identifier: Zhang, Wen  (2007) Production planning in a multi-product manufacturing environment using constant work-in-process.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Push-based MRP and pull-based Kanban systems are effective production control policies for a wide range of manufacturing environment. Both of them, however, have certain limitations when they are implemented in different production environments. In recent years, CONWIP (CONstant Work-In-process), a hybrid push/pull control policy, was proposed and studied to take advantages of MRP and Kanban systems for optimal work-in-process (WIP) inventory control. CONWIP is a closed production system in which a constant number of containers traverse a closed loop that includes the entire production system.  In order to effectively implement CONWIP control in a manufacturing environment, several issues, such as the number of containers, lot sizes and job sequence, need to be addressed. This research aims at the development of mathematical models to address these issues and to help implement CONWIP systems in different manufacturing environments. Two mathematical programming models are developed to address issues on a single serial CONWIP line system. The first model can be used in a make-to-stock environment and the objective function of the model is to minimize the setup costs and the costs associated with an unbalanced workload at the bottleneck machine. The solution of the first model simultaneously determines the optimal job sequence on the part list and the lot size associated with each entry on the part list. The second model can be used in a make-to-order environment or in a make-to-stock environment with a known part list. The objective function of the second model is to minimize the system makespan. Two essential CONWIP system parameters, number of containers and job sequence can be determined by solving the second model. A third model is developed for an assembly-type CONWIP system with multiple fabrication lines feeding an assembly station. The objective of the third model is to synchronize system production by minimizing makespan differences among all the fabrication lines. The solution of the third model determines the number of the containers and job sequence for each of the fabrication lines.  The solution of such models is NP-hard. The general branch and bound approach used by most off-the-shelf optimization software cannot be used to solve real sized problems of this nature. In order to solve real sized problems efficiently, we develop a heuristic search method based on simulated annealing. Several example problems are used to test the developed models and algorithms. Computational results validate the modelling and computational efficiency of the solution methods


identifier: Song, Xin Xin  (2007) A performance analysis of tandem networks of multiplexers with binary Markovian sources.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

type: Thesis NonPeerReviewed

abstract: Currently, the modern networks including Internet and ATM are based on packet-switched technology. In this technology, the arriving packets are statistically multiplexed to achieve high bandwidth gain, also the output ports of routers may be modeled as multiplexers. As a result, in this type of networks, a packet goes through a number of multiplexers as it transits from source to destination. Because of this, the study of tandem networks of multiplexers is very important; as it will give us the information regarding the traffic shaping that occurs along the route. Due to the lack of exact analysis methods, most of the previous work in the analysis of tandem networks is based on either simulation or approximate models. This thesis presents an exact performance analysis of tandem networks with arbitrary number of multiplexers. Since, the traffic generated by multimedia sources in the real networks is correlated, the binary Markov On/Off source model is assumed for the input traffic to the network. The objective of the analysis is to determine the Probability Generating Function (PGF) of the queue length of each multiplexer in the tandem network as well as the corresponding performance measures. The complicated dependency among tandem multiplexers results in unknown boundary functions, determination of which is the main source of difficulty in the exact performance analysis. In this thesis, at first a straightforward solution technique is used to determine the PGF of the queue lengths and number of On sources for a tandem network with two multiplexers. Unfortunately, this solution does not extend to tandem networks with higher number of multiplexers. As a result, an alternative method has been developed, which determines the unknown boundary functions by using busy periods of multiplexers. The PGF of the queue length and number of On sources is obtained for each multiplexer in a tandem network with arbitrary number of multiplexers. Following that, the mean and variance of queue lengths as well as the packet delay at each multiplexer have been determined. A proof of this solution is given to show that the analysis is correct. Then, the solution has been extended to a more general tandem network, where each multiplexer is fed by multiple types of traffic. Finally, numerical results regarding the analysis are presented and compared with those of the simulation. The analysis shows network traffic gets smoother when it goes through higher number of multiplexers, this smoothing effect is more obvious in heterogeneous traffic case. It also shows that under constant traffic load, as the number of sources increases, the delay and queue length increase. The analysis results enable to explain the delicate interaction between traffic smoothing and source burstiness.


identifier: Stateikina, Irina  (2007) Mechanism of wet anisotropic etching of silicon for nano-scale applications.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The fabrication processes of recent MEMS devices require the use of anisotropic etching and variety of concave structures.  Analysis of these structures uncovered phenomenon in the etch rates of surfaces exposed by anisotropic etchant. This phenomenon could not be explained without consideration of the composition of these surfaces on atomic level.  My study raised the step-based modeling of these planes, their relative interactions, and dependence on the etching environment. Control of this environment and better understanding of the different factors that influence the etch rates of these surfaces is the main theme of my work.  To help with the analysis of the studied surfaces a set of the experiments was done using a wagon-wheel pattern that provided the necessary assortment of concave structures for the purpose of this research. A mathematical model was built to help understand the processes that are responsible for anomalies in the etch rates and profiles of surfaces exposed on sidewalls of spokes in the wagon-wheel experiment.  Detailed examination of the profiles of the surfaces and their relative location within the same concave structure suggested the possibility of application of these surfaces in creation of different patterns for nano-applications. The major concern is the control of etch rates of these planes in order to achieve the necessary precision for the application on such scale. Light illumination of the etched surfaces is analyzed as a possible component in providing the necessary level of control.  Influence of the light intensity and different wavelengths is studied with the thought of application of the respective parameters in order to achieve a satisfactory control over the etch rates of illuminated surfaces.


identifier: Haghighat, Javad  (2007) Data compression using error correcting codes.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Application of error correcting codes for data compression is first investigated by Shannon where he suggests that there is a duality between source coding and channel coding. This duality implies that good channel codes are likely to be good source codes (and vice versa). Recently the problem of source coding using channel codes is receiving increasing attention. The main application of this problem is when data are transmitted over noisy channels. Since standard data compression techniques are not designed for error correction, compressing data and transmitting over noisy channels may cause corruption of the whole compressed sequence. However, instead of employing standard compression techniques, like Huffman coding, one may compress data using error correcting codes that are suitable for both data compression and error correction purposes. Recently, turbo codes, repeat-accumulate codes, low density parity check codes, and fountain codes have been used as lossless source codes and have achieved compression rates very close to the source entropy. When a near-lossless compression is desired, i.e. a small level of distortion is acceptable, the source encoder generates fixed-length codewords and the encoding complexity is low. Theoretically, random codes could achieve near-lossless compression. In literature, this has been proved by presenting a random binning scheme. Practically, all powerful channel codes, e.g. turbo codes, can follow the same procedure as suggested in random binning and achieve compression rates close to the entropy. On the other hand, if a completely lossless compression is required, i.e. if the distortion must be forced to zero, the source encoding is a complicated iterative procedure that generates variable-length codewords to guarantee zero distortion. However, the large complexity of encoding imposes a large delay to the system. The iterative encoding procedure can be regarded as using a nested code where each codeword of a higher-rate code is formed by adding parities to a codeword of some lower-rate code. This iterative encoding is proposed for practical codes, e.g. turbo codes and low density parity check (LDPC) codes, in the literature. In contrast to near-lossless source coding, in the lossless case no random coding theory is available to support achievability of entropy and specify distribution of the compression rate.  We have two main contributions in this thesis. Our first contribution is presenting a tree structured random binning scheme to prove that nested random codes asymptotically achieve the entropy. We derive the probability mass function of the compression rate and show how it varies when increasing the block length. We also consider a more practical tree structured random binning scheme, where parities are generated independently and randomly, but they are biased. Our second contribution is to decrease the delay in turbo source coding. We consider turbo codes for data compression and observe that existing schemes achieve low compression rates; but because of large block length and large number of iterations they impose a large delay to the system. To decrease this delay we look at the problem of source coding using short block length turbo codes. We show how to modify different components of the encoder to achieve low compression rates. Specifically we modify the parity interleaver and use rectangular puncturing arrays. We also replace a single turbo code by a library of turbo codes to further decrease the compression rate. Since the scheme is variable-length and also many codes are used, the codeword length along with the code index (index of the turbo code which is used for compression) are transmitted as an overhead. Transmission of this overhead increases the compression rate. We propose a detection method to detect this overhead from the codeword. Therefore, the overhead is no longer transmitted since it is detected from the codeword at the decoder. This detection method will reduce the compression rate for short block length systems but it becomes less attractive for large block length codes.


identifier: Hu, Shilian  (2007) Surface finish analysis of composite automotive panels.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Composite plates and panels are increasingly used in automotive body parts. These composite structures possess excellent strength and stiffness properties. For these applications, the surface finish of exterior surface of the composite panel is of critical importance to obtain customer acceptance. Automakers pursue to attain surface finish of class A for composite panels, in which they believe class A's surface finish should be very smooth and beautiful. Due to the lack of a good objective method to describe Class A surface finish, the surface finish of Class A is often determined by visual observation. On the other hand, for low cost operation, Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) is used to manufacture composite panels. Process parameters of RTM affect the surface quality of molded panel. There is a strong desire on the part of the automakers to obtain objective means for evaluation of surface finish. This objective means may allow automated correlation between process parameters and surface finish. This facilitates process optimization. Composite plates made by the RTM process using different process parameters (i.e amount of Low Profile Additive (LPA), process temperature and time) may have variations in the surface finish.  Current objective surface measurement techniques can not differentiate the qualities of these surfaces, thus can not be used easily to optimize the process parameters.  Work done in this thesis has resulted in the development of a new technique that is capable of objectively differentiating the quality of the surface of one composite plate to another


identifier: Kawwas, Charlie  (2007) Performance enhancements in next generation multi-service broadband ring networks.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Multi-service broadband networks are forming the basis of a converged service and transport infrastructure. These next generation networks use the Internet Protocol (IP) and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) to deliver service and network convergence. The dominant topology, especially in the Edge and Core of such networks, is the ring. Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) has emerged as a key technology and IEEE standard (IEEE 802.17) in delivering Edge and Core transport convergence enabling high utilization, resiliency and fairness. However, the current standard has several drawbacks such as slow convergence, severe oscillation, inefficient utilization of the dual-ring and inconsistent class of service handling. We examine multiple classes of IP services in the Edge and Core networks connected over ring topologies and review the pros and cons of RPR versus alternative solutions. We devise a new technique to increase the performance of RPR and optimize the use of the dual-ring bandwidth while distinguishing between various classes of service. We refer to this technique as Flow-based Priority Distribution (FPD); we take into account the total bandwidth available on both counter-rotating rings, and allocate flow bandwidth based on availability, cost and traffic prioritization. We also introduce a new transit buffer design, referred to as 3-TB design, which provides consistent service differentiation across the network. We analyze the performance of our techniques, and compare the results with current and recent techniques in the RPR research. We recommend the combination of FPD and 3-TB by Service Providers for evolving their networks to a packet-based infrastructure and delivering new IP-based services.


identifier: Janarthanan, Vasudevan  (2007) Formalization of uniprocessor and multiprocessor scheduling of real-time systems using supervisory control of discrete-event systems.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The theory of supervisory control of discrete-event systems has been applied to real-time systems. The contribution of our proposed work lies in the development of a formal constructive method for controlling the preemptive execution of real-time tasks on both uniprocessor and multiprocessor systems. The set of all possible timed traces of the system is specified by a discrete timed automaton, where each transition is associated with an event occurrence or the passage of one unit of time. This approach allows a unified view of scheduling theory based on the timing analysis of models of real-time applications, meaning that the problem of determining schedulability and finding out a suitable scheduling algorithm are assumed to be intermingled issues, with the solution of one in turn is a solution to the other too.  First, a framework for designing universal schedulers for real-time tasks on uniprocessors based on Supervisory Control Theory (SCT) is presented. For this purpose, priorities are introduced in SCT and applied to the setting of discrete timed automata in order to develop a formal and unified framework for task scheduling on a single CPU. A universal scheduler nondeterministically selects a task for execution in such a way that all timing constraints are met in a minimally restrictive fashion, while it contains all feasible deterministic scheduling policies.  We then extend that framework by providing a formal constructive method for controlling the preemptive and migrative execution of hard real-time tasks while scheduling them on a set of uniform processors. The methodology relies on the idea that the model of the scheduled system can be obtained by successive and appropriate restrictions of controllable actions of a model representing the real-time application. In uniform multiprocessors, each processor is characterized by its own computing capacity, with the interpretation that a task that executes on a processor of computing capacity s for x time units completes s x units of execution.  Since we represented explicitly discrete time in our scheduler design, model sizes were considerably large. The complexity in the synthesis of a scheduler using supervisory control [62] stems from the fact that, with the synchronous product, the number of states of a composite Timed Discrete-Event System (TDES) increases exponentially with the number of real-time tasks. We have attempted to alleviate some of the state explosion problems we had faced while designing schedulers for real-time systems using supervisory control of discrete-event systems framework [39, 41], by providing an informal procedure to design schedulers with reduced state space.


identifier: Morosan, Calin Dan  (2007) Studies of interconnection networks with applications in broadcasting.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The exponential growth of interconnection networks transformed the communication primitives into an important area of research. One of these primitives is the one-to-all communication, i.e. broadcasting. Its presence in areas such as static and mobile networks, Internet messaging, supercomputing, multimedia, epidemic algorithms, replicated databases, rumors and virus spreading, to mention only a few, shows the relevance of this primitive.  In this thesis we focus on the study of interconnection networks from the perspective of two main problems in broadcasting: the minimum broadcast time problem and the minimum broadcast graph problem. Both problems are discussed under the 1-port constant model, which assumes that each node of the network can communicate with only one other node at a time and the transmitting time is constant, regardless of the size of the message.  In the first part we introduce the minimum broadcast time function and we present two new properties of this function. One of the properties yields an iterative heuristic for the minimum broadcast time problem, which is the first iterative approach in approximating the broadcast time of an arbitrary graph.  In the second part we give exact upper and lower bounds for the number of broadcast schemes in graphs. We also propose an algorithm for enumerating all the broadcast schemes and a random algorithm for broadcasting.  In the third part we present a study of the spectra of Knödel graph and their applications. This study is motivated by the fact that, among the three known infinite families of minimum broadcast graphs, namely the hypercube, the recursive circulant, and the Knödel graph, the last one has the smallest diameter.  In the last part we introduce a new measure for the fault tolerance of an interconnection network, which we name the global fault tolerance. Based on this measure, we make a comparative study for the above mentioned classes of minimum broadcast graphs, along with other classes of graphs with good communication properties.


identifier: Liu, Yi  (2007) Enhanced admission control and QoS provisioning in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Golparian, Shaya  (2007) Unveiling : a video critique of Western misconceptions about the representation of women in Iranian film.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis describes an arts-based research project that includes a visual analysis of my video installations and other video art that deals with social and political issues of women in Iran. For this research I looked at cinema as a medium with the power to create a national identity and a national image and I investigated the reasons behind the western misconceptions about the representation of women in Iranian films. I also focused on the value of metaphor as a tool for visual research and I did a visual analysis of metaphors that Shirin Neshat, an Iranian video artist, and I used in our videos. This project explores a theoretical basis for artistic practice, positions it within the discourse of research and exemplifies one way that visual arts practice can be theorized as research.  This thesis consists of an in depth literature review on the topics of representation of gender and politics of Islam in Iranian cinema, metaphors and visual research; art production (for this part of the research I made my two videos, Unveiling and Dance ); and data analysis/art based research


identifier: Veltman, Heather M  (2007) Girls and their body image : sociopolitical issues in art education.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The thesis is feminist action research based on girl's body image in art education with a small sample of eleven and twelve year old girls from an elementary school in Montreal, Canada. The purpose of the study was to discover if art can assist young girls in resisting cultural stereotypes of feminine beauty. Pre-adolescence was chosen as an age-group to investigate if feminist theory and art-making strategies could promote a positive self image in girls. Issues-based art education was determined to be an appropriate teaching method to explore sociopolitical issues by looking at art and making art. A secondary goal of the study was to understand the dynamics related to teaching and learning about gender oppression, to identify factors that facilitated, and barriers that impeded the successful implementation of the body image project.  The results of the research indicate that the participants' body image dissatisfaction was influenced by media images, but that it originated in body-based harassment from boys at school. Also, the stereotype that 'girls are nice,' seen as an inherent feature of femininity, was a major stumbling block for the girls that necessitated self-silencing strategies. Nevertheless, it appeared that the girls used the body image workshops to practice their voices to address issues of gender inequity. Through analysis, what the participants said, in combination with their silence about significant life changes, offered insights into gaps where girls' self-esteem--and body image--can be enhanced through feminist education and art


identifier: Wang, Kunyi  (2007) Electronic trading, liquidity and information efficiency : evidence from the Montreal exchange.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This paper studies the deviation spread of the Equity Index S&P/TSX 60 Futures Contract SXF's daily price from the Cost of Carry Model before and after the contract is launched on the electronic trading platform in the Montreal Exchange. The relative stability of the deviation spread after the introduction of electronic trading shows strong market efficiency improvement. Besides this, after examining the relationship of the deviation spread with the trading volume and some other information sources generated on the trading venue before and after the introduction of the electronic trading, it is found that electronic trading greatly mitigates these information sources' adverse impacts on the spread's stability. This empirical evidence suggests that the information efficiency facilitated by the electronic trading may not conflict with the liquidity enhancement in the public exchange organization.


identifier: Liu, Gang  (2007) Automated cutter size and orientation determinations for multi-axis sculptured part milling.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In CNC machining of sculptured surface parts, using larger cutters can get better surface quality and higher productivity. However, the chance of gouging and interfering with the part surfaces during machining increases. In my thesis research, an innovative, generic method is proposed to determine optimal cutter sizes and orientations for 3- and 4-axis free-form surface end-milling without gouging and interference. The main research contribution is that, to cut a part surface at a cutter-contact point, the size and orientation of the optimal cutter, which is the minimum of all imaginary cutters that over-cut or collide with the part surfaces, are formulated with a global optimization problem. My work has proposed a hybrid global optimization method, which is a combination of the particle swarm optimization method and the local optimization method, and applied it to this optimization problem. Thus, the calculated optimal cutter is the largest tool to machine the cutter-contact point without gouging and interference. Based on the optimal cutters for all the cutter-contact points, a group of standard end-mills can be selected to be as large as possible for machining these part surfaces. To demonstrate the advantages of this new approach, two sculptured parts are adopted, one is a hair dryer mold with 24 free-form surface patches and the other is an axial-flow compressor. By applying this approach, a group of cutters and their orientations can be determined to achieve a high machining efficiency and ensure the surface accuracy and finish. The 3- and 4-axis machining for these parts are simulated with the CATIA V5 CAD/CAM system.


identifier: Rabbani Abolfazli, Ali Reza  (2007) New mapping schemes for multi-dimensional constellation in MIMO-BICH-ID systems.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Recently, Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) systems have shown a tremendous potential to increase the spectral efficiency and the reliability of wireless communication. These aspects are quantified in terms of the spatial multiplexing gain and the diversity gain respectively. It was shown that there is a trade-off between diversity and multiplexing gains. Bit Interleaved Coded Modulation with Iterative Decoding (BICM-ID) for Multiple Input and Multiple Output channels has recently been addressed as an effective mean to achieve high data rates while maintaining high diversity.  It has been shown that, when signal constellation, interleaver and error control code are fixed, signal mapping has a crucial influence on the error performance of a BICM-ID system. The role of signal mapping applies to the error performance of MIMO-BICM-ID system.  In this thesis, the design of constellation mapping for MIMO-BICM-ID system is studied. Based on minimizing pair-wise error probability, a design criterion is proposed to find the optimal constellation mapping for MIMO-BICM-ID. To reduce computational complexity of exhaustive search, Binary Switching Algorithm is improved to find the optimal solution. Using the design criterion and employing the Binary Switching Algorithm, some optimal constellation mappings are found for 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional cases.  A measurement based on mutual information is developed to evaluate the proposed constellation mappings. It is shown that proposed mappings sacrifice bit-wise mutual information without a priori information but improve significantly when perfect a priori knowledge is available. At the receiver, to avoid the computational complexity of the optimal Maximum-Likelihood (NIL) detector, List Sphere Decoder (LSD) is used as the inner detector.  Simulation results demonstrate that proposed schemes outperform conventional ones significantly at high signal to noise ratio (SNR) over fading channels. System simulations are carried out specifically for 2-dimensional QPSK, 2-dimensional 8QAM and 3-dimensional QPSK constellations/mappings. Results show an improvement of 1.3 dB, 1.6 dB and 1.8 dB compared to conventional constellation mappings over slow fading channels, respectively. This improvement increase to 3.5 dB, 2.7 dB and 2.4 dB for fast fading channels


identifier: Singh, Pramit  (2007) Tracking epileptic patients in digital videos for automated video-EEG monitoring.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Video EEG monitoring is considered to be the most successful application for the diagnosis of the epileptic patients. The movements of the patient are recorded in the form of a digital video along with the EEG, over a significant duration of time. This enables the analysis of the behavior of the patient during the seizures, and is critical in determining the area of the brain that is responsible for the seizures. As the video recording is extensive in time, automatic tracking of the patient is a practical need. This would not only make the monitoring process error free, but would also lower the costs associated with the need for the human intervention. The aim of this thesis is to develop a system to automate the video EEG monitoring of the epileptic patients. Due to the prior information available about the physical environment of the patient, feature-based tracking method is preferred in this thesis over the motion-based techniques. The available features are identified and analyzed for developing the tracking algorithm. The skin color is used as one of the features and a new skin color detection filter, which is shown to perform reasonably well for detecting the human skin color, has been developed. The cap worn by the patient to support the electrodes on the head is developed into a second feature by drawing a pattern on the cap. A pattern recognition technique using the Hough transform for line detection is proposed to detect this feature. The two features are jointly used together to develop an algorithm for locating the patient in the room. The tracking performance of this proposed feature-based algorithm is tested extensively under varying conditions and is shown to provide reasonable performance so that it can be used for practical implementation in a tracking system.


identifier: Ren, Ciwei  (2007) Characterization of insulator layers in magnetic tunneling junctions with applications in memory devices.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Magnetic tunnel junctions ( MTJ s) are electrical devices that display a large change in resistance when an external magnetic field applied to the junctions. MTJ s have applications in non-volatile memory element in Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM).  MTJ is composed of two ferromagnetic metallic electrodes and one insulating layer. The insulating layer is inserted in between the two electrodes. When a voltage is applied between the two electrodes, a tunneling current will flow through the insulating layer. An applied magnetic field can change the current direction due to influences on ferromagnetic material causing a change in resistance. The tunneling magnetoresistance ( TMR ) is a measure of the sensitivity of the device to magnetic fields.  It is common that an aluminium oxide ( Al 2 O 3 ) tunneling barrier, which is made by oxidation of a thin layer of aluminium ( Al ), is used in most MTJ s design. Several oxidation processes have been applied to achieve high quality barrier layers. Typical processes are oxidations in atmosphere, in a pure oxygen environment, oxygen reactive sputtering and RF plasma. By applying these techniques, several groups have reported the TMR ratios greater than 30%. The main disadvantage of these processes is that the oxidation rate is very fast, and usually it takes not more than 1{598}40 seconds to complete the oxidation. It is difficult to control the thickness of oxidation layer, which yields an Al 2 O 3 layer either under-oxidized or over-oxidized.  Aluminium nitride ( AlN ) is an insulating material which can take the place of Al 2 O 3 in these devices. The nitridation process of Al films is expected to progress much slower than the oxidation process of Al films, due to the lower diffusion coefficient of nitrogen in the insulating layer compare to that of oxygen. The research objective of this work is to investigate the effect of nitridation of the insulator layers in MTJ devices. For this, different methods are used to nitridize the insulator layer which is chosen to be as a thin layer of Al. The effect of post-processing annealing is also studied. The tunneling junction resistances versus external magnetic field, and tunneling junction I{598}V characteristic for different samples were measured, compared and discussed. Finally, conclusions are made to compare these techniques with those already available in practise


identifier: Vasefy, Farnaz  (2007) Capability of rhamnolipid and two biological products in bioremediation of oil in marine environment.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Each year more than 1.3 million metric tonnes of oil are released into the seas from manmade and natural sources. While mechanical and chemical processes have proven to have limited effectiveness, in many cases biological techniques are promising alternatives because of the lower costs, environmental friendliness associated with them. This study focuses on assessing the effectiveness of a rhamnolipid biosurfactant (JBR 425(TM)) and two other commercial biological products on biodegradation of weathered light crude oil, heavy crude oil, and diesel fuel spilled on saline water following the USEPA's biological effectiveness test method.  The two products contain bacterial consortia and nutrients and were used as supplementary additives to enhance the biodegradation rate and extent of hydrocarbon compounds. Results show that at 20°C and 35 [per thousand] salinity, the mixture of rhamnolipid biosurfactant and one of the biological products overall produced the highest percentage of biodegradation at 81% for diesel fuel, 76% for light crude oil, and 64% for heavy crude oil after 28 days of experiment. Degradation rates of oil types for most of the treatments were in the order of diesel fuel > light crude oil > heavy crude oil and generally removal percentage and microbial densities had a direct relationship. The results obtained from this study show the potential for petroleum hydrocarbon removal enhancement in various oils by the addition of biological agents to the rhamnolipid biosurfactant


identifier: Ramachandran, Radhakrishnan  (2007) Model driven educational assistance for patients.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Benefits of patient education in improving patient's compliance to treatment and self management are well recognized by the health care community. Such benefits contribute to the growing interest in the use of computers to complement traditional means such as providing leaflets, instruction by the nurse and patient-doctor dialogue. Over the years a number of systems have been developed for patient education addressing the personalization and information needs of patients. Most of those systems focus mainly on personalizing the contents to be presented and give lesser importance to usability or user interface design of the software. As a result, many such systems are not deployed in hospitals. The primary focus of this thesis is to propose a patient education framework that can be successfully deployed and used in a typical hospital setting. We have explored the avenues that are identified important to have personalization in a patient education system. Model Driven Educational Assistance (MDEA) framework uses a combination of XML Topic Maps and the Learning Unit Classes (LUC) model for flexible knowledge organization. A simple and intuitive user interface was designed to help patients learn easily from the system. A functional prototype has been developed to assist transplant patients as they learn about their post transplant care. The pilot test was conducted over a period of six months at the transplant center of a Montreal hospital. The results of the evaluation were promising indicating that the software was easy to learn and to use.


identifier: Hachem, Mohamed  (2007) Cinematic presence system.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Cinematic presence system

abstract: Over the last ten years, the computer has extended its functionalities from a business tool used by computer literates to a multimedia display that provides information, entertainment and communication to all people. This evolution calls for new interaction technologies. Indeed, the stationary interaction of the keyboard and the mouse limits the usability of the computer. Both the mouse and the keyboard were introduced to write documents or to execute commands, but what tools were created to permit a dynamic navigational system through a movie or real-time editing of a song ? Such an enhanced manipulation of media content requires another human-computer interactive approach. Few of the current methodologies of interaction have considered the possibilities of real time editing of moving image content or musical scores. Our contribution to more user-centric interactive systems is the Cinematic Presence System (CPS). The CPS is a non-tangible user interface that stresses the notion of Free Body Hypermedia Interaction (FBHI--Mohamed Hachem and Jean-Claude Bustros), which frees the user from following certain steps, wearing certain tools, or enduring any control over his/her senses while interacting with a multimedia display. CPS consists of a multimedia display that reacts to the user's movements. A user's interaction with the display allows the media content to be navigated and extracted in a non-linear fashion. Furthermore, this user-system interaction will promote a renewed, expanded cinema experience, where the user can interact dynamically with the image, the environment, and the screen.


identifier: Cueva, David  (2007) A Hilbert space compression framework for parallel relational OLAP.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The Data Cube is the central abstraction behind the power of On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems. It enables knowledge workers to analyze vast amounts of enterprise data, in order to make timely and informed decisions. Nevertheless, this potential is accompanied by massive amounts of storage requirements. This fact challenges even the most powerful parallel systems to efficiently pack and manage the data, allowing the delivery of fast responses to user queries.  An ample number of methods concentrate on generic data compression, but relatively few have been proposed which fulfill the requirements of distributed OLAP environments. This thesis investigates these opportunities by presenting a compression framework specially tailored for parallel OLAP. New algorithms for data and index compression are proposed. The data encoding method is based on the Hilbert space-filling curve. It eliminates the inherent redundancies in OLAP data and preserves compression granularity at the block level. The index encoding technique is based on the concept of packed R-trees, and when combined with our native query engine provides fast and I/O efficient access to the specific blocks satisfying a user request. Additionally, unlimited scalability is achieved by a set of supporting techniques permitting the framework to handle arbitrarily large data sets.  We have performed a broad evaluation of our framework, including comparison benchmarks with several influential published methods. Our compression algorithms deliver state-of-the-art ratios with averages above 80% for data and 95% for indexes. Finally, the number of blocks accessed by the query engine is typically reduced by a factor of 10


identifier: Mirbagheri, Ashkan  (2007) Design, modeling, fabrication and testing of a membrane piezoelectric tactile sensor with four sensing elements.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The fundamental requirement of a competent tactile sensor for manipulating an object is to determine the magnitude and the position of an applied force on it. In addition, it is important to determine orientation of the object in relation to the tactile sensor. In order to achieve these goals, most investigators have attempted to design a tactile sensor using an array of sensing elements arranged in matrix form. There are several problems associated with this type of tactile sensors. These problems include cross-talk between sensing elements, fragility, and complexity. This thesis reports on the design, modeling, fabrication and testing of a membrane tactile sensing system with only four sensing elements. By using membrane stress combined with triangulation approach, it is shown that it is possible to overcome the above problems. The prototype sensor consists of a single film of 25 micron thick Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF) film, which is held between two 12 mm-thick flat Plexiglass plates, each with a 90 mm-diameter center hole. Four square sensing elements, each 3 min side, were fabricated around the center of the membrane. The fabrication of the sensing elements is performed using photolithographic and etching techniques. By applying force with a probe of various shapes and sizes at various points away from the sensing elements, and using a geometric mapping process, the sensor is calibrated. As the result of calibration various isocharge contours were drawn. Using both finite element and experimental analysis, it is shown that it is possible to determine the position, orientation and the magnitude of the applied load though various flat shaped probes, by using only four sensing elements. The experimental and the finite element results are compared. It is shown that there is a good correlation between the finite element predictions and experimental data.


identifier: MacKenzie, Heather Ann  (2007) Seeking authentic educational development practice : a spiritual and philosophical journey.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis is a spiritual and philosophical journey whose purpose is to explore the question: How can I realize my authenticity more fully in my practice as educational developer? The investigation is situated autobiographically in various dilemmas of educational development practice that I experienced. These experiences are consequences of tensions between the performative demands of the culture of western universities and the more ontological demands of authenticity. Authenticity calls us to a moral, "higher" educational purpose to become persons in a more developed sense. I propose that performative acts and utterances designed to create an impression of excellence and efficiency, and to improve competitiveness and wealth of universities, can obscure this higher educational purpose, denigrating authenticity of individual educators and of the institutions within which we work. I also propose that the Social Sciences research paradigms underpinning academic development as an emerging field of study and practice have methodological limitations for educational research. This lack of an authentically educational methodological paradigm, focused on the development of persons and rooted in educational practice, is at the heart of the stated problems of lack of legitimacy in the field of academic development. In this thesis I both employ and propose philosophical fieldwork as a new, inclusive paradigm for higher education research and practice that is concerned with the "higher" development of persons. This paradigm does not necessarily exclude or delegitimate performativie criteria or traditional or postmodern methodological approaches. It acknowledges and critiques them in the context of what it is to be educational. At the same time this paradigm includes and legitimizes a moral horizon (and language) of education that facilitates individual and institutional authenticity. I identify moral and spiritual dispositions and qualities of listening, thinking, and being underpinning this educational methodology--a pathway for realizing my authenticity more fully in my practice.


identifier: Long, Nancy  (2007) Smelling and tasting are believing : a studio inquiry into an intersensorial practice.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis I sought to explore an intersensorial connection with my studio and art teaching practice through a studio-based inquiry by asking how can I utilize the senses of taste and smell in my studio practice in the visual arts? The question was first explored by focusing on certain physiological and psychological functions of our gustatory and olfactory senses and their link to memory and secondly by looking to literature within cultural studies, philosophies of art and art practices. This literature suggests that there is a growing acknowledgement of an intersensory way of knowing, yet its potential in the art classroom is still largely untapped.  I chose to answer my question through a heuristic methodology by drawing from the research findings, personal observations, dialogues and experiences on taste and smell, memory and perception. The methodology was used to answer my question through a creative synthesis in four installations linking the two senses and memory and perception. Although I deem the installations as personally successful, I discovered that my personal aesthetic is largely based on pattern and order, which could both hinder and help in my teaching of an intersensorial practice. Teaching toward sensory awareness in a literate, visually oriented society may need to begin with a corporeal re-connection with and re cognition of our environment. Through the recognition of the "aesthetics of the everyday" such suggestions and implications for the art classroom are discussed


identifier: Hannan, Christopher  (2007) Measurements and modeling of air and heat flow in a brick wall cavity.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Rain screen wall systems are effective for control of rain water. The ventilation in the air space of such walls is also expected to play a role in the drying of cladding and control of vapor flows through the wall. For example, wet cladding exposed to solar radiation may subject the wall to inward vapor flow, unless an air cavity short-circuits that vapor flow. Although the role of the air cavity has been previously studied, it is relevant to evaluate more quantitatively the movement of air within the air cavity between the cladding and the backwall.  The effect of wind pressure notwithstanding, convective movement of air in the cavity is the result of buoyancy. Air movement can result from the increased temperature of the cladding due to solar radiation. The first objective of this thesis was the development of a numerical model of air movement driven by the variation of wall temperature with height, taking into account heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation and mass transfer by diffusion and convection. The model was validated by means of comparison with analytical results from the literature, as well as with two sets of experimental results. The experimental procedures involved the evaluation of the magnitude and direction of the air movement within a large-scale cavity with a uni-directional anemometer and with particle image velocimetry. Once the boundary conditions were known, they were used to determine experimentally the mass transfer coefficients at the surface of wetted brick in the cavity with a horizontal wind tunnel setup. The validated model was used to evaluate parametrically the air movement's effects on heat and moisture flow within the assembly, assuming the brick had wetted by rain water before exposure to the solar radiation. Conclusions were drawn as to the effect of the air movement on the evacuation of heat and moisture from the assembly, based on variation of six parameters.  It was found that the air movement in the cavity plays a significant role in the drying of the cladding by saturation of rain water. As well, under average summer conditions for Montreal, the air velocity in the cavity was found to have an approximate peak of 0.20 m/s, neglecting the effects of wind pressure. The air flow is turbulent at the weephole entrance of the cavity, before becoming laminar within approximately 10 centimeters of flow development. Finally, convective mass and heat transfer surface coefficients increase with air velocity, except for air velocities lower than 0.10 m/s


identifier: Wu, Yang  (2007) Experimental study of hygrothermal properties for building materials.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis, the hygrothermal properties of building materials are studied experimentally and numerically. The properties of 10 building materials which are widely used in Canada were determined using either international standard or well-documented and peer-reviewed approaches. The measured products include OSB, plywood, fiberboard and spruce, stucco, gypsum board, two insulation products, one vapor membrane, and construction paper. The properties that were determined include thermal conductivity, sorption/desorption isotherms, vapor permeability, water absorption coefficient, liquid diffusivity, and air permeability. Those data will be used as the input of advanced heat, air, and moisture movement (HAM) models.  The moisture storage and release of building materials during the indoor humidity changes were investigated in this thesis. A test facility was developed to characterize this property, which is referred to as moisture buffering value (MBV). MBVs of five products were determined. It is found that fiberboard has the greatest MBV while plywood has the least MBV. Through the curve fitting of measurement data, the relationship of mass change and time elapsed have been represented by mathematical equations.  The HAM model, hygIRC 1D, was used to simulate the MBC experiment. The measured material properties from current work were used as the input for the simulation model. For gypsum board, OSB, and fiberboard the overall agreement between the experimental and simulation results is acceptable. However, the simulated weight changes of plywood and stucco are higher than the measured value. These differences could be the resultant of the variation in material properties of these building products. In addition, parametric analysis was performed. It shows that moisture transfer coefficient has the greatest effect in the numerical simulation of moisture transfer within fiberboard; the sorption isotherm also gives significant influence. Whereas, the liquid diffusivity has almost no effect.


identifier: Adjemian, Aram  (2007) Canada's moral mandate for Armenia : sparking humanitarian and political interest, 1880-1923.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis explores the efforts undertaken by Canadians in support of the Armenian people from 1880 to the 1920s. Canadian Protestant missionaries stationed in the Ottoman Empire wrote home about atrocities they witnessed, and some of their reports and their pleas for assistance were published in the Canadian media. Money for Armenian relief was collected and sent abroad on several occasions. Imperialist-minded Canadian intellectuals and politicians influenced by their Christian heritage and their work for social reform were especially involved in the Armenian relief efforts.  In early 1920, some Canadian Protestant groups lobbied the government to oppose the return of the Armenian provinces to Turkish rule. The Canadian government echoed these pleas, and subsequently demanded that the British government share with it timely and appropriate information about the negotiations of the Turkish peace treaty. Several prominent British and Canadian individuals suggested that Canada take on a daunting League of Nations mandate for Armenia should the United States fail to do so. However, the vigorous reaction was short lived, as interested parties became increasingly more preoccupied with domestic concerns.  The failure to prepare the Canadian public for more sustained protest activities on behalf of the Armenians and initiate a discussion of a more meaningful Canadian role offers a practical perspective to consider the reaction to more recent humanitarian crises. It illustrates how preparing the public to support profound sacrifices in personal and public funds is vital if international humanitarian interventions are to prove truly effective. Most of the primary manuscript material cited in this thesis was consulted at the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario


identifier: Su, Chang  (2007) Video object detection using fast and accurate change detection and thresholding.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Video object detection is an important video processing technique. Change detection and thresholding based video object detection techniques are widely used due to their efficiency. However, change detection and thresholding in real-world video sequences is challenging due to the complexity of video contents and of environmental artifacts. This thesis proposes a color-based change detection and a video-content adaptive thresholding method for accurate and fast video object detection.  The proposed color-based change detection algorithm is based on the YUV color model, which has been proved as the most effective color model for object detection. First, frame-differencing is carried out in each channel of a video frame. Then, the pixel intensities in both gray-level channel Y and the color channels U and V of the difference frames are statistically modeled. Second, based on the statistical model of the gray-levels in Y channel, an entropy-based blocks-of-interest scatter estimation algorithm is proposed for locating the frame blocks potentially containing moving objects; and based on the statistical models of the color intensities in color channels, a statistical model of the maximum-intensity between U and V channels are obtained. Third, significance test is applied to the detected blocks-of-interest in both gray-level channel and color channels based on the gray-level statistical model of Y channel and the maximum-intensity statistical model of U and V channels. The gray-levels of the non-significant pixels in Y channel but significant in the U or the V channels are then compensated according to their significance probabilities in the color channels. Finally, change masks can be obtained by a thresholding algorithm.  The proposed thresholding algorithm for change detection is based on a change region scatter estimation algorithm and a video-content assessment algorithm to detect the empty frames and estimate the strength of local unimportant changes. According to the proposed video-content assessment, the global threshold of a difference frame is discriminatively computed. For an empty frame, a noise-statistic based thresholding algorithm with a low false alarm is applied to obtain the threshold. Otherwise, the global threshold is obtained by an optimum-thresholding based artifact-robust thresholding algorithm.  Experimental results show that (1) with the support from the scatter estimation of the blocks-of-interest, the proposed change detection algorithm is efficient and robust to multiple video contents; (2) the proposed thresholding algorithm clearly outperforms the widely used intensity-distribution based thresholding methods and more efficient and more stable than the state-of-the-art spatial-property based thresholding methods for change detection; and (3) the video object detection technique consisting of the proposed change detection and the proposed thresholding algorithms is robust to artifacts and multiple video contents, and is especially suitable for real-world on-line video applications such as video surveillance


identifier: Hesketh, Michael Sean  (2007) Evaluation of mass seed crops in Pidea engelmanni and Picea glauca using vegetation indices derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper data.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Mass seeding is the intermittent and regionally synchronous production of large seed crops among conspecific populations. With conifers, the large female cones, concentrated preferentially in the upper crowns of trees, may occupy a sizable part of the upper canopy during a mass seed event. In this study, I evaluate the utility of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data for the detection of temporal and spatial trends in white ( Picea glauca ) and Engelmann spruce ( P. engelmannii ) mass cone production. Through analysis of vegetation indices (Vls) calculated from TM data along with estimates of cone crop size and stand basal area per area from sites in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia and the Abitibi region of Quebec, I came to three main conclusions. (1) The presence of a mass cone crop is readily detectable in analysis of the difference between the Vls from the mass seed year and the years previous and subsequent. (2) The incorporation of spruce basal area per area allows for accurate spatial modeling of this difference. (3) The direct correlation of the Vls to field cone production estimates may be possible, but will require further research before it yields satisfactory results.


identifier: Largo, Marissa  (2007) From the pearl of the orient to uptown : a collaborative arts-based inquiry with Filipino youth activists in Montreal.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Informed by social reconstruction, critical pedagogy, and critical multiculturalism, this thesis examines the ways in which collaborative art production can assist a youth activist organization in furthering its goals for individual and collective empowerment. Enacting the roles of the community artist/educator as facilitator and gatherer, two arts-based projects were developed for and with Filipino youth activists in Montreal as a way to extend their community work into art activism.  Embracing participatory action research as the primary methodology, this research demonstrates that collaborative art production, tied to the concerns and values of an organization, allows its members to identify and visually represent community problems, connect personal experiences to larger group reality, and envision alternatives for their community. I reflect on my role as a cultural worker in this process and finally, I discuss implications of this research for community art education and community organizing.*  *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a DVD as part of the dissertation). The DVD requires the following system requirements: Windows MediaPlayer or RealPlayer


identifier: Clamen, Jennifer M  (2007) Creating a blueprint for law reform : a sex worker rights community project.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The international sex worker rights community has been struggling towards decriminalization of the sex industry since the 1970s. Alongside activist and political work on behalf of the community itself, there has been a plethora of political and academic research from outside the community in Canada that attempts to define the needs of sex workers and make recommendations for law reform. Most legal reform recommendations, however, have not included sex workers' perspectives. In response to this and to the current political climate of Canadian prostitution law review, this thesis highlights how a small group of sex workers inform a political process by identifying their own recommendations for legal reform using through community-based action research. It also provides a privileged look at how sex workers organize around law reform, providing an opportunity for sex workers to participate in an action research project where they construct an ideal model of law reform. In turn, this project initiates an empowered community response to policy reform through research, as is rarely done by communities themselves.


identifier: Gerlach, Caroline  (2007) La traduction et l'adaptation de The Last of the Mohicans de James Fenimore Cooper dans la culture allemande au XIXe siècle : vers une éthique de l'adaptation.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: For this research project in Translation Studies, we intend, by taking as a starting point the recent theories about ethics in translation of different authorities, to inquire if there also exists an ethics for adaptation, which would necessarily be different from the ethics of translation itself. The different researchers are Antoine Berman, Lawrence Venuti, Henri Meschonnic and Jean-Marc Gouanvic. It was Jean-Marc Gouanvic who gave the impetus to this project by asking several pertinent questions about adaptation in relation to his social theories about translation.  As corpus for our textual analysis, we have chosen the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, in particular the story of the Last of the Mohicans, written in 1826, one of the first German translations made in 1826 by Heinrich Döring, as well as the first German adaptation for children, written by Alexander Friedrich Franz Hoffmann and published in 1845.  After having presented James Fenimore Cooper, his work and the complete German translation of the Last of the Mohicans by Heinrich Döring seen in the light of the theories of our researchers, we have put the emphasis on the theories of Lawrence Venuti, allowing us, within an exposition about the reception, imitators and epigones of James Fenimore Cooper in Germany, to present an overview of the literature generated by this first Indian novel. Thereafter follows a detailed textual analysis between the English original, the complete German translation and the first adaptation for children in accordance with the criteria of the notions of signifiance and illusio that we have taken from Henri Meschonnic and Jean-Marc Gouanvic. Finally, we have put forward several hypotheses and conclusions in the end of the analysis.


identifier: Bélanger, Maryse-Mylène  (2007) Untangling threads : the translation of Marie Hélène Poitra's Soudain le Minotaure.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Translation in the age of postmodernism can no longer be simply conceived as the reproduction of an original, but has become subject to the rewriting of an already pluralized original. Postmodernists gave awareness to the text by questioning whether it has any identifiable limits and borders. The text is conceptualized as an intertext, itself a translation, blurring the distinction of the original by carrying traces of other texts. It deconstructs the hierarchy between the original text and its versions, as well as reconfiguring the conception of authorship and originality, and thus, translation.  This thesis puts this theory to test by illustrating the translation of a postmodern text, Soudain le Minotaure, written by Marie Hélène Poitras, a young Québécoise whose artistic creativity is darkly alluring. It is a novel so rich in postmodern substance that a straightforward, linear, literal approach to its translation is virtually impossible. Poitras's novel interprets distinctively postmodern subjects: the author, intertextuality, the Other, language, realism, truth and society, which are examined in the first two sections of this thesis to support the translation. The third section examines the difficulties and challenges met during the translation of a postmodern text. The bulk of the thesis is the English translation of the first half of this remarkable novel, the newly titled Suddenly the Minotaur


identifier: Koepke, Melora  (2007) Corpus Delicti : disappearance and bodily traces in Vancouver, 1978-2007.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Public stories regarding human mass murder tend to focus on killers as operative forces. The victims are sidelined in their sheer numbers, and the glamour of violence is almost irresistible. Corpus Delicti: Disappearance and Bodily Traces in Vancouver, 1978-2007 is an investigation into the case of Vancouver's missing women who, now, are not only missing from their lives and their neighbourhood, but also, to a large extent, from the stories we tell about them.  Beginning in 2007, Robert Pickton, the so-called "Pig Farm Killer", is being prosecuted for the murders of twenty-six of these women. But our acknowledgement of these women's lost lives is broader than news reporting on details of the crimes committed against them. In order to properly memorialize the missing women and ensure that such disappearance never happens again, it is necessary to tell broader stories about the lives that have been lost.  Since 1978, the growing list of missing women was generally understood by the authorities to be discrete disappearances caused by the geopolitical determinants of the women's lives in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood. Chapter One examines the geographical location of disappearance. In Chapter Two, a history of the "missing women series" in the newspaper shows how this public story put faces and names to these women, and how their public story brought momentum to the case which quickly resulted in a face and name being assigned to their accused killer. Chapter Three looks at various artistic enactments about and around the missing women, and suggests how we, the living, are necessarily implicated ourselves in their absence


identifier: Matlow, Rachel  (2007) Love. Appropriation. Music. Baby : Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku girls.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: With the release of her debut solo album, 2004's Love. Angel. Music. Baby. , No-Doubt front-woman Gwen Stefani turned to the street fashions of Tokyo's Harajuku district for her inspiration. The platinum-blonde Stefani promoted herself by being constantly surrounded with an entourage of four voiceless Asian women, dubbed her "Harajuku Girls". They were on her CD cover, she dedicated a track to them, they performed in her videos, and they danced on her Harajuku Lovers live tour. Stefani even re-named them, "Love", "Angel", "Music", and "Baby" after her new record and clothing line, L.A.M.B. The Harajuku Girls function as Stefani's human accessories--silent, sexed-up, submissive, school-girl muses sent to save her from her dull whiteness. I introduce Stefani as an intertextual celebrity who appropriates, absorbs and crossreferences cultural texts and ethnicities in order to market and brand herself as a distinct entity in the worlds of music and fashion--all while resisting any static signification or "authentic" identity. This thesis questions: (1) how Stefani has appropriated Harajuku culture in ways that reinforce Orientalist ideas of Asian women; (2) how Stefani has used Harajuku culture in order to reinforce her whiteness and distinguish herself as a distinct celebrity brand; (3) if Stefani's representations reveal the performative nature of ethnicity and destabilize essentialist ideas of authenticity; (4) how we may compare the transcultural differences between Harajuku appropriation of American culture and Stefani's appropriation of it; and (5) what the political and cultural implications of Stefani's ethnic signifiers may be.


identifier: Murphy, Michael  (2007) Gore Vidal's historical novels.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Gore Vidal's historical novels

abstract: Published between 1967 and 2000, the seven historical novels that constitute Gore Vidal's American Chronicles series fictionalize major events in U.S. history, beginning with the Revolutionary Wars in the eighteenth century and ending, effectively, in the early 1960s.  A number of critics have characterized the American Chronicles as aesthetically and thematically conventional in the age of postmodernism and the context of what Linda Hutcheon has argued is its hallmark literary manifestation, historiography metafiction. Considered alongside typical historiography metafictions such as Don DeLillo's Libra and E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime , the American Chronicles seem old-fashioned inasmuch as they take a comparatively non-problematic approach to the issue of the historian's ability to know the past; avoid pronounced formal experimentation; and advance a systematic and relatively straightforward periodization of U.S. history in support of the partisan 'platform' Vidal has outlined in his long and prolific career as a commentator on U.S. politics. However, the epistemological and stylistic traditionalism of Vidal's series must be understood within the context of his view that the historical novel should not principally serve the serious American writer as an occasion for philosophizing about historiography, but should enable him to construct a popular, artistically credible, and relatively definitive version of the nation's past whose political implications for the present will influence readers


identifier: Schnier, Zachariah  (2007) The patient.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: The patient

abstract: The collection of stories brought together under the title The Patient attempts to explore the relationship between author, character, and reader through the use of different narrative techniques. Each story is preoccupied in some way with perspective; each attempts to construct a point-of-view in an effort to establish different modes of looking. "B--Street and L" can in this way be seen as the most experimental and pivotal story in the selection, for its multi-perspectival narration is actively engaged in finding different ways of looking at the same thing. Ideally, the trajectory which moves from the egocentric, first-person narration of "Birding," to the distant and ironic tone of the third-person narrator in "The Patient" speaks to this shifting perspective, highlighting in the process the writer, as he negotiates a place for himself within his work.  The central characters in these stories are withdrawn, reticent, and tentative; each resorts to a mode of speech which is in some sense a compensation for these qualities. Elevated speech gestures toward a desire to hide behind the formal properties of language, whereas the naturalized speech of some of the secondary characters reveals a willingness to engage socially. In this way, language becomes another way to construct and articulate perspective


identifier: Silver, Robyn  (2007) Space, place, and identity in the prose of Dionne Brand.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Dionne Brand's prose explores the Black subjects' relation to place and space across both historical and spatial trajectories. Focusing on Brand's prose, the thesis draws on recent scholarship in the areas of literature and social geography to pursue questions of identity and identification and to examine the intersection of gendered and racialized subjectivities with place and space through the foci of language and history. Examinations of At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999), No Burden to Carry (1991), A Map to the Door of No Return (2001), and selected stories from Sans Souci and Other Stories (1988) investigate the implications of place and space in the retrieval and retelling of personal and collective histories. These texts explore how the Canadian present enables the creation of a history for Black subjects in Canada, one that is inflected by the other places and spaces of the Caribbean and Africa. As identities are developed, learned, and articulated through the language of a place, I consider In Another Place, Not Here (1997) and Bread Out of Stone (1994) to explore possibilities of exclusion and silencing, belonging and empowerment, and resistance, as expressed in and through language. Lastly, What We All Long For (2005) highlights a shift in Brand's representation of identities, places, and spaces, and my analysis considers the continuities and new approaches to Brand's depiction of the relation of identity to place and space.


identifier: Walsh, Christine  (2007) Irish travellers : on writing orality, representation and belonging.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Travellers, a traditionally nomadic people indigenous to Ireland, have suffered marginalization and discrimination within modern Ireland. This thesis, informed by Michel Foucault's musings on struggles for power within the modern nation, explores the history of colonialism as an unresolved trauma that contributes to the persecution of Travellers in Ireland. Due to their traditional oral culture as well as systemic racism that excluded them from educational institutions, many Traveller autobiographies (most published in the last twenty years) have been "spoken" works such as Traveller activist Nan Joyce's My Life on the Road , one of two longer autobiographies focused on in this thesis. Joyce's direct style approaches language as primarily a social interaction, characteristic of orality, as she responds to negative representations of Travellers within the dominant culture. Even though Sean Maher's more literary 1972 memoir, The Road to God Knows Where , reflects his formal education, his focus remains on storytelling as he writes to preserve Traveller traditions that he sees as imperilled. Both writers present worldviews that challenge not only the more literary expectations of the presumed non-Traveller reader, but also the academic 'othering' that delegitimizes knowledge derived from orality, and ultimately the rational materialism that validates the homogenizing and normalizing impulses that regulate the modern nation. By re-presenting official versions of history in narratives that include Travellers as active participants, Joyce and Maher reveal the role of storytelling in creating national belonging even as they write to construct legitimate places of belonging for Travellers within the nation.


identifier: Chakravarty, K. Gandhar  (2007) Where have all the Nazirites gone? : the pacification of Judeo-Christian holiness as illuminated by Naziritic motifs in the Bible.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: This thesis compares biblical naziritic behaviour. Through the various, often diametrically opposed characterizations of nazîrs, we can trace the reasons for which conceptions of holiness gradually became pacifistic in the context of Judeo-Christianity (ca. 1250 BCE-150 CE). Two distinct models of biblical naziritism can be posited: the tribal and the cultic nazîr. The tribal nazîr is a lifelong warrior of Yahweh who is consecrated in the womb and must never cut his or her hair or drink wine. The cultic nazîr, however, engages in a temporary vow in which a priest consecrates him or her and, furthermore, the cultic nazîr must also swear off contact from dead bodies during the period of consecration. These classifications, however, serve as no more than signposts to mark the limits of possibility. Often opposing traits and inconsistencies coexist within the characterization of a given naziritic figure. We can make sense of these contradictory representations as follows: when Israel was no more than a warring tribe (ca. 1250-1000 BCE) in Caanan eking out an existence in the promised land, religious heroes had to be warriors of some kind, but as the circumstances of Israel and Judah evolved over centuries, so that the Israelites and Judahites were increasingly subject to the rule of foreign powers, the Jewish priestly ruling class had to make amendments to presuppositions of holiness in order to discourage violent behaviour. The movement away from holy warrior continues to shift further until the incarnation of the holy person in early Christianity is far from militaristic.


identifier: Yang, Rongchang  (2007) Nonlinear interaction of piles-soil-raft during consolidation /cYang Rongchang.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In the literature the analysis of piles-soil-cap interaction received little attention from the geotechnical engineering community. This is mainly due to the complexity of the problem and the difficulties involved in experimental and analytical modelling. This thesis presents highly sophisticated analytical and numerical models to investigate the problem stated and incorporating the pore water pressure dissipation, which takes place during the consolidation process for the plane-strain, axi-symmetrical and three dimensional cases. Furthermore, the theories developed estimate the nonlinear load-settlement relationship of pile-soil-raft interactive foundation, the proportions of loads carried by the raft and piles, the increasing process of the ultimate bearing capacity of piles and the effective stress changes which take place in the soil mass.  Evaluation of piles-soil-caps interaction during pore water pressure dissipation and the consolidation process may positively impact on the foundation settlement and the load sharing mechanism. The interaction is a nonlinear operation which involves the piles in the group, soil surrounding the piles, piles' cap (raft), and excess pore-water pressure (EPWP) in the soil.  In the literature, due to the complexity of the problem stated, the role of the pore water pressure was ignored and accordingly, the raft will share the foundation load when the piles reach the ultimate load. Under this condition, the sharing ratio of the soil-piles load does not change during consolidation and further overestimates the contribution of the raft to the total load.  This thesis presents a nonlinear method of analysis to evaluate the load sharing ratio during the consolidation process and accordingly as a result of the pore water pressure dissipation. The proposed analysis establishes the load-sharing ratio as a function of the load level and load location on the raft. The initial pore water pressure distribution after pile driving was also investigated. It was noted that the pore pressure generated during driving is not only due to cavity expansion but also due to an increase in mean total stress caused by the skin friction along the pile's shaft and on the pile tip. Furthermore, the pore pressure generated by the residual forces is relatively small and can be neglected. The analysis of strength-stress relationship shows that the excess pore pressure generated during pile driving increases almost linearly with depth, which confirms field measurements. Furthermore, fractures in soil during pile driving make the excess pore pressure fall to a stable level equivalent to the effective overburden pressure. This becomes a major factor, which should be considered in the estimation of the excess pore pressure generated within the pile group.  Analytical models are developed to simulate the cases of pore pressure dissipation for plan-strain, axi-symmetrical and rectangle-area problems with only horizontal permeating, and 3-D dissipation problem for uniform soil. Moreover, the numerical inversion of Laplace transform to find solution of pore-pressure dissipation in layered soil is presented. The changing process of the ultimate bearing capacity of pile foundations due to the interaction process is presented. The proposed theories are practical and easy to use. Furthermore, charts for the consolidation level for a pile group and pile length are also given in this thesis.  The simplified and convenient interaction analysis methods established in this thesis were validated using the results obtained by a sophisticated numerical model. This method is capable to estimate the load-settlement curves of pile-soil-raft nonlinear interactions and accordingly, the variations of load sharing proportions.  Key words. piles-soil-raft interaction, pore-water pressure, initial distribution models, nonlinear analyses, consolidation process, numerical methods, effective stress analysis


identifier: Colarossi, Melissa  (2007) The different voices of separation and divorce.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The impact of marital separation and divorce on individuals varies widely, depending on a range of factors. These narratives of separation and divorce explain and clarify why couples break-up, how they negotiate their break-up, and with what consequences. Research is based on heterosexual marriages. I interviewed 12 individuals, 6 males and 6 females, who are separated or divorced. 2 of the 12 respondents were divorced twice, so there is a total of 14 cases, which were then divided into four groups: male and female initiators and non-initiators of separation/divorce. The different voices of divorce reflect both these variables, but also the quality of the courtship, rather than the duration, the relationship with the children and the financial consequences. My findings included that men were in general happier after divorce than the women, the women received custody of the children in all cases, but two cases of parental alienation syndrome were recorded, that happiness after divorce was affected by whether the individual initiated separation or not, that the quality of the sex related to divorce was plural, that the financial consequences for women depended on whether they initiated the separation or not. The voices are so different that further research is necessary.


identifier: Sadri, Javad  (2007) Automatic segmentation and recognition of unconstrained handwritten numeral strings.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Segmentation and recognition of handwritten numeral strings is a very interesting and challenging problem in pattern recognition. It also has a lot of important applications such as: postal code recognition, bank check processing; tax form reading, etc. In this thesis, a new system for the segmentation and recognition of unconstrained handwritten numeral strings is proposed. The system uses a combination of foreground and background features for the segmentation of touching numerals in strings. The method introduces new algorithms for the traversal of top and bottom foreground and background skeletons, and top and bottom contours of numerals. Then; it tries to locate all feature points on these skeletons and contours and alternatively match feature points from top to bottom (or bottom to top) of the images to build all possible candidate segmentation paths (so-called segmentation hypotheses). A novel genetic representation scheme is utilized in order to represent the space of all possible segmentation hypotheses. In order to improve searching and evolution of segmentation hypotheses and facilitate finding the ones with the highest confidence values of segmentation and recognition, this genetic framework utilizes contextual knowledge extracted from string images. A novel evaluation scheme based on segmentation and recognition scores is introduced in order to improve the evaluation of segmentation hypotheses and to enhance the outlier resistance of the system. In order to improve stability and plasticity of our system in the learning and recognition of numerals, a new algorithm for clustering of handwritten digits based on their shapes is proposed. Also, in order to improve the searching power of our system and its convergence, a new evolutionary algorithm based on genetic particle swarm optimization (GBPSO) is proposed. Numerous experiments using images from well known databases of handwritten numeral strings such as CENPARMI, NIST NSTRING SD19, and our newly created databases of Farsi/Arabic numerals have been conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Experiments have shown that proper use of contextual knowledge in segmentation; evaluation and search greatly improves the overall performance of the system. This system shows superior results compared with those reported in the literature.


identifier: He, Junlei  (2007) Peer-to-peer network based on the Knödel Graph.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Knödel graphs W d,n of even order n and degree d , 1 {600} d {600} [Special characters omitted.] log 2 n [Special characters omitted.] , was introduced by W. Knödel for broadcasting and gossiping information in interconnected networks. It has been proved that the diameter of the Knödel graphs W d,2 d is [Special characters omitted.] .  In recent years, peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has attracted a lot of attention from the researchers and application developers. With the development of mobile networks, mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) computing may become a potential "killer application" of the mobile carriers.  In this thesis, we present a P2P network structure based on the Knödel graphs. The routing algorithm takes advantage of the routing heuristics in the Knödel graphs and reduces the routing length of P2P network by half, compared with the currently studied P2P network structures (CHORD and CAN). Given that most mobile devices have limited computing resources, another advantage of the proposed P2P network structure is that it can be flexibly configured to adapt to different MP2P application scenarios, taking into the fact that most mobile devices have limited computing resources. With this model, each mobile node maintains a fixed-size routing table regardless of the size of the whole network, while the tradeoff on routing hops is still acceptable in many MP2P applications.  Some practical heuristics for real mobile network are also proposed in this thesis


identifier: Thamildurai, Anand  (2007) Efficient and scalable indexing techniques for sequence data management.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Sequence data is one of the rapidly growing types of data. New efficient and scalable techniques are needed to support fast access to this type of data. We study indexing techniques for sequence data, especially biological sequence data. The existing solutions for this type of data either support efficient index construction for long sequences or support fast search, but not both. We propose two new indexing techniques, Suffix Tree Top-Down 64 bit and Suffix Tree Depth-First 64 bit, which offer a tradeoff between scalable index construction, index size, and support of fast search. They differ in the order in which the index nodes are recorded but have similar performance. We compare our techniques with the best known existing techniques, which are based on suffix trees (TDD) or suffix arrays (ESA). The results of our extensive experiments show that while our proposed techniques have a slightly slower construction time for small sequences and larger index size compared to TDD, they outperform TDD in search. We further show that for very large sequences, such as the human genome (about 3GB), our techniques are superior to TDD due to the use of dynamic buffering and better index representation. Compared to the most search efficient in-memory indexing technique, ESA, our proposed techniques are slower in construction but have comparable index size and search performance. The main advantage of our techniques over ESA is that they are disk-based and can handle large sequences.


identifier: Matyas, Lissa  (2007) Explaining consumers' reactions to assortment size.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: In this thesis we propose that the impact of assortment size on choice is moderated by goals (regulatory focus). We argue that if the choice is approached with a prevention focus, a consumer who lacks articulated preferences will concentrate on avoiding regret, and in needing to evaluate every option to correctly reject all but the one best alternative, will find it easier to process a small assortment. Conversely, a promotion-focused individual will stop at the choice that meets all of his/her requirements, so we predict a preference for a large assortment, as more options means more 'hits'.  Prior research has shown that product category can trigger a consumer's prevention or promotion focus. We further suggest that product category will influence the ideal assortment size. When buying a 'prevention product', comparing many options increases the difficulty of making correct rejections, and we predict a preference for a small assortment. When buying a 'promotion product', the priority is to have as many 'hits' as possible, so we expect a preference for a large assortment.  Understanding how goals are activated, given the purchasing decision, and how they moderate the assortment size/consumer response relationship will provide guidance to both manufacturers and retailers in terms of editing the assortment size to increase consumers' purchasing likelihood


identifier: Johal, Geeta  (2007) Frobenius fields of elliptic curves.  Masters thesis, Concordia University.

title: Frobenius fields of elliptic curves

abstract: Let E be an elliptic curve without complex multiplication defined over Q . Let [Special characters omitted.] be a fixed imaginary field where D > 0 is a nonsquare integer. Let [straight phi] p denote the Frobenius endomorphism of E at p . The Frobenius field of [straight phi] p is denoted by Q ( s p ). In this thesis, we find upper bounds for the number of primes p whose Frobenius fields Q ( s p ) equal a fixed imaginary quadratic field [Special characters omitted.] .  In The Square Sieve and the Lang-Trotter Conjecture , A. Cojocaru, E. Fouvry and M. Murty found upper bounds for this problem by applying the Chebotarev Density Theorem on the torsion fields Q ( E [ m ]) associated with E . Based on Serre's theorem, those fields have Galois groups GL 2 ( Z/mZ ).  In this thesis, we improve their result by considering smaller extensions F E [ m ] ✹ Q ( E [ m ]) over Q with Galois groups PGL 2 ( Z/mZ ) and by applying an explicit version of the Chebotarev Density Theorem to those fields. More precisely, we show that the bound obtained by A. Cojocaru, E. Fouvry and M. Murty under the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, can be improved from O ( x 17/18 log x ) to O ( x 13/14 log x ). Under the additional condition of Artin's Holomorphy Conjecture, the bound obtained by A. Cojocaru, E. Fouvry and M. Murty can be improved from O ( x 13/14 log x ) to O ( x 7/8 log x ).


identifier: Marszalek, Malgorzata A  (2007) Phylogeny, phylogeography and genetic structure of the North American diaptomid copepod, Hesperodiaptomus shoshone (Copepoda: Calanoida).  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: The freshwater diaptomid copepod Hesperodiaptomus shoshone (S.A. Forbes, 1882) occurs in high altitudes of Western North America, ranging from British Columbia to Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, and in the Sierra Nevada of California. I examined the genetic variation of H. shoshone at different spatial scales to determine the extent of current demographic processes and historical events shaping the distribution and dispersal of this species. First, I examined the phylogenetic relationships within the genus Hesperodiaptomus based upon nuclear ribosomal DNA gene sequences. Phylogenetic reconstructions supported the monophyletic origin of the genus and revealed two clades supported by morphological characters. Second, I carried out a phylogeographic study using partial DNA sequences of the cytochrome oxidase I gene and from nuclear ribosomal DNA gene sequences from 51 populations representing the current distribution range of the species. The genetic divergence among populations was high, and indicates a low level of dispersal among populations. The data revealed the presence of two geographically distinct deep lineages (North/South), with further genetic sub-structuring within each region. I hypothesize that the observed patterns of genetic diversity and structure reflect historical dispersal events and episodic range displacement due to glaciations. Finally, I characterized three microsatellite markers for this species and carried out a population genetic study to examine the genetic structure among 12 neighbouring populations in the Gunnison area of Colorado. The results indicated that H. shoshone have significant population differentiation and high genetic divergence suggesting a limited gene flow even at relatively small spatial scales.


identifier: Roy, Jean-François  (2007) S-Nitrosation and denitrosation of Oxytocin : a possible source of HNO in vivo?  Masters thesis, Concordia University.


identifier: Cuevas Gutiérrez, Carlos Cuauhtémoc  (2007) Modeling and experimental validation of an ultrasonic rotary motor.  PhD thesis, Concordia University.

abstract: Ultrasonic motors are a new type of actuators that use mechanical vibrations of its stator to drive the rotor through frictional forces between the interface of the stator and rotor. Ultrasonic motors have recently been attracting considerable attention in industrial applications where high precision, fast response and high torque at low speed are desirable. In contrast to traditional electromagnetic motors, ultrasonic motors provide larger torque to volume ratio, silent operation, and compact design. Furthermore, its operation is not affected by electromagnetic fields, and the motor shaft remains braked when the power supply is removed. The commercial development of ultrasonic motors, however, has been limited primarily due to lack of complete models for the purpose of control. Consequently, the development of an accurate model based on the physical structure is extremely vital for controllers development.  The present dissertation proposes a comprehensive model for the purpose of predicting the motor performance. A lumped-mass model of the stator is proposed to consider the coupling effects on the stator based on the flexibility influence coefficients, which are estimated from a finite element method. Moreover, the stator natural frequencies are obtained using modal analysis. Nonlinear tangential interface forces between the rotor and stator are incorporated into the driving torque function. A rotor model based on the Stribeck effect, Coulomb and viscous friction is also incorporated to describe the friction torque associated with the motor response. An extensive series of experiments have been designed together with a state-of-the-art test bench built at the laboratory of Concordia University. The validity of the proposed model was examined by comparing the model results with the measured data under different excitation conditions. The lumped-mass model is able to reproduce reasonably well the stator displacements and the excited modes when it is driven at different frequencies as a result of the stiffness coupling. Several rotor model parameters are identified by using the experimental data and a weighted error minimization function. From the results obtained in the present study, it is concluded that the proposed USM model can reproduce reasonably well the motor behavior to different excitations inputs such as step, ramp and harmonic excitations as well as the torque-speed characteristics.  It is important to note that the developed model shows torque-speed hysteresis behavior, which has not been reported in literature. To experimentally confirm this new phenomenon, extensive experimental tests have been conducted to identify the torque-speed characteristics on the ultrasonic motor. It has been observed from experiments a clear torque-speed hysteresis in the ultrasonic motor attributed mainly to the friction drive principle at the contact interface. This behavior, however, has not been addressed previously. It is suggested that the lack of an appropriate instrumentation together with inadequate models have made very difficult to describe this phenomenon. On the other hand, the torque-speed hysteresis exhibits a high asymmetric behavior at low speed as a result of the friction torque produced by the Stribeck effect