layers were evaluated by using scanning electron microscope images (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Dielectric breakdown voltage tests were conducted on selected heating systems and the performance of the alumina layer individually and within the heating system was examined.

The advantages and disadvantages of using each of the thermal spraying processes and the impact of various spraying parameters on the microstructure of the developed systems were studied. In the FS-sprayed alumina, large pores were detected that were randomly distributed in the coatings which led to the penetration of the top heating element layer. Partial melting of the alumina powder particles was observed in the FS alumina samples that led to formation of two different alumina phases in each particle. Dense, cauliflower-like, and porous structures were seen in SPS-sprayed alumina coatings that consequently, resulted in various proportions of the alumina phases in each coating.

It was found that microstructural and phase content characteristics are both influential components in determining the dielectric properties of the sprayed alumina coatings. Dielectric strength of single layered samples (only alumina) was much higher compared to multi-layered samples. The results suggest that the types of alumina phases present in the coatings and microstructural features such as air gaps and interconnected cracks can negatively affect the final electrical properties of the alumina layer in the heating system.


identifier: Clement-Coulson, Samuel  (2020) Cardiac Function, Pupillometry, Subjective Workload and Performance of Commercial Pilots During Jet Airplane Handling Manoeuvres.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Projected demand for commercial pilots is expected to exceed current training programs. As such, next-generation training programs are focused on developing competencies through practice sessions targeting specific manoeuvres. These sessions are most effective when conducted near a trainee’s maximum workload. Thus, measuring and understanding the relationship between workload and performance in the cockpit is of prime importance. Currently, workload measurement in the cockpit relies on subjective measures. More recently, heart rate, heart rate variability and pupillometry have shown promise as objective, continuous indicators of workload. We investigated relationships between these psychophysiological measures, NASA-TLX subjective workload ratings and aircraft handling performance in commercial pilots flying a jet airplane simulator. We found that (1) heart rate and heart rate variability patterns were stable between participants, showing clear differences between manoeuvre types, but not manoeuvre difficulty, (2) pupil diameter is not an effective measure of workload in the simulator cockpit, likely due to the differences in brightness, and (3) psychophysiological measures of workload can supplement subjective workload reports to better understand performance.


identifier: Aeon, Brad  (2020) Everything you always wanted to know about time management (but didn’t have time to ask).  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
I’ve structured my dissertation around these three questions. What do we know about time management? Does it actually work? What, exactly, is time management? These are fundamental questions; addressing them is necessary pave the way toward a more thorough, evidence-based and, ultimately, socially useful conception of time management.

The first article asks the question: What do we know about time management? To address this question, my coauthor and I reviewed the literature. We found that scholars usually assess time management’s effectiveness by its impact on performance (in school and at work) and wellbeing. However, findings were mixed—we couldn’t really tell whether time management boosts performance and enhances wellbeing. We also noticed that the time management literature was surprisingly narrow: there is a plethora of useful insights in sociology, psychology, and behavioral economics that the time management literature had almost completely overlooked. To address this issue, we integrated these insights spanning various disciplines to show how internal (e.g., individual differences) and external factors (e.g., national culture) can affect the way we manage time. Our main point is that unless researchers control for these factors, studies will keep yielding confusing results. The first article of this dissertation thus not only reviews the state of the literature but also offers novel perspectives to guide future research.

The second article asks the question: Does time management actually work? To find out, we conducted a meta-analysis on the topic. In line with the first article, we found that most studies assess time management’s effectiveness by its influence on performance and wellbeing. The meta-analysis is, of course, more conclusive than the first article for three reasons. First, the meta-analysis is more comprehensive, covering more than 50,000 people over many decades. Second, the meta-analysis allows for moderation testing: we can control for factors that affect time management outcomes, such as national culture. Third, the meta-analysis, unlike our qualitative review, is quantitative: we can determine not just whether time management works, but also, and importantly, to what extent. By and large, time management works. It has a moderate impact on performance (both in professional and academic settings) and an even stronger impact on wellbeing (especially life satisfaction). The findings of this meta-analysis also challenge our intuitive ideas of what time management is and what it does. We elaborate on this last point in the third article.

The third article asks the question: What is time management? One may point out that this question should have been addressed at the very beginning of the dissertation. That is a valid point. However, figuring out first what we know about time management (and whether it works) has led me to an interesting conclusion: the literature has a very narrow, ahistorical, Anglo understanding of time management. Only in drawing from sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, economics, and gender studies, at the very least, can we get a fuller picture of time management. Thus, defining time management only at the end of this dissertation makes sense: I needed to first review the literature, figure out what was missing, and take the time to draw from other disciplines to acquire a broader understanding. Only after doing all this was I able to develop a definition of time management that, I think, applies not only in modern North American settings, but also in a wide variety of cultures and historical periods. The third article, of course, goes way beyond just defining time management. This theory paper uses cultural evolution principles to describe how time management, as an idea, evolves in different settings. Just like genes, time management can survive or die out depending on the surrounding environment. The main advantage of this theory is that it goes beyond the one-size-fits-all approach to time management that many scholars have used until now. There is no one best way to manage time. Rather, people use time management strategies that more or less fit their environment—maladaptive strategies perish; adaptive ones prevail. Overall, the appeal of this paper is not so much that it addresses the question of time management is as the question of what time management is for.


title:
Thin-Suspended 2D Heterostructures:
Deterministic Transfer and Tunable
Graphene Light Absorption

abstract:
We report a deterministic 2D material (2DM) transfer method to assemble any-stacking-order heterostructures incorporating suspended ultra-thin 2D materials, such as single (SLG) and bilayer graphene (BLG). This high-yield and facile transfer method will enable fabrication of 2DM heterostructures suited for nano-opto-electromechanical (NOEMS) studies, such as optical transducers where a small gate voltage moves a suspended 2DM to vastly enhance or suppress its exclusive light absorption. Our transfer procedure is based on a 3 dimensional (3D) nitrocellulose micro-stamp which can dry pick-up single and naked 2DMs (graphene, MoS2, and hBN) directly from a SiO2 substrate, and deterministically transfer them on substrates or suspend them over trenches. Optical and Raman spectroscopy show that no significant defects and doping is introduced upon transfer, even in suspended SLG and BLG. The transferred area of ultra-thin 2D crystals ranges up to 600 μm2. The suspension procedure does not require critical point drying, and transfers ultra-thin 2DM areas up to 15 μm2 with suspension heights down to 550 nm. Using this fabrication method,
we assembled optical cavities able to accurately tune the Raman scattering intensity and exclusive light absorption on both on substrate and suspended BLG by factors of 19 and 4 respectively. This deterministic fabrication of heterostructures incorporating
suspended 2DMs is likely to accelerate research in twistronics, straintronics and NOEMS.


identifier: Lavigne, Max  (2020) Towards a 3D printed patient clone: Application to the effect of aortic regurgitation on the flow in the left ventricle.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world.  Amongst the many cardiovascular diseases, heart valve failure is a common reoccurrence.  Patient safety has risen to being a top priority focus for every field of medicine therefore heart simulators are implemented and expected to contribute immensely to the medical training of physicians, medical device testing and the study of cardiovascular fluid dynamics.  Common methods to studying cardiovascular fluid dynamics have been the use of Doppler echocardiography or 2D plane analysis using particle image velocimetry.  The objective of this thesis is to design an innovated 3D printed heart simulator which is completely mobile and M.R.I. (magnetic resonance imaging)-compatible which can obtain results that are not possible with present methods.  The 3D printed heart simulator created for this dissertation was named the MaxTron system.  Among the many heart diseases that could be modeled with the system, aortic regurgitation was chosen to demonstrate one of its many capabilities.  Simulation was controlled through guided wires entering the 3D printed representation of the left side of a male patient’s heart.  Each leaflet of the aortic heart valve could be independently controlled to represent different severities of the disease.  Results demonstrate the accuracy of 4D flow readings and the versatility of the MaxTron system.  Vortex formation and particle pathlines formed by aortic regurgitation and mitral inflow interaction can be observed from any angle or plane during both diastolic and systolic phases.  Lifelike heart valves perform better for M.R.I. experiments when compared to both mechanical and bio-prosthetic heart valves that contain metal components which are less M.R.I.-compatible.


identifier: Osman, Tousif ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3878-8385 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3878-8385>  (2020) AppVeto: Securing Android Applications Thtough Resource Access Veto.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Modern mobile devices and mobile operating systems are equipped with high-resolution motion and environmental sensors, camera, microphone, and other resources to support better usability and the latest features—e.g. augmented reality, personalized user experience, activity tracking etc. Apps on the modern mobile platforms can access these resources with, or without, an explicit user permission. Running multiple concurrent apps is also commonly supported. Although the Android OS generally maintains strict separation between apps, an app can still get access to another app’s private information, such as the user’s input or apps output, through numerous side-channels. This is mostly enabled by having access to permissioned or permission-less (sometimes even unrelated) resources. For example, keystrokes and swipe gestures from a victim app can be inferred indirectly from the accelerometer or gyroscope output, allowing a zero-permission app to learn sensitive inputs such as passwords from the victim’s app. Current mobile OSes has started allowing an app to defend itself in such situations only in some exceptional cases—e.g., screenshot opt-out feature of Android allows an app to self-defense itself from malicious apps trying to capture its information viewed on the screen.

In this work, we propose a general mechanism for apps to self-defend themselves from any unwanted implicit or explicit interference from other concurrently running apps. Our AppVeto solution enables an app developer to easily configure an app’s requirements for a safe environment; a foreground app can request the OS to disallow access—i.e., to enable veto powers—to selected side-channel-prone resources to all other running apps for a constraint duration (also throttled for a short duration for preventing DoS), e.g., no access to the accelerometer during password input. In a sense, we enable a finer-grained access control policy than the current runtime permission model. We implement AppVeto on Android using the Xposed framework and PLT hooking techniques, without changing Android APIs. Furthermore, we show that AppVeto imposes negligible overhead, while being effective against several well-known side-channel attacks—implemented via both Android Java and/or Native APIs.

We have prototyped AppVeto using runtime hooking techniques which allows AppVeto to be used and tested out of the box on any Android OS with Xposed framework installed on it. We also orchestrated our prototype to veto resource access from Android native framework which is not achievable with conventional Android’s native binary hooking techniques. We finally evaluated AppVeto against production apps and test apps. Our performance evaluation also shows AppVeto’s overhead is practical and below tolerable margin and our solution and design can be adopted in present mobile platforms.


identifier: Jafari, Mina  (2020) Measuring the Effectiveness of Microsoft Authenticode: A Systematic Analysis of Signed Freeware.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Recent studies have shown that Authenticode, the Windows code signing standard for portable executable files, can be abused by potentially unwanted programs (PUP) and malware to evade detection and bypass Windows protections. These studies discuss improper signature checks by frameworks (e.g., anti-virus programs), key mismanagement, improper verification by certificate authorities (CAs) and underground certificate trade as weaknesses that can be abused in Windows code signing public key infrastructure (PKI). We explore the Authenticode signatures of supposedly benign applications in the wild to gain a clearer understanding of this mechanism so that we can identify potential issues that can undermine trust in Authenticode. For studying the blackbox of the Authenticode, we tackle the main challenge of doing a measurement study on Authenticode, lack of a comprehensive corpus of Windows code signing certificates. As placing trust in the freeware that is downloaded from web is one significant use case of code signing, we target eight popular download portals as source of our dataset and collect 106K Windows applications. We present an analysis framework for studying code signing certificates and extract 27K certificates from signed executable applications. This framework provides a crawler for automated download of applications from download portals. Furthermore, as part of our analysis framework, we develop a linter that is specifically designed for Authenticode certificates. Both of our tools are in the process of release for public use of researchers. Our results identify issues in the code signing certificates that the Authenticode validation fails in preventing them. Usage of inadequately secure hash and public key algorithms such as MD5, SHA1 and 1024-bit RSA, missing or invalid Key Usage and Extended Key Usage, missing revocation information, non-critical Basic Constraints for CA certificates are examples of the issues that potentially undermine both integrity and authenticity assurance that Authenticode provides.


identifier: Alowa, Abdunasser ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9473-9671 <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9473-9671>  (2020) Scalable ReliableControllerPlacementinSoftwareDefinedNetworking.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new networking paradigm that facilitates a centralized system of computer networks by decoupling the control and data plane from each other, where a controller maintains the management of a global view of the network. SDN architectures can provide programmatic interfaces in communication networks that significantly simplify network management. Hence, the controllability and manageability of a network can be improved. On the one hand, the placement of controllers can significantly impact network performance in terms of controller responsiveness. On the other hand, SDN offers the ability to have controllers distributed over the network to solve the single point of failure problem at the control plane, increasing scalability and flexibility. However, there are some inevitable problems for such networks, especially for controller-related problems. For instance, scalability, reliability, and controller availability are some of the hottest aspects of SDN. More precisely, failure of the controllers themselves may lead to the impact of these aspects and the collapse of the network performance.
Despite the issues mentioned above, the controller placement challenges must be appropriately addressed to take advantage of the SDN. The connections between the controller (control plane) and the switches (data plane) in SDN are established by either an in-band or an out-of-band control mechanism. New challenges still arise regardin  the connection availability and provide more protection for the connection between the data and control planes. A disconnection between the two planes could result in performance degradation. Although the SDN offers the advantage of an environment of multiple distributed controllers, yet the intercommunication factor between these controllers is still a key challenge. This thesis investigates the issues mentioned above and organizes them into four stages.
First, dealing with the controller placement problem as the most crucial concern in SDN, via exploiting the independent dominating set approach to ensure a distribution of controllers with lowest response times. We propose a new node degree-based algorithm named High Degree with Independent Dominating Set (HDIDS) for the controller placement problem in the SDN networks. HDIDS is composed of two phases to deal with controller placement: (1) determining candidate controller instances by selecting those nodes with the highest degree; and (2) partitioning the network into
multiple domains, one controller per domain.
To further improve network performance, reliability, and survivability, one solution is to deploy backup controllers to satisfy the quality of service requirements. In this regard, as a second step, we enhance the controller placement approach by designing a reliable and survivable controller placement strategy. This strategy relies on the efficient deployment of backup controllers by constructing virtual backup domains set(s) to ensure the durability and resilience of network control management. The approach design is called a Survivable Backup Controller Placement approach.
Furthermore, to achieve reliable control traffic between data and control planes in an in-band control network, as a third stage, we design and implement an In-band Control Protection Module that finds a set of ideal paths for the control channel under the failure conditions. The proposed protection mechanism protects as much control traffic as possible.
Finally, we present a practical approach for the controller placement problem in software defined networks aiming to minimize the inter-controller communication delay time and the delay time between controller and switches. The principal concept employed in this approach is the Connected Dominating Set. Further, we present an algorithm using the Minimum Connected Dominating Set, which minimizes the delay time between the distributed SDN controllers.


identifier: Fernandez Rosales, Vanessa Caryn  (2020) Reinstatement Following Overexpectation Training in Male and Female Rats.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Extinction and overexpectation are two paradigms by which a previously established association between a CS and US can be altered. Both mechanisms occur by a reward expectation that is higher than the delivered reward (or omission of reward) which consequentially decreases the expectation of an outcome, manifesting in a corresponding decrease in behavioural response. Both effects have been documented in both male and female rats. After undergoing an overexpectation or extinction design, it is possible to obtain a recovery in conditioned responding either by the passage of time (spontaneous recovery) or by a change in context upon test (renewal). Additionally, a recovery in responding has been found to occur following unsignalled presentations of the US after extinction training and prior to test (reinstatement). The presentation of the unsignalled US works to re-establish responding to the target cue post-extinction in the absence of any additional CS-US pairing. To date, this reinstatement effect had not been studied following overexpectation training. In the present thesis, we examined whether reinstatement can be obtained following overexpectation training in male and female rats. The results show some evidence for a reinstatement in behavioural responding, albeit weak, following overexpectation in male but not female rats. The present findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms by which reinstatement occurs.


identifier: Lawrence, Elizabeth R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-941X <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-941X>  (2020) Synthesizing vertebrate population richness and genetic diversity across the American continents.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Intraspecific diversity is an important facet of biodiversity, both for the understanding of broad-scale biodiversity distribution and for the prioritization of conservation hotspots below the species level. It is the level of biodiversity that responds first to environmental change, yet few studies have assessed its broad-scale distribution. By constructing and analyzing an extensive population-genetics database, my thesis aims to demonstrate both the links and differences between species richness, population richness, and population-specific genetic diversity (PGD). Chapter 1 details the database and provides an exploration of population genetic data across five vertebrate taxonomic groups. The database collated geo-referenced information from 895 vertebrate species, 1308 studies, and 9090 genetically distinct populations. I found that anadromous species tended to be both the most population rich and genetically diverse, while mammals had lower levels of genetic diversity. In Chapter 2, I synthesized the conceptual foundation for broad-scale expectations of genetic and population diversity patterns by drawing from theories in the species diversity literature. I also tested the relationship between range size and population richness or PGD, finding a positive and a non-significant relationship for population richness and PGD, respectively. For Chapter 3, I assessed the latitudinal gradient in vertebrate PGD and assessed how environmental variables and variation among genera may mediate patterns in PGD. I found minimal evidence for a latitudinal gradient in PGD, a weak influence of environmental variables, and strong evidence for genera-specific patterns. In Chapter 4, I evaluated the influence of anthropogenic impacts (namely human population density and heterogeneity in land use intensity) on metrics of PGD across broad-scales. I found inconsistent support for the expected negative impacts, instead finding that human impact varies both between and within taxonomic groups. Collectively, my thesis demonstrates the difficulties in applying species theories to intraspecific diversity and that species-centric views overlook important variation below the species level. Taxonomic-dependent responses are common, and there is no “broad brush” for biodiversity – considering differences among taxa, even down to the genus-level, can be vital for biodiversity conservation. Intraspecific diversity does not have the same distribution as species diversity, and more extensive sampling would be needed to investigate these patterns more clearly.


identifier: Peppinck, Bradley  (2019) Reconciliation Journalism.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Reconciliation Journalism

abstract:
My master’s thesis project contributes a collaborative and critical understanding of Concordia University’s Department of Journalism’s obligation to amend their journalism curriculum to be in line with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Call to Action number 86, which states:

We call upon Canadian journalism programs and media schools to require education for all students on the history of Aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations (“We Are All Treaty People” 198).

Using a research-creation methodology to investigate the particulars of this imperative, I developed a speculative course syllabus that corresponds to the TRC Call to Action number 86. I conclude by arguing that Concordia University’s efforts towards advancing reconciliation are incomplete without adopting a paradigmatic shift to the undergraduate journalism curriculum where students are offered equal access to education on the topic of Indigenous Journalism and to critiques of how newsroom practices, journalistic ethics, and media representations contribute to power inequalities.


identifier: Kajoba, David  (2020) The Zero-sum Logic: A Rationale for Violence in the Bible.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
My thesis analyzes selected biblical passages to argue that the zero-sum logic formed an integral part of people’s understanding of conflict in the Bible. The characters in these passages perceived the world to exist in finite quantities and already fully distributed so that one person’s gain meant another’s loss. This logic often influenced how conflicts unfolded in biblical times, and why they broke out in the first place.
In the process of the dissemination of the Bible, the same logic has shaped the worldview of many people who have looked to the Bible as the inspired word of God and the primary source of instruction for daily living. This worldview has largely influenced the negatively defined way of thinking about identity, ethnicity, religion and Nationalism in terms of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ and the all or nothing nature of religious conflicts. Informed by the zero-sum logic, religiously defined groups tend to perceive themselves to have mutually incompatible interests with other groups. This fosters an insider/ outsider ideology which creates a marginalized other who is perceived as a threat to the existence of the group and as such any violence orchestrated against this other is justified as necessary for the survival of the group.
My study further contends that the perception of a limited universe nuanced in the selected biblical passages is fundamentally rooted in and influenced by the cultural and socio-economic realities of the Agrarian world in which the Bible was born.


identifier: Montes Maestre, Juan Sebastian  (2020) Lagrangian-on-Lagrangian Garment Design.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

title: Lagrangian-on-Lagrangian Garment Design

abstract: Since the discovery of elastomeric materials, such as spandex or lycra, skintight clothing has revolutionized many different areas of the clothing industry, such as body-shaping clothing, athletic wear, and medical garments, among others. Often, this kind of clothing is designed to fulfill a given purpose, such as providing comfort, mobility, or improving recovery in the case of an athlete, provide support or exert some desired pressure in the case of medical garments, or actively deform the body to acquire some desired shape. Additionally, some designs aim to improve the life of the garment by, for example, minimizing tractions across the seams. While many tight-skin garments are sold in the market for generic body shapes, many of the purposes here mentioned are only achievable through a personalized fitting. To this end, we introduce a novel model, where the cloth is modeled as a membrane, parameterized as a function of the body. The cloth, is then able to slide on the body and deform it while staying always in contact. We call this model Lagrangian-on-Lagrangian. Based on this model, we develop an optimization framework, based on sensitivity analysis, capable of developing sewable patterns such that, when worn by a person, satisfy a given design target. With the framework, we include several design targets such as, body shape, stretch, pressure, sliding under motion, and seam traction. We evaluate our method on a variety of applications, as well as body shapes.


identifier: Saadon, Mia  (2020) Examining Music Self-Concept in Older Adults.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Each person has a unique relationship to music and constructed perceptions of their musical abilities referred to as a ‘music self-concept’. There is a gap in the music therapy literature regarding this construct, specifically, for older adults. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the music self-concepts of three older adults through semi-structured interviews. The data was analyzed and coded into three global meaning units: (a) positive music self-concept (b) negative music self-concept and (c) evolving music self-concept. The emergent themes influencing music self-concept included: access to financial means, feedback from significant persons, social comparisons, music in the home environment, self-confidence, interest in music, availability of a support network, and the acceptance of oneself as a musical being. From these findings, practical implications for further research and practice in the music therapy field are presented.


identifier: Peng, Zi  (2020) Revisiting Test Impact Analysis in Continuous Testing From the Perspective of Code Dependencies.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
In continuous testing, developers execute automated test cases once or even several times per day
to ensure the quality of the integrated code. Although continuous testing helps ensure the quality
of the code and reduces maintenance effort, it also significantly increases test execution overhead.
In this thesis, we empirically evaluate the effectiveness of test impact analysis from the perspective
of code dependencies in the continuous testing setting. We first applied test impact analysis to one
year of software development history in 11 large-scale open-source systems. We found that even
though the number of changed files is small in daily commits (median ranges from 3 to 28 files),
around 50% or more of the test cases are still impacted and need to be executed. Motivated by
our finding, we further studied the code dependencies between source code files and test cases, and
among test cases. We found that 1) test cases often focus on testing the integrated behaviour of the
systems; 2) 18% of the test cases have dependencies with other test cases, and test case inheritance is
the most common cause of test case dependencies; 3) We documented four dependency-related test
smells that we uncovered in our manual study. Our study provides the first step towards studying
and understanding the effectiveness of test impact analysis in the continuous testing setting and
provides insights on improving test design and execution.


identifier: Ehdaeivand, Mohammad-Reza  (2020) Differential Roles of At-CLO4 in Regulation of Heterotrimeric G Protein Complex in Arabidopsis thaliana and Characterization of Members of the Extra-Large G Protein Family in Triticeae.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Caleosins, calcium binding proteins characterized by a single EF hand domain, are known to be involved in ABA signaling and the response to abiotic stress in plants. They are encoded by gene family with seven members in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Caleosins have been shown to physically interact with the alpha subunit of the heterotrimeric G proteins in vitro and in vivo. The heterotrimeric G protein complex in Arabidopsis consists of three subunits; the α subunit, GPA1, the β subunit, AGB1, and one of three γ subunits named AGG1, AGG2 and AGG3 which are known to be involved in signalling pathways associated with development and the response to abiotic stresses. Caleosins and G protein subunits are known to physically interact, however the genetic interaction of these two classes of proteins and their combined roles in the stress response of plants is poorly understood. This study confirmed in planta interaction
of GPA1 and CLO4, a member of the caleosin gene family in Arabidopsis and addressed questions arising from role of the interaction in plant signaling and stress responses. The in vivo
promoter activity of CLO4 showed that the gene is negatively regulated in both primary and lateral roots by abscisic acid. CLO4 was found to positively regulate stomatal development,
through GPA1 related signalling and both genes were found not to be individually sufficient to control lateral root elongation in response to ABA treatment. Arabidopsis plants mutated in both
clo4 and gpa1 genes showed significant reduction of total lateral root length. Gain of function of the CLO4 gene through over-expression suggests that caleosins play a role in the ABA induced stomatal closure and ABA induced inhibition of primary root elongation. In addition to Arabidopsis CLO4, this study investigated the possible GTPase activity of another member of
the caleosins gene family, RD20/CLO3, toward GPA1 and showed that the GAP activity of the RD20/CLO3 protein toward GPA1 is negligible compared to the other known plant GTPase
accelerating protein, RGS1, which suggests different mechanism of regulation of the heterotrimeric G protein Complex through caleosins. This study also characterized the ExtraLarge G protein gene family in Triticum aestivum. Total of three Xlgs per haploid geneome, each with three homeologous copies for the total of 9 genes in the hexaploid genome were identified and characterized for expression patterns. Differential tissue specific gene expression of the members of Xlg gene family showed that the genes are expressed in seed, root, inflorescence, leaf and stem. Bioinformatics analysis on the transcript level abundance showed that, under stress conditions such as drought, heat, cold and Fusarium graminearum infection, members of the gene family altered expression which suggests transcriptional regulation of certain members of Xlg gene family in response to biotic and abiotic stress conditions.


identifier: van der Valk Bouman, Jim  (2020) The local covering problem: producing and certifying local coverings.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The covering problem is a classical type of problem that is concerned with finding the smallest collection of structures such that a larger structure is covered. In this thesis we focus on a few examples of the local covering problem, which can be described by the following goal:

Given a connected set X on a manifold and a fixed r>0, find the smallest set of points such that the union of the balls of radius r around the points covers X.

We first explore the problem by picking a few easier settings and constructing an algorithm that can explicitly produce coverings of a certain set. We then discuss a result in algebraic topology based on the construction of the nerve of a covering, which allows us to certify that a given collection of opens provides a covering of the set. This inherently interesting result allows us to finally improve on the results of our algorithm. We do this by removing some points from its output configurations and applying gradient flow to move them around such that they repel each other. We then apply the homological criterion to verify that the points give a covering after gradient flow, in which case we have improved our results.


identifier: Glinel, Christian  (2020) Teaching 21st Century Skills: An Integrative Literature Review.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Research Problem: The purpose of this integrative literature review is to explore the scientific literature on 21st century skills, the education establishment’s response to forecasted socioeconomic changes brought forth by automation technology. The review analyzes the literature to identify its predominant patterns and trends.
Research questions:
1.	What terminology is most prominently used in the literature to refer to 21st century skills, competencies, and literacies?
2.	Which 21st century skills, competencies and literacies are most prominent in the literature?
3.	Which teaching strategies and educational technologies have been suggested to support the development of 21st century skills, competencies, and literacies?
Literature Review:  The purpose of the literature review is to describe the emergence of 21st century skills and identify gaps that it presents. This preliminary review first examines the major international frameworks promoting 21st century skills that have been published by governments and non-profit organizations. The review then follows by examining the empirical literature on the topic, including two comparative analyses that compared the 21st century skills frameworks.
Methodology: The study uses an integrative literature review methodology, analyzing articles using content analysis. A sample of articles is collected, using replicable search parameters. These articles are then reviewed to confirm they meet the integration criteria. Included articles are then reviewed systematically to determine the terminology they used and the 21st century skills, teaching strategies and educational technology they identified.
Results and Conclusions: The study revealed several dominant and strong patterns in the literature. These patterns included the use of the term skill as the dominant terminology, and the prominence in the literature of skills such as communication, collaboration, problem-solving and critical thinking. The review also identified that the use of student-centred learning activities, learning activities based on designing products, as well as the integration of ICT devices, social media, communication, and web 2.0 tools in the learning environment represented strong patterns in the literature. The implications of this study serve to inform the practice of teachers seeking to integrate 21st century skills into their classrooms, by enabling them to focus their efforts on integrating the groups of skills, teaching strategies and educational technology tools that were identified as prominent in the literature. Furthermore, this study also serves to identify priorities for researchers wanting to operationalize the key concepts, strategies, and tools of 21st century skills and contribute to the accrual of empirical knowledge about them. The limitations of the study relate to the fact that the literature is continuously evolving and that new patterns may yet emerge from it. Future research should seek to operationalize terms that are used ambiguously throughout the literature. Furthermore, researchers should seek to create working definitions of individual skills to suggest ways to best develop them in students.


identifier: Shulman, Nicholas Gwyn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0706-5491 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0706-5491>  (2020) Abstraction Fashion: Seeing and Making Network Abstractions and Computational Fashions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Human life today is enmeshed with network organisms. What we value, the ways we talk, and the subject matter we pay attention to are all dependent on and depended upon by the networks that dominate our imagination. The internet, private social platforms, and the virtual and physical supply chains that create the hardware, software, and memetic abstractions with which we think are all examples of network organisms. Each has found a viability mechanism that permits it to survive and thrive in the present moment. Each viability mechanism creates its own unique incentives for self-perpetuation, which drive the outward appearances with which we are familiar. These incentives manifest as product forms, interface abstractions, and socially optimized beliefs and identities. To grapple with what drives the abstractions these network organisms output, this dissertation builds a worldview for seeing and making with computational networks. Computing machines are composed of abstractions, simulate abstractions, and project their abstractions onto the world. Creating in this medium requires resources that can be acquired through attention manipulation and fashion performance.  The text culminates in an appendix documenting ewaste club, an art research-creation project that combines wearable cameras, supply chain inspired fashion, and disposable computers. Through a mixture of practical projects, historical analysis, and technical explanation, this dissertation proposes several new concepts linking fashion, the arts, and computation to making in the time of networks.


identifier: Basnet, Ramesh ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8969-0890 <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8969-0890>  (2020) A Parameter-Efficient Deep Dense Residual Convolutional Neural Network for Volumetric Brain Tissue Segmentation from Magnetic Resonance Images.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Brain tissue segmentation is a common medical image processing problem that deals with identifying a region of interest in the human brain from medical scans. It is a fundamental step towards neuroscience research and clinical diagnosis. Magnetic resonance (MR) images are widely used for segmentation in view of their non-invasive acquisition, and high spatial resolution and various contrast information. Accurate segmentation of brain tissues from MR images is very challenging due to the presence of motion artifacts, low signal-to-noise ratio, intensity overlaps, and intra- and inter-subject variability. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) recently employed for segmentation provide remarkable advantages over the traditional and manual segmentation methods, however, their complex architectures and the large number of parameters make them computationally expensive and difficult to optimize. In this thesis, a novel learning-based algorithm using a three-dimensional deep convolutional neural network is proposed for efficient parameter reduction and compact feature representation to learn end-to-end mapping of T1-weighted (T1w) and/or T2-weighted (T2w)  brain MR images to the probability scores of each voxel belonging to the different labels of brain tissues, namely, white matter (WM), gray matter (GM) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for segmentation. The basic idea in the proposed method is to use densely connected convolutional layers and residual skip-connections to increase representation capacity, facilitate better gradient flow, improve learning, and significantly reduce the number of parameters in the network. The network is independently trained on three different loss functions, cross-entropy, dice similarity, and a combination of the two and the results are compared with each other to investigate better loss function for the training. The model has the number of network parameters reduced by a significant amount compared to that of the state-of-the-art methods in brain tissue segmentation. Experiments are performed using the single-modality IBSR18 dataset containing high-resolution T1-weighted MR scans of diverse age groups, and the multi-modality iSeg-2017 dataset containing T1w and T2w MR scans of infants. It is shown that the proposed method provides the best performance on the test sets of both datasets amongst all the existing deep-learning based methods for brain tissue segmentation using the MR images and achieves competitive performance in the iSeg-2017 challenge with the number of parameters that is 47% to 98% lower than that of the other deep-learning based architectures.


identifier: Dai, Hetong  (2020) logram: efficient log paring using n-gram model.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Software systems usually record important runtime information in their logs. Logs help practitioners understand system runtime behaviors and diagnose field failures. As logs are usually very large in size, automated log analysis is needed to assist practitioners in their
software operation and maintenance efforts. Typically, the first step of automated log analysis is log parsing, i.e., converting unstructured raw logs into structured data. However, log parsing is challenging, because logs are produced by static templates in the source code (i.e., logging statements) yet the templates are usually inaccessible when parsing logs. Prior work proposed automated log parsing approaches that have achieved high accuracy. However, as the volume of logs grows rapidly in the era of cloud computing, efficiency
becomes a major concern in log parsing. In this work, we propose an automated log parsing approach, Logram, which leverages n-gram dictionaries to achieve efficient log parsing. We evaluated Logram on 16 public log datasets and compared Logram with five state-of-the-art log parsing approaches. We found that Logram achieves a higher parsing accuracy than the best existing approaches (i.e., at least 10% higher, on average) and also outperforms these approaches in efficiency (i.e., 1.8 to 5.1 times faster than the second-fastest approaches in terms of end-to-end parsing time). Furthermore, we deployed Logram on Spark and we found that Logram scales out efficiently with the number of Spark nodes (e.g., with near-
linear scalability for some logs) without sacrificing parsing accuracy. In addition, we demonstrated that Logram can support effective online parsing of logs, achieving similar parsing results and efficiency to the offline mode.


identifier: Cabau, Noémie  (2020) Game-theoretic analysis of network formation and drug pricing.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 offers a model of endogenous network formation where agents form connections strategically to maximize information diffusion in their group. The model builds on the idea that groups of individuals who are better informed take better collective decisions. The equilibrium and efficient networks have simple architectures: e.g., loops and flowers that may or may not include all agents. If frictions happen during information transmission, optimal architectures centralize the connections around a single agent. Chapters 2 and 3 aim at rationalizing the use of secret rebates during the negotiations on drug prices. Secret rebates enable to hide the price a country pays for a pharmaceutical product from other countries. Two models of the interactions between public payers (countries) and a monopolist pharmaceutical firm are presented to rationalize the use of secret rebates. We reach the following conclusions. Manufacturers benefit from secret rebates because they avoid price interdependencies across markets; and reference countries gain from hiding the details of their deals when other countries would otherwise base their offers to the supplier on the prices they observe other countries pay. However, the use of secret rebates has mitigated social effects. In particular, they benefit the countries which negotiate first and hurt those which negotiate last.


identifier: Aryanpour, Zahra  (2020) Characterization of position 64 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae tRNA nucleotidyltransferase: Exploring the mechanism of suppression.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The enzyme ATP(CTP): tRNA-specific tRNA nucleotidyltransferase catalyzes the addition of cytidine, cytidine, adenosine (CCA) to the 3’ end of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) during their synthesis and repair. This CCA sequence is required for aminoacylation and protein synthesis. The Saccharomyces cerevisiae enzyme is defined as a Class II tRNA nucleotidyltransferase through five motifs (A to E) conserved in the amino-terminal half of the protein. Functions have been assigned to each of these motifs. Our previous studies have shown that enzyme activity is reduced by mutations in motif C leading to a temperature-sensitive (ts) phenotype. Further, we also have shown that these ts mutations can be suppressed by a second-site mutation in motif A suggesting an interaction between motifs A and C. Here we use site-directed mutagenesis to make specific changes in residues in these motifs to explore these interactions.
Specifically, arginine 64 found in motif A was changed to phenylalanine, proline or alanine and the effects of these substitutions on wild-type and mutant backgrounds was determined. Changing arginine 64 to proline (R64P) resulted in a lethal phenotype in any background tested. Converting arginine to phenylalanine (R64F) resulted in no measurable changes in growth in a wild-type background in our in vivo assay and also suppressed the ts phenotype resulting from the conversion of glutamate 189 to phenylalanine (E189F) or lysine (as had been seen previously for an arginine 64 to tryptophan substitution). In contrast, the R64F substitution could not rescue the lethal phenotype resulting from conversion of aspartate 190 to phenylalanine (D190F). Changing arginine 64 to alanine (R64A) resulted in reduced growth at the restrictive temperature in a wild-type background and did not suppress the E189F, E189K, or D190A ts phenotypes. Moreover, the R64A change in the D190A background enhanced the growth defect at the permissive temperature. Taken together, these data support our hypothesis of a direct interaction between elements of motifs A and C. Computational modelling is used to explore how the phenotypes observed are linked to changes in the structure of the protein.


identifier: Wissink, Ingrid  (2020) Sounding the Pain: Exploring a Feminist Group Music Therapy Approach for Women with Contested Chronic Pain Conditions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: There is an identified need for non-pharmacological approaches to address the unique psychosocial needs of women suffering from contested chronic pain conditions.  Although music therapy interventions hold potential to address these needs, very little is written about how a music therapy treatment approach might be conceptualized for this population. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to make a case as to why group music therapy realized within a feminist approach is an ideal way to address the unique psychosocial needs of women with contested chronic pain conditions. A philosophical inquiry methodology situated within a feminist intersectional perspective used scholarly literature as the primary source of data to address this purpose. This involved a critical analysis where three overarching concepts contained in the subsidiary research questions were explored, conceptualized, and clarified: (a) unique psychosocial needs of women with contested chronic pain conditions; (b) music therapy interventions that can used to treat the psychosocial components of chronic pain conditions; and (c) advantages of group music therapy realized within a feminist approach for women with contested chronic pain conditions. Cumulatively, the information outlined in these overarching concepts created a cogent argument aimed at answering the purpose (i.e., primary research question) of this study. Limitations of the study as well as implications for music therapy practice, research, and advocacy are presented.


identifier: Al Bakri, Anas  (2020) Performance Evaluation of Adaptive Backoff Mechanism of Random Access Procedures in NB-IoT.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a promising radio technology that was standardized by 3GPP in 2016 for connecting a massive number of low-cost, low-power and delay-tolerant devices to the Internet of Things (IoT) with a small bandwidth of 180 KHz.  Prior studies on the random access of NB-IoT have investigated its performance under various conditions and considering several mechanisms, however, the backoff mechanism as a method for contention resolution was ignored mostly either for simplification or in favor of other mechanisms while few works considered it under certain restrictions. This thesis proposes a comprehensive analytical model that evaluates the performance of random access procedures under the assumption of adaptive backoff mechanism that doubles the backoff window size for each new transmission attempt to achieve a better contention resolution.
	The proposed model allows arrival of packets with different rates to each device in the network which is more practical in cases where there are noticeable differences in specifications between connected devices such as in layered, packet loss intolerant and clustered networks. The system is modeled  using discrete-time analysis with First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) user queues with infinite buffers. The analysis has led to derivations of probability of successful packet transmission, mean packet delay, utilization, and probability of packet discarding. The results have shown the advantages of the adaptive backoff mechanism in improving the performance of the system compared to constant backoff. Additionally, results have demonstrated the trade-off between packet discarding probability and mean packet delay where higher number of attempts allows for almost zero packet loss probability at the cost of slightly higher delay. A simulation system was implemented which verified the accuracy of the analytical model. The results of this thesis can be helpful in designing new NB-IoT communication networks.


identifier: Khan, Shanze  (2020) The Effect of Ethical Attributes on Brand Personality and Brand Equity.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: With growing consumer demand for ethical products and resultant seismic shifts taking place in the industry as a response, it is imperative to better understand the effects of ethicality. Honing in on two such effects, the specific objective of this paper is to explore the question: How will ethical attributes affect the perception of brand personality dimensions of sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness and in turn how do these dimensions mediate the relationship between ethicality and brand equity? The paper makes use of past literature on the constructs of brand personality and brand equity and responds to the call to study the former as a driver of the latter. Since it has been suggested that particular personality dimensions may be more or less valuable than others (Keller and Lehmann, 2006), this research aims to explore whether particular brand personality dimensions have a greater impact on brand equity of ethical brands compared to others. Results show that ethicality has a positive direct effect on each of the brand personality dimensions and this effect is not moderated by price of the product. Ethicality also has a positive direct effect on overall brand equity. When controlling for ethical attribute relevance and brand personality, out of the five brand personality dimensions, only sophistication positively mediates the relationship between ethicality and overall brand equity.


identifier: Beheshtian, Mohammad Javad  (2020) Software Batch Testing to Reduce Build Test Executions.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Testing is expensive and batching tests have the potential to reduce test costs. The continuous integration strategy of testing each commit or change individually helps to quickly identify faults but leads to a maximum number of test executions. Large companies that have a large number of commits, e.g. Google and Facebook, or have expensive test infrastructure, e.g. Ericsson, must batch changes together to reduce the number of total test runs. For example, if eight builds are batched together and there is no failure, then we have tested eight builds with one execution saving seven executions. However, when a failure occurs it is not immediately clear which build is the cause of the failure. A bisection is run to isolate the failing build, i.e. the culprit build. In our eight builds example, a failure will require an additional 6 executions, resulting in a saving of one execution.

The goal of this work is to improve the efficiency of the batch testing. We evaluate six approaches. The first is the baseline approach that tests each build individually. The second, is the existing bisection approach. The third uses a batch size of four, which we show mathematically reduces the number of execution without requiring bisection. The fourth combines the two prior techniques introducing a stopping condition to the bisection. The final two approaches use models
of build change risk to isolate risky changes and test them in smaller batches.

We evaluate the approaches on nine open source projects that use Travis CI. Compared to the TestAll baseline, on average, the approaches reduce the number of build test executions across projects by 46%, 48%, 50%, 44%, and 49% for BatchBisect, Batch4, BatchStop4, RiskTopN, and RiskBatch, respectively. The greatest reduction is BatchStop4 at 50%. However, the simple approach of Batch4 does not require bisection and achieves a reduction of 48%. We recommend that
all CI pipelines use a batch size of at least four. We release our scripts and data for replication.

Regardless of the approach, on average, we save around half the build test executions compared to testing each change individually. We release the BatchBuilder tool that automatically batches submitted changes on GitHub for testing on Travis CI. Since the tool reports individual results for each pull-request or pushed commit, the batching happens in the background and the development process is unchanged.


identifier: El-Helou, Joseph  (2020) Labatorials and Reflective Writing for a Better Understanding of Dynamics in High School.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Decades of research show that introductory physics students struggle to learn Newtonian concepts of force and motion. Conventional lecture method of instruction has been unable to improve students’ ideas and attitudes. This study examined the impact of combining Labatorials and Reflective Writing on high school students’ knowledge of Newtonian dynamics.
Participants are 210 secondary 5 (grade 11) students, from three private schools in Montreal, who took a physics course during 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Their ideas and opinions about forces and learning physics were investigated, prior to and following the study, with: (a) the Discipline-focused Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire; (b) the Force Concept Inventory (FCI); (c) a concept map focused on the relations between force and motion. Pre- and post- semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 participants. The post interview required students to analyse a hands-on experiment about the two-way motion of a fan cart. Data was also collected from participants’ teachers throughout the duration of the study.
Results from the FCI indicate a medium gain as calculated by Hake (1998) which is similar to those obtained when Interactive Engagement practices are used in teaching physics (Hake, 1998). The interviews with students as well as feedback from teachers showed that students preferred the combination of Labatorials with Reflective Writing to traditional labs. Preliminary analysis of concept maps completed in the post-test to those in the pretest indicate that students better connected concepts related to forces and motion. The gathered data and interviews indicate that the process of combining Labatorials with Reflective Writing improves students’ knowledge of the subject as well as their attitudes towards learning it.


identifier: Bagherzadeh, Maryam  (2020) Computationally efficient robust model predictive control strategies for linear constrained systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis deals with control problem of designing low computationally demanding robust model predictive controllers (MPC) for constrained systems subject to states/input limitations and bounded disturbances. In particular, the proposed solutions are based on a dual-mode control paradigm known as Set-Theoretic MPC (ST-MPC). This control schemes are particularly appealing for their capability of reducing the typical computation burden of robust MPC controllers. The latter is obtained by moving most of the required computations into an off-line phase, while leaving a simple and real-time affordable computational algorithm in the on-line phase. In this work, such a paradigm has been properly extended to deal with regulation and tracking problems appearing in two different control applications, namely transient stability regulation in smart grid and reference tracking in multi autonomous vehicles.

In the transient stability control problem, we consider an operative scenario where a physical fault or a cyber-attack produces an impulsive state perturbation, and a controller must be designed to robustly recover, in a finite-time, transient stability despite initial perturbation and uncertainties. In such scenario, first we have used the standard feedback linearizion technicalities to linearize the smart grid model, then, we have applied a set-theoretic MPC scheme to robustly regulate the state trajectory towards the transient stability region. Moreover, to validate the proposed theory, a simulation campaign has been performed to contrast the proposed solution with a state-of-the-art competitor. Simulation results has shown that the proposed strategy outperforms the competitor scheme both in terms of settling time and robustness.

In the multi-vehicle control problem, we exploit set-theoretic arguments to solve the reference tracking problem when the vehicles have different dynamics and/or constraints and/or disturbance, and each vehicle must follow uncoordinated reference trajectories. More in specific, we propose a novel control architecture where robust collision-free reference tracking is ensured by jointly using the set-theoretic control scheme and graph theory. To better clarify the potential and effectiveness of the proposed architecture, a simulation example involving 5 heterogeneous vehicles has been conducted.


identifier: Marchessault, Jessie  (2020) Casual Play, Hardcore Community: Social and Spatial Ecosystems in Location-Based Mobile Gameplay.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
This thesis explores the social and spatial dynamics of two major Location-Based Mobile Games communities in Montréal. By conducting interviews and play sessions with fifteen active members of the local Ingress (Niantic, 2012) and Pokémon Go (Niantic, 2016) player communities, I identify that the social ecosystems that have developed around both games have generated forms of play that extend far beyond the limits of the games themselves.

In the first chapter, I draw from Celia Pearce’s understanding of ‘communities of play’ and T.L. Taylor’s notion of ‘power gaming’ to posit that Location-based games communities and their social practices exist somewhere between those found in MMOGs and those found in Social Games. Further, as players are often involved in moderation, research, and organizational activities, I found that interviewees’ engagement with their game of choice means that the typical boundaries between labour and play sometimes disintegrate entirely. Accordingly, I explore the emergent theme of cheating, highlighting how each community perceives, negotiates punishes forms of rule-breaking within their social spheres.

As locative gameplay takes place within both the realm of the physical and digital, it can be thought of as having simultaneous modalities of presence. Accordingly, the second chapter investigates how co-presence in locative play can generate tensions between players and non-players in the ‘real world’ and explores how spatial awareness of local play areas transforms through a process of mental mapping. Moreover, spatial experience often correlates with either habitual (everyday) play habits or situational (event-based) instances of play.

Like many other games’ communities, the social and spatial ecosystems of Ingress and Pokémon Go are “messy, contested and constantly under negotiation” (Taylor, 153); yet conducting a qualitative analysis around active players within these communities has helped provided a research framework for a more nuanced understanding of how localized micro-communities operate, coordinate and experience locative play.


identifier: Kennedy-Turner, Kathleen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3435-8695 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3435-8695>  (2020) Prevention of criminal offending: Disentangling the role of education in the pathway from childhood risk factors to adult criminal charges.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Education plays an important role in reducing the probability of criminal offending. Although research has shown that having more education is associated with reduced criminalization, very few studies have examined whether education plays an intervening or protective role from childhood risk factors to criminal charges in adulthood. This dissertation was designed to examine two main questions in a series of two studies: 1) Does education intervene and/or protect against childhood risk factors in the pathway to criminal offending? 2) Which of the childhood risk and protective factors contribute to the vital roles education plays in the pathway to criminalization?
	In both Studies 1 and 2, childhood aggression, withdrawal, and likeability, neighborhood disadvantage, and years of education were examined as predictors of criminal charges in adulthood, within mediational models. In Study 2, academic achievement, and school absences were added as mediators. In Study 1, we found that higher childhood aggression and neighborhood disadvantage were associated with fewer years of education, which in turn was associated with an increased probability of criminal charges. Additionally, the participants at highest risk were those who had high childhood aggression and less education. There was a unique protective effect for some of the participants, such that those with high childhood aggression but more years of education had a reduced probability of criminal charges.
	Study 2 investigated the effects of academic achievement and school absences on the relations between variables observed in Study 1. We observed that aggression contributed to achievement but not absences, whereas being liked by others contributed to both. Achievement and absences in turn predicted years of education which then predicted criminal charges. Achievement was moderated by gender such that males who were high achieving had reduced criminal charges. Absences were a risk factor for both males and females, but the highest risk was for males with high absences. Results from this dissertation highlight the importance of examining education in the trajectory to criminal offending. By understanding the factors that contribute to education, its protective effects can be utilized to help the most at risk children avoid a trajectory towards criminalization.


identifier: Ghazi Sharyatpanahi, Nozhat Sadat  (2020) Seismic Performance of Steel Shear Walls with Rectangular Openings.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Unstiffened Steel Plate Shear Wall (SPSW) has widely been accepted as an effective lateral load resisting system for resisting wind and earthquake loads. This system has significant post-buckling strength, high ductility, stable hysteretic behaviors and robust initial stiffness. Composite Plate Shear Wall (C-PSW) is also a new form of steel shear wall which has a steel plate and a layer of reinforced concrete (RC) at one or both sides of the steel plate. The steel plate and the concrete layer are connected with shear studs to have a complete composite behavior. C-PSW has some advantages over SPSW such as protection against fire and blast loading. In addition, the presence of the concrete panel can prevent buckling of the steel plate and thereby increase the stiffness, shear strength, and energy dissipation capacity of the C-PSW system in comparison to conventional SPSW system.
Often, SPSWs and C-PSWs need to accommodate large door or window size openings in the infill plates, such as when SPSWs/C-PSWs are used in the building central cores around the elevators. Current AISC design standard recommends use of horizontal and vertical local boundary elements (LBE), in the form of stiffeners, around these large rectangular openings to anchor the tension field developed in the infill plate. Research on SPSW with stiffened large openings like door and window sized openings is limited. Also research on C-PSWs with large openings is still in the initial stage and a significant amount of research is needed before it can be adopted by the Canadian steel design code. This study presents seismic performance of SPSWs and C-PSWs with door size openings in the web plate. Nonlinear FE models were developed in ABAQUS for SPSW and C-PSW with door size openings. The FE models include both material and geometric nonlinearities. The proposed FE model was validated against available experimental data. The study describes details of the validation of the finite element model. Two multi-storey (3- and 5-storey) SPSWs and C-PSWs were designed following the capacity design concept and the guidelines of current AISC seismic design standard. The performance of selected SPSWs and C-PSWs were investigated through conducting a series of time history analysis using a suite of 8 ground motions that are developed for western Canada and are compatible with Vancouver design response spectrum. Nonlinear seismic analysis shows that both SPSWs and C-PSWs with rectangular openings exhibit excellent seismic performance with high ductility and strength when subjected to strong ground motions. Maximum contribution of various structural components (i.e., infill plate and boundary members) in resisting applied lateral loads are calculated from seismic analysis and presented in the study.  The maximum interstorey drift is found to be within the code limit for both systems under all ground motions. It is observed that the designed stiffeners around the openings are very effective in limiting the in-plane and out-of-plane deformations around the rectangular openings, especially in the SPSW system and the presence of these stiffeners do not alter the recommended yielding sequence of the system. In addition, it is observed that current AISC requirement to attach horizontal and vertical LBE around rectangular opening of C-PSW is conservative and can be relaxed if the infill plate is connected with the concrete panel with adequate shear connectors.


identifier: Himmiche, Sara  (2020) Comparative study of neural network-based models for fatigue crack growth predictions of small cracks.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The behavior of small cracks (less than 1 mm in length) have been shown to be quite different than large cracks for a variety of materials. In the past two decades, the large-crack test procedure (load shedding) has been shown to cause a load-history effect in the low-rate regime, generating elevated thresholds, and slower rates than steady-state behavior, which caused a large part of these differences. The literature has shown that small-crack data is more appropriate for damage tolerance and fatigue analyses. The objective of this work was to validate the development of artificial neural network (ANN) methods in fatigue crack growth predictions of small cracks. Two ANNs were developed: extreme learning machine (ELM) and radial basis function network (RBFN) to predict fatigue crack growth of small cracks for various materials. A wide range in stress ratio R and stress levels were considered for selected materials. The two ANNs were compared with each other in terms of mean squared error achieved and performance. The ELM method showed a superior interpolation and extrapolation ability compared to the RBFN method.


identifier: Chin, John D.  (2020) Independent Parallel Capillary Array Separations for Rapid Second Dimension Sampling in On-Line Two-Dimensional Capillary Electrophoresis of Complex Biological Samples.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
Biological samples remain challenging in proteomic separations due to their complexity and large concentration dynamic range. Improvements to separation power are needed to interrogate proteomes more deeply and facilitate the advancement of biomarker discovery for personalized medicine.

Current online multidimensional separations require compromise; long analysis times if the second dimension (2nd-D) must be regenerated between injections, or reduced separation efficiency if the 2nd-D is operated rapidly. Using an array of capillaries as the 2nd-D, operated in parallel, allows fast sampling of the first dimension (1st-D). This relaxes the constraints on the 2nd-D separation, allowing it to operate at optimal separation conditions that would otherwise be sacrificed for speed. This configuration allows total separation times to approximately equal to the 1st-D separation time.

We have developed a novel interface that enables continuous sampling of a 1st-D separation by a 2nd-D capillary array for rapid, high peak capacity two dimensional (2D) separations, based upon automated precision positioning of capillaries. Within a laminar flow regime, a capillary electrophoresis (CE) 1st-D separation was coupled to an array of eight independent CE 2nd-D separations. The instrument terminus provides laser induced fluorescence detection via a sheath flow cuvette.

Effluent transfer efficiency, from the 1st-D to the 2nd-D, and detection was optimized using visible and fluorescent dye tracers. To that end, this dissertation will discuss characterization of interface and detector parameters, including: inter capillary transverse alignment accuracy, injection distance, injection time, hydrodynamic flow rate, density considerations, inter  and intra capillary differences, signal crosstalk and laser intensity.

Separation performance will further be demonstrated using model protein and serum digestates. Each dimension of the 2D instrument will be operated as a one dimensional (1D) instrument to compare against an optimized commercial 1D CE instrument. These results will be used to evaluate the quality of the separations operated in on-line 2D capillary electrophoresis-to-capillary array electrophoresis (CE×CAE) mode. A novel application of the CE×CAE design will be discussed in the spirit of resolving the long standing challenge of migration time reproducibility in CE separations.


identifier: Marino, Laura  (2020) Khovanov homology and the unknotting number.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract:
The aim of this thesis is to describe a new lower bound λ for the unknotting number.
The unknotting number u is a classical knot invariant, defined as the minimum number of crossing changes that are needed in order to turn a knot into the Unknot (where a knot is the image of a smooth embedding S^1 → R^3, and the Unknot is the "unknotted" knot). We
have that u is hard to compute, thus one of the goals of knot theory is to find lower bounds for it.
Among the tools that have recently been used to describe lower bounds for u there is Khovanov homology. It is a link invariant, constructed from algebraic structures called Frobenius systems in the following way: given a link diagram D, we associate a cube of (1+1)-cobordisms to it. Then every Frobenius system F of rank two generates a functor, called TQFT, that associates a chain complex C_F (D) to this cube. Khovanov homology is the homology of C_F (D).
Thus different Frobenius systems F generate different homology theories H_F . Among Frobenius systems, F_Univ is particularly interesting because H_F_Univ determines every other Khovanov homology H_F .
Alishahi and Dowlin (2017) defined two lower bounds λ_BN and λ_Lee for the unknotting number using the Khovanov homology theories relative to Frobenius systems F_BN and F_Lee.
Other than giving a bound for u these bounds have several interesting applications related to the convergence of some spectral sequences and to the Knight Move Conjecture. Using the structures and tools introduced by Alishahi and Dowlin, in this thesis we find a new bound that subsumes λ_BN and λ_Lee, using the Khovanov homology theory relative to F_Univ.