title: Investigating Concreteness Fading in the Programming Domain with an Online Computer Tutor

abstract: Abstract concepts are difficult because students cannot connect them to prior knowledge. The pedagogical approach concreteness fading introduces abstract concepts through a concrete representation grounded in students' real-world knowledge. As instruction progresses, perceptual information is removed until the abstract representation is reached. This thesis investigates concreteness fading in the programming domain with university-level students (N = 50). We created a lesson to teach the concept of 'for-loops', in the Python language. The study used a between-subject design with two conditions. The experimental condition included a lesson starting with a concrete representation of the concept depicted as an animation, that gradually faded into its abstract representation, namely the Python code. The control condition included a traditional lesson with only the abstract code. The intervention was implemented with an online computer tutor built using the Cognitive Tutor Authoring Tools (CTAT) package. While learning increased overall, there was no significant effect of condition.


title: A Test of the Space-For-Time Substitution Hypothesis:  North American Bird Responses to Forest Loss over Space do not Predict Their Responses Over Time

abstract: The practice of space-for-time substitution in landscape ecology has provided vital insights for conservation policy, but whether these insights are reliable remains inconclusive. Here, my objective was to test space-for-time substitution using data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) and Global Forest Change (GFC) to compare the effects of landscape-level forest cover on bird community metrics over time and space across 31 space-time comparisons in the United States and Canada. Temporal and spatial effects of forest cover on mean bird species richness and mean bird abundance were weakly correlated across the 31 comparisons for both forest and open-habitat species. Bird-forest cover relationships measured over time were more variable and inconsistent than those observed in space. Overall, my study results do not support the use of space-for-time substitution when studying North American birds.


title: Development of an Occupant-centric Control Algorithm for Mixed-Mode Ventilation Buildings to Regulate Window Operations

abstract: Mixed-mode ventilation combines natural ventilation and mechanical ventilation to improve building energy efficiency and indoor air quality. However, in practice, mixed-mode ventilation buildings do not always achieve better performance than mechanically ventilated buildings, largely due to inappropriate window operations. Therefore, the sequences of operation for terminal devices serving zones with operable windows should be designed in recognition of these risks, which in turn should be informed by research investigating occupants' window and thermostat use behaviour. This research analyzes window and thermostat use data collected from two mixed-mode ventilation buildings in Ottawa, Canada. Based on this analysis, the control algorithms are developed, and 3-16% of energy reductions could be achieved based on building performance simulation (BPS). It is also found that the unregulated window operations could increase the heating load up to 21% and cooling load by 33% relative to identical buildings with fixed windows in a cold climate.


title: Investigating the Roles of BLADE-ON-PETIOLE1 and 2 with Clade I TGACG-Motif Binding Basic Leucine Zipper Transcription Factors in the Regulation of Development and Defense in Arabidopsis thaliana

abstract: Plant health relies on a critical balance between growth and defense. The activation of defense responses is generally linked to growth repression but the mechanisms behind this response are unclear. BTB-ankyrin domain-containing proteins comprise a family of transcriptional co-regulators in land plants with roles in development and defense. Discovered in Arabidopsis thaliana, proteins in this family form two groups: NONEXPRESSOR OF PATHOGENESIS RELATED GENES 1 (NPR1) and related proteins are essential for systemic acquired resistance to pathogens whereas BLADE-ON-PETIOLE 1 and 2 proteins regulate plant morphology. Structurally, proteins from both groups lack a DNA-binding domain but share conserved protein-interacting BTB/POZ and ankyrin domains. BTB-ankyrin proteins interact with TGACG-motif binding (TGA) basic leucine zipper (bZIP) and WRKY transcription factors but functional knowledge of these interactions is incomplete. My thesis explores roles for BOP1 and BOP2 in development and defense with TGA bZIP transcription factors as functional partners. First, I showed that clade I TGAs function in the same genetic pathways as BOP1/2 important for the development of organ boundaries and plant architecture. Second, I showed that BOP1/2 function in pattern-triggered immunity through interaction with clade I TGA and WRKY transcription factors. Lastly, I found that BOP1/2 regulate plant defense in an NPR1-independent manner. Collectively, these findings revealed a dual role of BOP1/2 in plant development and defense.


title: Simple and Scalable Approach for Virtualized Network Function Placement in Wireless Multi-hop Networks

abstract: Network Function Virtualization (NFV) can lower the CAPEX and/or OPEX for service providers and allow for quick deployment of services. The main challenge in the use of Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) is the VNFs' placement in the network. This research provides mathematical models and heuristics for NF placement for wired and wireless networks. We use Integer Linear and Non-Linear Programming as a mathematical optimization program for NF placement. We start from a basic model for a wired network and extend it gradually to develop a traffic-aware mathematical model for NF placement in wireless multi-hop networks. For the first time, we model the interference which is a major difference between a wired and wireless network and included it in our optimization model. We identified the issue of scarcity of BW in wireless multi-hop networks and its role in the average cost of placement and acceptance rate of requests. The critical problem of mathematical models is that they are NP-hard, and consequently not applicable to larger networks. While there exist many efforts in designing a heuristic model that can provide solutions in a timely manner, the primary focus with such heuristics was almost always whether they provide near-optimal results. Consequently, the heuristics themselves become quite non-trivial, and solving the placement problem for larger networks still takes a significant amount of time. In our research, in contrast, we focus on designing a simple and scalable heuristic. We propose a set of heuristics, which are gradually becoming more complex. We start from the random placement heuristic as the simplest approach and at each step add a parameter such as choosing between shortest paths, sort NFs based on their nodal resources, and replacing previously placed NFs to our heuristic. We compare the performance of our heuristics with each other, related heuristics, and our mathematical model. Our results demonstrate that the simple approach of placing NFs along their shortest path can find near-optimal solutions much faster than the other more complicated heuristics while keeping the ratio of accepted requests close to the acceptance ratio of our NP-hard optimization model.


title: Selection Performance Using a Smartphone in VR with Redirected Input

abstract: We present a method to track a smartphone in VR using a fiducial marker displayed on the screen. Using WebRTC transmission protocol, we capture input on the smartphone touchscreen as well as the screen contents, copying them to a virtual representation in VR. We present two Fitts' law experiments assessing the performance of selecting targets displayed on the virtual smartphone screen using this method. The first compares direct vs. indirect input (i.e., virtual smartphone co-located with the physical smartphone, or not), and reveals there is no difference in performance due to input indirection. The second experiment assesses the influence of input scaling, i.e., decoupling the virtual cursor from the actual finger position on the smartphone screen so as to provide a larger virtual tactile surface. Results indicate a small effect for extreme scale factors. We discuss implications for the use of smartphones as input devices in VR.


title: System Justification and Normative Influence: Jury Decision-Making in a Police Shooting Trial

abstract: This study investigated whether normative influence (i.e., arguments to conform to the group) was related to jurors' system justification (SJS) beliefs (i.e., beliefs that justify a racially disparaging societal status quo) and time during the deliberation of a mock trial. Given the traumatic colonial context that exists between Indigenous communities in Canada and the criminal justice system, jurors with lower SJS may use normative influence to persuade other jurors to conform to their verdict preference. Further, research has found a relation between time pressure and normative influence. Lower SJS and time pressure were hypothesized to be related to greater normative discussion content. Deliberations were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for 11 mock juries (N = 83 jurors) in a simulated first-degree murder trial. Findings did not support a relationship between normative influence and either SJS or time. This research has implications for understanding jury decision-making processes and how to instruct jurors.


title: Peripheral biomarkers in Repeated Ketamine Infusions Trial

abstract: Abnormalities in the endocrine and immune systems are well documented in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), however, the mechanisms by which the novel antidepressant treatment, ketamine, influences these physiological systems are unclear. This study examined the effects of repeated ketamine infusions on the endocrine and immune systems using the peripheral biomarkers C-reactive protein (CRP) and cortisol. While both depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation were reduced with repeated ketamine treatment, there was no significant change in plasma CRP levels throughout the clinical trial. Morning salivary cortisol did change throughout the clinical trial in a sex-dependent way. Further sex-specific investigation into ketamine's effect on glucocorticoid expression is needed to advance the knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of ketamine's rapid antidepressant effects to more effectively treat patients with depression.


title: Adoption of Additive Manufacturing Processes Toward 3D Printed Electronics

abstract: This research addresses the application of 3D printing technologies in innovative electrical machinery. It takes advantage of the unique design freedom provided by Additive Manufacturing (AM), which has the potential to develop the way electrical motors are manufactured. Recently, researchers have focused on using AM to fabricate parts with integrated electronic components. Several research groups have reported embedding electronic components into 3D printed objects during process interruptions. Though, to date, there is a lack of fabricated devices with electromechanical functionality for parts entirely manufactured using only AM technologies. This study provides a new and different approach to create a fully 3D printed electric motors, with a particular focus on an additively manufactured iron core, winding, insulation, and permanent magnet. In particular, we investigated how to develop 3D printed motor with multi-material and multi-technique to achieve a fully 3D printed motor that can build without embedding devices.


title: Impact of the Psychological Resistance and the Trust-Building Factors on Elders’ Technology Adoption Decisions

abstract: The increasing elderly population in western countries has created a shortage of personal support workers (PSW), and the current healthcare systems are struggling to keep up with the rising demand for PSWs. The coronavirus outbreak worsened the situation because PSWs were becoming a medium for the coronavirus to spread. However, the recent technological advancement in elderly personal care (e.g., Care robots, Ambient intelligence devices/sensors) provides a promising solution to these problems. This research studies how the psychological resistance and trust generating factors affect the technology adoption decisions of elderly personal care devices. The moderating effects of age, gender, income, past profession, and lifestyle on the relationship between the independent variables (the psychological resistance and trust generating factors) with the dependent variable (technology adoption decision) were studied in this research. The study provides interesting results and proposes a new framework to understand the technology adoption of elders.


title: Enhanced Design, Optimal Tuning, and Parallel Real-Time Implementation of Monocular Visual-Inertial-GNSS Navigation System

abstract: This Ph.D. thesis presents novel design, optimal tuning, and parallel real-time implementation of Tightly-Coupled (TC) Visual-Inertial Navigation (VIN) systems integrated with the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for autonomous vehicle applications. Although the cost and size efficiency of the Visual-Inertial-GNSS Navigation (VIGN) systems offer great commercialization potentials, achieving high accuracy, robustness, and real-time performance on embedded computing platforms are still challenging. Accuracy and robustness in VIGN systems heavily rely on two factors: first, a TC fusion scheme that harvests the deep inter-modality correlations in the sensory data, and second, a well-tuned fusion model that sufficiently characterizes the actual behaviour of the VIGN system in practice. However, fusing multi-modal sensory data in TC fashion scheme, as in the VIGN system, inevitably imposes a high computational burden due to the large state space and diverse volumes of visual processing, making it quite challenging to satisfying strict real-time constraints on embedded computing platforms. To address these challenges, this Ph.D. thesis proposes novel design and optimization approaches that have resulted in three main contributions. This Ph.D. research initially develops an enhanced VIN system based on Multi-State Constraint Kalman Filter (MSCKF). Further, it proposes a novel systematic design and automatic tuning framework to adjust its design parameters for optimal state estimation using an evolutionary technique based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The second contribution takes a step further and reformulates the combined problem of designing and tuning a VIGN system as a single end-to-end learning problem. A novel Deep Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (DCRNN) architecture has been proposed to automatically train a model-free and calibration-free VIGN system. Finally, this thesis takes the VIN system developed in the first contribution and proposes a parallel and real-time implementation on embedded computing hardware. To satisfy strict real-time constraints, the computationally burdensome modules of the developed VIN's pipeline have been parallelized and distributed on the multi-core and many-core architectures of an embedded CPU-GPU-enabled computing platform. The accuracy, efficacy, and real-time performance of the proposed solutions have been evaluated on real datasets supported by a hardware-in-the-loop simulation setup.


title: The Role of Khatami's Belief System in Changing Iranian Foreign Policy from 1997 to 2005

abstract: Iranian foreign policy under the Khatami presidency (1997-2005) went through a paradigm shift, one that involved a change from confrontation to peaceful relations. The main reason for this alteration rests on Khatami's belief system, whose discourse of "Dialogue Among Civilizations" aiming at coexistence and cooperation assured the international community that Iran would not pursue revolutionary aspirations, but rather seek constructive and meaningful relations based on equality, mutual respect and understanding. I have applied Operational Code analysis as the theoretical framework since this approach examines how the decision-maker perceives world politics, whether as conflictual or harmonious and then decides what strategy he/she would adopt in order to achieve their goals. As this dissertation shows, Khatami believed that conflict was not a permanent feature of the international system; therefore, he followed a cooperative approach on the foreign policy front. The basis of this new approach was Dialogue among Civilizations, instead of Clash of Civilizations. Based on this worldview, Iran, under Khatami, experienced the most peaceful relations with the international community since the inception of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.


title: Photographing the Feminine:  Aufseherinnen in Holocaust Photography and Popular Culture, 1944-2018

abstract: Between 1939 and 1945, National Socialist Germany mobilized upwards of 500,000 female auxiliaries into the German armed forces. Approximately 3,700 of these auxiliaries participated in, and carried out, systemic violence against Nazi concentration camp victims. The female overseers who worked in the Nazi camps consisted of a diverse group of "ordinary" women from various backgrounds and individual identity. Post-war discussions established a narrative of 'masculinity' and 'deviancy' surrounding the Aufseherinnen that continues within current public memory. Examining Holocaust photographs taken by Nazi concentration camp staff and Allied liberation troops this thesis expands current knowledge on the workaday lives of female SS guards (Aufseherinnen).


title: The Postcranial Anatomy of Pachycephalosaurs (Ornithischia: Pachycephalosauria) and its Phylogenetic and Myological Implications

abstract: Pachycephalosaurs are a group of small-bodied, bipedal ornithischian dinosaurs. They are best known for their characteristic fusion of the frontals and parietals into a "skull dome". This feature is the most commonly preserved element of pachycephalosaurs and therefore much research has been dedicated to their cranial anatomy. The postcranial skeleton is not often preserved and does not receive the same attention. CMN 22039 at the Canadian Museum of Nature represents a rare postcranial specimen. The goal of this study is to use CMN 22039 with other comparable specimens to investigate the postcranial anatomy of pachycephalosaurs in both a functional and phylogenetic context. Examining CMN 22039 alongside other pachycephalosaurs revealed that new postcranial characters change the current phylogeny of pachycephalosaurs, although, it remains unclear if this is due to ontogenetic variations. Studying the postcranial anatomy of Stegoceras validum also facilitated the first detailed myological reconstruction of the appendicular skeleton of pachycephalosaurs.


title: Computationally Efficient and Secure Kronecker-based Compressive Sensing

abstract: We propose an efficient permuted Kronecker-based sparse measurement matrix for compressive sensing applications. We use sub-matrices to create a block-diagonal matrix and multiply it with a deterministic permutation matrix to measure the sparse or compressible signals. Using ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database, we show that the reconstructed signal quality is comparable to the ones achieved using standard compressive sensing methods. Our methodology results in an overall reduction in storage and computations and can be generalized to other classes of eligible measurement matrices in compressive sensing. We show that with the use of a securely generated one-time sensing matrix, our proposed method is computationally secure against plaintext and ciphertext-only attacks. The proposed one-time sensing matrix is superior to other measurement matrices in the literature in terms of the number of linear feedback shift register bits required for their generation.


title: Under-serving the Over-represented: Indigenous Peoples' Access to Specialized Courts

abstract: This thesis examines specialized courts (such as drug courts and mental health courts) across what is known as Canada and how they meet the needs of Indigenous persons. This thesis explores such courts' admission and participation policies and connects under an Indigenizing framework developed from four Indigenous scholars. Then, it explores the experiences of Indigenous persons with previous drug-related criminal convictions and the experiences of service providers whose roles support those clients. In general, Indigenous persons are disproportionately excluded from participation in specialized courts. I argue current specialized court policies fail to adequately account for colonial challenges and barriers faced by Indigenous peoples. I suggest recommendations that acknowledge the need for programs to return to Indigenous communities, allow for Indigenous autonomy and self-governance of such programs, Indigenous development in programs, and increased capacity to individualize approaches to the participant's needs.


title: Community Peer Support Among Individuals Living with Spinal Cord Injury

abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that the relation between peer support and well-being is unclear among individuals living with SCI. The present study expands on these findings by exploring the conditions under which peer support is more strongly associated with better adjustment. Participants were 135 individuals living with SCI recruited through social media and major SCI organizations globally who completed an online self-report questionnaire. Although peer support, as measured by the SCI-PSI, was not associated with better adjustment, a measure of perceived support (i.e., the level of satisfaction with the peer support one receives) was associated with all indicators of adjustment. Individuals who were more satisfied with the peer support they received exhibited fewer depressive symptoms, had higher subjective well-being, experienced less loneliness, and exhibited better community reintegration. Longitudinal research is needed to better understand the adjustment trajectory of persons with SCI who are recipients of peer support.


title: An Integrated Thesis Examining the Influence of Casino Loyalty Program Membership on Gamblers’ Attitudinal and Behavioural Loyalty

abstract: Every major casino corporation offers their customers the opportunity to enroll in a brand-affiliated loyalty program. These programs serve as marketing strategies designed to foster attitudinal (i.e., trust and satisfaction with the brand) and behavioural (i.e., purchase intentions and actions) loyalty among customers by way of granting members rewards in exchange for making purchases. It is the hope that through granting members rewards, gambling expenditure will be increased, thus generating profits for the casino. However, unlike loyalty programs in other industries, casino loyalty programs reward members for engaging in gambling—an inherently addictive activity. Despite this, there is a paucity of research that has applied knowledge from the field of responsible gambling studies to help us understand how loyalty program membership influences the attitudinal and behavioural loyalty of members. In the current work, I present an integrated thesis that includes three manuscripts (six studies in total) that sought to expand the knowledge base on the aforementioned issue. In the first manuscript, I used two studies to test the hypothesis that loyalty program tier status and disordered gambling symptomatology would have an interactive effect on the attitudinal and behavioural loyalty of members, such that the highest level of loyalty would be observed among high tier status, high risk gamblers. In the second manuscript, I investigated whether positive play (i.e., responsible gambling beliefs and behaviours) is predictive of attitudinal (Study 1) and behavioural loyalty (Study 2), and whether this predictive utility would be maintained after accounting for disordered gambling symptomatology. In the final manuscript, I examined the potential benefits of belonging to a casino loyalty program for both players and industry. In two studies, I tested whether incentivizing responsible gambling tool use increases both willingness to use responsible gambling tools and attitudinal loyalty. Results from the current work will help responsible gambling researchers, policy makers and industry have a better understanding of how players may be affected by casino loyalty program membership.


title: End User Mental Models of Social Engineering Attacks

abstract: How do end users understand social engineering attacks, and how do their mental models differ from reality? To investigate, we have proposed a new social engineering attack framework, and ran two studies using the framework as the foundation. In the first study, we conducted 30 interviews to investigate social engineering mental models, and found that confidence and accuracy are underlying themes that affect users' mental models. In the second survey, we quantified how confidence and accuracy impact mental models at different stages of an attack. We found that users tend to be overconfident in their ability to understand social engineering attacks, but hold inaccurate beliefs. They hold major misconceptions of what constitutes as social engineering, and the threat levels of these attacks. Based on our results, we have proposed various educational and design opportunities to match social engineering mitigation strategies to end user mental models of social engineering.


title: Development and Evolution of the Skull-Neck Boundary: Insights from Amphibian Model Species

abstract: The history of life is marked by near constant morphological transformations, preserved in part by the fossil record. Unfortunately, the developmental mechanisms that drove many key morphological transformations are not well understood. In order to study these morphological transformations and their underlying developmental mechanisms, an integrative approach synthesizing data from palaeontological, phylogenetic, and developmental sources is required. Here, I have focused on improving our understanding of one such transformation, the morphology and development of the skull-neck boundary in lissamphibians. To complete this goal, I tested two hypotheses. First, that the skull-neck boundary and composition of the occiput observed in extant lissamphibians is the result of a secondary reduction compared to their fossil relatives. Second, that changes in Hox gene expression domains can cause homeotic transformations of skull-neck boundary structures in two lissamphibian model organisms, Ambystoma mexicanum (salamanders) and Xenopus laevis (frogs). I found using phylogenetic analyses and ancestral state reconstructions that the lissamphibian occipital morphology is secondarily derived when compared to their fossil relatives. Then, I described the development of the skull, focusing on the occiput, in A. mexicanum and X. laevis using cell-lineage tracing techniques to track somitic contributions to the skull, hypoglossal nerve complex morphological data, and traditional whole-mount cartilage and bone staining techniques. Finally, I perturbed Hox gene expression patterns to produce homeotic transformations via exogenous retinoic acid and a retinoic acid inhibitor (citral) and described the resulting skull morphology. I provided evidence that homeotic transformations of skull-neck boundary structures could be induced via changing retinoic acid concentration in the developing embryo: first with the position of the hypoglossal nerve complex relative to skeletal structures along the anterior-posterior axis and second with GFP-labelled somite cell-lineage tracing. The resulting morphologies indicate that it is likely that changing Hox gene expression domains resulted in the unique lissamphibian morphology at the occiput and the derived position of their skull-neck boundary. This research contributes to our understanding of the evolution of the unique lissamphibian skull-neck morphology. My integrative approach has helped to elucidate the relationship between morphological transformations and the developmental processes underlying them.


title: Remote Detection of Sodium and Potassium Atomic Emission Signatures as an Indicator of Liquid Carry-Over into Flare Systems

abstract: Carry-over of salt-laden aerosols into flares at upstream oil and gas production sites is a potentially important driver of adverse flare emissions. However, the frequency of this occurrence at upstream production sites is unknown. Sodium (Na) and potassium (K) are abundant in produced water samples and have persistent atomic emission signatures at 588/589 and 766/769 nm. A pair of spectrometer systems was developed to detect these signatures in flare flames as proof of liquid carry-over. Field measurements of 95 flares at upstream oil and gas production sites in North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Ecuador found 72% had detectable Na or K signatures, suggesting liquid carry-over is surprisingly common. Analysis of the 76 North Dakota flares found that liquid carry-over was statistically correlated with younger wells and increased volumes of produced oil, water, gas and reported flared/vented volumes. These findings have importance implications for the likely severity of global flare emissions.


title: Self-control strategies for financial goals: Proactive and reactive strategy use and effectiveness

abstract: Self-control strategies help people resist tempting situations and make more goal-consistent decisions. I examined strategies in the financial domain through the lens of the Preventive-Interventive and Process models of self-control, distinguishing between proactive strategies used before a spending temptation and reactive strategies used during a spending temptation. I first conducted a meta-analysis to aggregate extant research and to estimate the overall effect size of financial self-control strategies. Strategies reduced spending and increased saving significantly with a medium effect size (d = 0.57, k = 29). I then examined whether these empirically studied strategies were present in a media sample (104 websites) and in people's personal experiences (n = 939). About half the strategies found through the meta-analysis were present in the media sample and were listed by lay participants, and across these three perspectives, the majority were proactive strategies. Next, I examined how strategy use impacted monthly spending in two longitudinal experimental studies. I asked participants to read about proactive vs. reactive strategies (Study 3) or list the proactive vs. reactive strategies they personally already use (Study 4). In Study 3, reminding participants of proactive or reactive strategies did not influence monthly spending compared to an empty control or a "just use willpower" condition. In Study 4, participants described their personal proactive and reactive strategies and watched a brief video highlighting relevant strategies. Participants who described proactive strategies reported spending $322 less than their goal during the month and significantly differed from the those who described reactive strategies (who spent $246 more than their goal) but did not differ significantly from an empty control condition. This finding suggests that people's personal proactive strategies can be effective for bringing spending in line with their goals. In sum, the first part of this dissertation summarizes and identifies gaps between the empirical literature, online media, and lay sample perspectives on self-control strategies for financial goals. The second part of this dissertation attempts to manipulate strategy use and assess proactive and reactive strategy effectiveness for bringing spending in line with goals.


title: A Winter's Tale: MicroRNA Biogenesis and Regulation in the Freeze-Tolerant Grey Tree Frog, Hyla Versicolor

abstract: Grey tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) can endure full-body freezing over the winter, with survival aided by metabolic rate depression. Post-transcriptional controls on gene expression include microRNA regulation of gene transcripts that can aid implementation of protein changes required for freezing survival. Western immunoblotting was used to examine protein expression levels of the miRNA biogenesis pathway in three tissues. During freezing, four proteins were upregulated in liver, whereas four proteins in muscle and five proteins in kidney were downregulated. Small RNA-sequencing and bioinformatic analysis of liver showed that seven miRNAs were freeze-upregulated and four were freeze-downregulated. Functions for these miRNAs may involve inhibition of signaling pathways, apoptosis, and nuclear processes. Interestingly, miRNAs may enhance ribosomal biogenesis. Overall, the data show miRNA biosynthesis is altered during freezing and differentially regulated across tissues, with computational predictions highlighting specific functions and processes that may be disproportionally altered during freezing.


title: Improving Air Travel Comfort & Experience: Designing for Infection Prevention and Control.

abstract: The onset of the Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) caused a shift in the air travel industry as safety and precautionary measures were put in place to mitigate some of the risks associated with infection prevention and control. This research documents and reveals a glimpse of the state of current air travel during the pandemic, through the first-hand experiences of passengers. The study consisted of three methods used to collect real-time and recollective reflections from current passengers, while also evaluating the development, implementation, and use of these methods within the context of remote qualitative research. Our findings suggest that passengers' air travel experiences during pandemic conditions are influenced by factors that span layers of user experience, within the larger umbrella of service design. The findings point to new areas of research and design development, that should be explored to support a more positive travel experience during pandemic conditions.


title: Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship: Administrative Behavioral Changes and E-Government Advancement in Bangladesh

abstract: This study analyzes how a postcolonial democracy like Bangladesh is experimenting with electronic or e-Government agendas, to address challenges in public service delivery traditions and processes, through soft administrative reforms. The mainstream literature on Bangladesh focuses on how the dual colonial legacy structured bureaucrats' behavior within the post-independence political context, making it unresponsive to societal needs. Taking a cue from this, the present study investigates the political, structural, and behavioral conditions which impeded successive public administration reforms overtime in Bangladesh, and analyzes the conditions which may have influenced administrative behavior for e-Government implementation. It looks at the power struggles at the higher levels of bureaucracy, and its effect on the implementation of public administration reforms. The dissertation uses a mixed-method approach: content analysis, interviews, and survey findings. An analysis of secondary literature charts out the colonial formation of the Bangladesh bureaucracy, how it endured and resisted reforms under different regimes, and how the onset of Digital Bangladesh created new political expectations of the public administration. This study demonstrates mechanisms through which ideas generated by different international models such as New Public Management (NPM), digital era governance (DEG), New Public Governance (NPG) and design thinking (DT), were applied nationally to make the Weberian-colonial bureaucracy more entrepreneurial and citizen-centric. The study explores how these models influenced the design of capacity building initiatives, some of which continued despite politicization of the bureaucracy, and set the ground for e-Government transformation under Digital Bangladesh. A survey of field-level bureaucrats, who attended an empathy training program, was carried out for identifying behavioral and organizational determinants of successful e-Government innovation. Results from a multivariate logistic regression identified entrepreneurial orientation of the bureaucracy as one of the key determinants of successful innovation. The present study emphasizes that bureaucratic entrepreneurship can be observed in emerging post-NPM approaches such as NPG, DEG and DT. It concludes with the policy, practical and research implications arguing that Weberian-colonial bureaucracies in developing countries require political and administrative support in the form of policies, strategies, and innovation toolkits, for implementing e-Government innovation, within the administrative bounds of the system.


title: Automated Discovery of Big Data Workload Types

abstract: Big data workload characterization is an inevitable part of big data workload prediction and auto-tuning big data applications. Due to many different ways of applying big data frameworks and applications, there are various categories that these workloads can belong. Clustering techniques are applied in this research to detect Apache Spark and Hadoop workloads independent of historical data. Clustering techniques are compared in terms of different evaluation metrics, and the ones with the highest performance are introduced. The DBSCAN algorithm has shown the best performance and adequacy with 71% and 80% for the Purity, and Windows Type Accuracy (Awt), respectively. Ultimately, the Incremental DBSCAN algorithm and Den-Stream (an online version of DBSCAN) are presented as the most practical methods for big data workload discovery automatization. A scheme is then provided to use these algorithms integrated with methods to self-discover their hyperparameters. Ultimately, the procedure is fully automated.


title: Enhancement of Pile-Soil Adfreeze Strength in Warming Permafrost

abstract: In this thesis, a research program aimed at developing a new retrofitting technique for enhancing bearing capacity of steel pile foundations in warming permafrost area is presented. The main goal was to refreeze the thawed soils surrounding pile foundations in permafrost regions and develop adfreeze bond at the pile-soil interface level by using a low temperature antifreeze circulated into steel pile. An experimental load test setup of a model steel pipe pile embedded in cohesionless ice-poor soils was carried out. The experimental results showed that local freezing is capable of developing adfreeze bond at the pile-soil interface. The pile shaft capacity significantly increased up to twice its initial shaft strength as a result of cooling application for only 25 min. An ABAQUS software model was also developed to investigate the effect of controlling parameters including pile diameter, thermal loads, and liquid circulation period on load carrying capacity of the piles.


title: Evaluating Adversarial Learning Resilience on Various Encrypted Traffic Classifications

abstract: In this research, we focus on investigating and evaluating the effectiveness of different adversarial attacks and see how resilient ML and DL algorithms are in classifying encrypted traffic applications. We train our models in the adversarial-free environment on encrypted traffic datasets using the top five features. Then, we use adversarial samples to attack the models and check their resilience in classifying the encrypted applications. Finally, we retrain the models using the top nine features in the adversarial-free and adversarial environment to compare the effect of the adversarial samples in both scenarios. We demonstrate that DL shows better resilience against the adversarial samples in encrypted traffic classifications in comparison to ML. We also indicate that ML and DL model's performance in an adversarial-free environment and their resilience against adversarial samples was improved when using more top selected features. However, the impact of the attack varies depending on the type of attack.


title: Redefining Resiliency, Resistance, and Oppression: A Case Study of the Bahá'i Underground University in Iran

abstract: Iran's Bahá'í community is the country's largest religious minority and has been systematically oppressed since its founding in 1844. Bahá'ís are barred from higher education in Iran and the Bahá'í community has responded to this formal exclusion by establishing their own underground university known as the Bahá'í Institute of Higher Education (BIHE). BIHE's existence and growth exemplify perseverance and resilience under intergenerational pressure and makes for an excellent case study to examine resiliency and resistance. Using qualitative methodologies, this thesis investigates the nature of resiliency among 15 BIHE alumni. Many theories of resiliency do not adequately account for how resiliency is modeled and adopted. This study proposes that resiliency is a socially embedded process that propels both the individual and the community forward. Additional themes that emerged in defining resiliency included developing individual characteristics, advancing resources within the community, improving circumstances, tools of resistance, a non-violent approach, and seeking justice.


title: Being “in Touch”:  The Role of Daily Empathic Accuracy and Affectionate Touch Fulfillment in Shaping Well-Being

abstract: The receipt of affectionate touch from a relationship partner has been found to influence one's social, personal, and physical well-being. However, simply receiving a hug or a kiss from a spouse may not be enough, as recent research suggests that the benefits of affectionate touch may only be realized when a person receives the amount of affectionate touch that they desire. This implies that a relationship partner must recognize the extent to which a person desires touch for that person to reap the relational and personal benefits of affectionate touch. Using data collected from a sample of community couples (N = 144) across 21-days, the current study assessed whether having more accurate perceptions of a partner's desire for affectionate touch (i.e., empathic accuracy) would be associated with the partner, and self, experiencing greater relational and personal well-being. It was hypothesized that at the within- and between- persons levels having a partner who experiences more empathic accuracy for a person's desire for affectionate touch would be associated with a person reporting greater affectionate touch fulfillment, which would consequently be related to that person experiencing greater relational and personal well-being. The nuances of this association were also examined to determine whether these associations were more important on certain days (i.e., stressful vs. non-stressful) and for certain people (e.g., those who are less avoidantly attached vs. those who are more avoidantly attached). Multilevel modeling in combination with actor partner interdependence modelling was used to test the hypotheses of the current study. Overall, the findings suggested that a partner's empathic accuracy is important for person's relational well-being, and that a person's affectionate touch fulfillment plays a pivotal role in explaining the association between a partner's empathic accuracy and a person's relational and personal well-being, especially on stressful days.


title: A Critique of Smart Cities: Sidewalk Labs’ Project in Toronto

abstract: The term 'smart city' has become a popular buzzword in urban politics, but it has not received enough critical scrutiny given the enthusiastic adoption it has received from many scholars, governments, and corporations. This thesis contributes to broader efforts to critically analyze the concept. My work will provide a post-mortem analysis of a now canceled smart city project in Toronto, Canada. Even though the project will not be completed, there is ample material for an analysis of the project as a representation of what an 'actually-existing' smart city would look like as a comprehensive project. My thesis argues that the Toronto project (and many other projects) are organically linked to the politics and economics of accumulation of what scholars have called "urban neoliberalism." To do so, I examine the relationship between this project and interurban competition, capitalist accumulation and commodification, and privatization and corporate control.


title: The Influence of Brain-Skull Interactions on the Development of the Amphibian Skull

abstract: The tetrapod skull has evolved in response to various pressures over its long evolutionary history - one pressure being the expansion of the cerebral hemispheres. The molecular basis of these brain-skull interactions remains incompletely understood, though studies indicate that key to this relationship is the biochemical signaling sources within the forebrain. One method of eliminating local signals is tissue removal/ablation. To better understand these brain-skull interactions, forebrain removal experiments were conducted in Xenopus laevis, a representative of the poorly studied amphibians, to study the resulting skull morphology. To facilitate these comparisons, a detailed internal staging guide for X. laevis was developed. It was found that removal of forebrain tissue in early tailbud embryos resulted in craniofacial deformities, as well as a disruption to sensory development. These findings indicate that the role of the forebrain in craniofacial development seen in amniotes is likely conserved in X. laevis.


title: A Novel Line Hatching Style through Conformal Mapping

abstract: Pen-and-ink line hatching is a non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) image style typically characterized by monochrome, locally near-parallel lines. Our motivation was to generate line hatching images inspired by the Grendel image by Emil Antonucci. Antonucci's images are composed of many cells containing relatively short near-parallel lines. We develop an automatic NPR system that converts a photo into an output image portraying a novel line hatching style. One key characteristic of our approach is its use of conformal mapping to reshape segmented regions into a standardized shape. After drawing the lines on the standardized shape, we then transfer the lines back to the segment region. The transformation automatically distorts the lines to follow the segment region contours. Our process generates line hatching images that have short near-parallel lines, lines that change direction to represent feature boundaries, line density and line width variations to represent tone intensity, edge lines, and line perturbations.


title: Optical Properties of Substrate Supported Mixtures of Silver and Gold Nanoparticles

abstract: Silver and gold have been extensively explored in the field of nanoscience owing to their strong plasmonic responses in the visible region of the spectrum. Herein, mixtures of Au and Ag nanoparticles (NPs) were combined to achieve new nanoarchitectures with useful electromagnetic properties. It was predicted that these mixtures would produce materials with multiple plasmon modes providing opportunity for greater manipulation of light within one simple system. The spectral information obtained from individual depositions of NPs provided information on the light extinction exhibited by the nanomaterials. For AgNCs and AuNPs on polystyrene (PS) dipolar resonances at 439 nm and at 530 nm were obtained respectively. Simple computations were proceeded for the design of mixtures of nanoparticles having a 1:1 extinction of AuNP:AgNCs, and the mix was deposited on a PS film. The plasmonic modes obtained in the mixture are tunable across the UV-vis-NIR spectrum by manipulation of their local environment.


title: Sparse Recovery, Classification, and Data Compression via Improved Maximum Feasible Subsystem Algorithms

abstract: Two new strategies are developed in this thesis to increase the speed of the state-of-the-art Maximum Feasible Subsystem (MAX FS) algorithms. The newly developed strategies can be combined with any MAX FS algorithm to increase its speed while preserving or improving solution quality. The improved algorithms apply in the case of dense constraint matrices such as those found when various data compression/dimensionality reduction, classification, and sparse recovery problems are converted to MAX FS problems. This approach is used for sparse recovery in Compressive Sensing (CS) and data compression via Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) for the first time in this thesis. In CS, the new algorithm can successfully recover real-world signals such as speech and Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals that have been more greatly compressed than existing methods can handle, and with greater recovered signal quality. They also deliver sparser solutions when compared with those obtained using traditional sparse recovery algorithms. The new algorithm significantly reduces the solution time of the existing MAX FS methods. It reduces the solution time of Method B by 80.64% and 77.82% for recovery of compressively sensed ECG and speech signals for instance, respectively. Three novel MAX FS-based methods for NNMF are developed and investigated using synthetic data and real-world image datasets. The new NNMF algorithms, unlike the majority of existing NNMF methods, do not require an initialization method or prior knowledge of the matrix rank. These new NNMF solutions methods are also more robust to outliers and provide higher quality solution compared to the state-of-the-art NNMF algorithms. To illustrate, the new NNMF algorithm improves the relative approximation quality of the existing column subset selection NNMF algorithm by 5.2% for the ORL facial image dataset. A faster MAX FS-based algorithm for binary classification is also proposed, which improves the processing time of the existing MAX FS algorithm (Algorithm 2) by 94.77% on average. In comparison, the developed algorithm outperforms widely used binary classification algorithms by providing better results for recall-oriented machine learning tasks such as disease diagnosis. For instance, the new algorithm improves the average recall score of Support Vector Machine by 18.16% for binary classification task.


title: Understanding the Experiences of Fly-In/Fly-Out Mental Health Service Providers in the Inuit Nunangat Region

abstract: My Master's thesis examined the experiences of fly-in and fly-out (FIFO) mental health service providers in Inuit Nunangat. Through participatory action research and semi-structured interviews with eight FIFO mental health service providers who deliver services to various Inuit communities across Inuit Nunangat, I assessed barriers and enablers to FIFO counselling, and I co-developed recommendations to ensure optimal delivery of services with my partner organization. I examined the factors that influence experiences of vicarious trauma for providers and gained insight into ways that FIFO practices may mitigate the effects of vicarious trauma. Additionally, I explored the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on FIFO mental health service delivery. The findings enabled us to reconceptualize mental health service delivery with considerations to mitigate pandemic risks. Together, these two papers are a novel contribution to understanding the experiences of FIFO mental health service providers in northern Canada.


title: Machine Learning Algorithms for Identification of Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio Radar Signals

abstract: Areas such as spectrum monitoring require identification of known and unknown radar transmitters to identify known and rogue users. Often such identification needs to done under conditions where the signal-to-noise ratio is low. This thesis proposes an approach to determine the unknown radar chirp parameters of a linear frequency modulated (LFM) radar waveform, assuming that the unknown parameters come from a given set of known chirp parameters. A concatenated output of matched filters corresponding to the known set of chirp parameters is presented to four well-known machine learning architectures, namely decision tree (DT), random forest (RnF), na¨ıve Bayes (NB) and support vector machine (SVM). Realistic radar parameters for airborne, marine and weather radars were used in the simulations. The robustness of the classifiers to parameter mismatch and truncation of the radar pulse were also studied. DT outperformed the other classifiers except for the truncated pulse case (where NB and SVM performed better). RnF did not perform acceptably.


title: Social Work Practice, Data, Time and Biopolitics: Looking at Short-Term RFPs in Contemporary Community Practice in a Canadian Context

abstract: My study uses Discourse Analysis (Garrity, 2007; Jäger, 2004) to read short-term Request for Proposals (RFPs) to study the relationship between linear temporality, community work and how governments produce vulnerable subjects through data. In particular, I am interested in the ways that linear time serves as a backdrop facilitating the datafication (Dijk, 2014) of practice, and the shift from the relational to the informational in social work practice (Parton, 2008). To get a sense of how linear time and the use of data is potentially implicated in the construction of knowable and governable subjects, I utilize a conceptual framework of Biopower (Cruikshank, 1999; Million, 2013). This study hopes to contribute to relevant social work and communications literatures by focusing on data, subjectivity, linear time as a tool of social control and contemporary social work practice.


title: Investigating the Role of Porcupine and WNTless: Components of WNT Signalling Pathway in Response to Endoplasmic Reticulum, Oxidative, Hypoxia and Environmental Toxins Stesses

abstract: Porcupine (PORCN) and WNTless (WLS) are factors that control the production of WNT; a protein involved in the early stages of gastric cancer development. The WNT proteins play a role in stem cell development and cell differentiation. However, the response of PORCN and WLS to stressors remains to be studied. Previously, we investigated how modifications of PORCN and WLS result in changes in WNT expression and secretion from cells under stress conditions that are found in the tumor microenvironment (hypoxia, oxidative stress, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress). The mRNA and protein expression of both PORCN and WLS were notably altered with treatments in human colon cancer (HCT116) cells and Human Intestinal epithelium (HIEC-6) cells. Our results demonstrated significant changes in expression, which led us to investigate the role of different transcription factors during stresses including (GRP78, HIF1α, NFE2L1, NFEL2L2 and MT1). These transcription factors were altered both at levels of the translation and transcriptional, when overexpressed by PORCN, WLS and WNT3A. WNT and PORCN levels significantly at translation and transcriptional levels when overexpressed by PORCN, WLS and WNT3A. WNT and PORCN undergo palmitoyleation; a modification implicated in cancer cell signalling. The inhibition of palmitoyleation by 2-bromohexdecanoic acid (2-BHDA) resulted in a decrease in the modified forms of PORCN in HCT116 cells. Furthermore, the data showed that palmitoyleation plays an essential role in the expression of WNT proteins; specifically, inhibiting WNT3A and decreasing WLS protein expression in HCT116 cells. However, WLS and WNT3A are modified by N-linked glycosylation. Emerging evidence indicates the critical role of glycosylation in tumor aggressiveness, progression, and metastasis. Cell lysates from hypoxic HCT116 cells, containing induced WLS and WNT3A proteins, HCT116 cells were subjected for deglycosylation. The production of glycosylated WLS and WNT3A was inhibited. We also investigated the role of cadmium in activating WNT signaling and its components, our results showed a significant increase of the WNT proteins, and the transcription factors, when exposed to dose-specific concentration of cadmium at 5μM. These notable findings show the essential role of post-translation modification of PORCN and WLS and how it alters WNT signalling during stress conditions


title: Conflict Journalism through the Practice of Embedded Reporting

abstract: With a Canadian focus wherever possible, this thesis explores the history of conflict coverage and evaluates the common criticism of North American modern conflict coverage by practice of embedded journalism. The thesis is intended to shine a light on the issue for news consumers and advocate for greater transparency in conflict journalism but does not attempt to make recommendations for military embedding programs. Rather, this thesis suggests a new way to look at embedded journalism in its next iteration to better understand the impact of the journalism, generated by embedded reporting, on news consumers. In assessing the efficacy of different methods of covering conflict, more attention could be devoted to the needs and reactions of journalistic audiences.


title: Investigating Custodial Symmetry Violation in the Georgi-Machacek Model

abstract: The Georgi-Machacek (GM) model is the simplest benchmark model for higher isospin multiplet extensions of the Standard Model (SM) which allow for large contributions to electro-weak symmetry breaking (EWSB) from these 'exotic' multiplets. It is used to motivate and interpret Large Hadron Collider (LHC) searches for doubly charged scalars decaying to vector boson pairs. It preserves custodial symmetry (CS) at tree level; however, this CS has long been known to be violated at the one-loop level by hypercharge interactions. In this thesis, we study the effects of CS violation (CV). We assume that the CS GM model arises at a high scale as a result of an unspecified ultraviolet (UV) completion, and quantify the CV induced at the weak scale. We show that experimental data constrains the UV scale to lie below tens to hundreds of TeV over almost all of the parameter space. Subject to this constraint, we quantify the size of other CV effects at the weak scale and we find that these effects are small enough that they are unlikely to be probed by the LHC, but may be detectable at a future e+e- collider. We note that the upper bound on the UV scale is large enough that virtual effects from the UV completion will likely be undetectable at the LHC. This means that the GM model is a valid effective theory for LHC physics. We also propose a new "low-m5" benchmark for the tree level GM model, defined for m5 2 (50; 550) GeV, and characterize its properties. This benchmark plane is designed to facilitate the extension of current collider searches for doubly charged scalars to an unexplored region of parameter space which was not previously covered by a benchmark plane. The doubly charged scalars are part of a degenerate fermiophobic custodial fiveplet with states H_5^{++} , H_5^+, and H_5^0 and the input parameter m5 is their common mass. We apply all existing experimental constraints and summarize the phenomenology of the surviving parameter space. We show that there is a largely unprobed region of parameter space from 120 GeV < m5 < 200 GeV where light doubly-charged scalars could exist.


title: Developmental Effects of Microplastic Ingestion on the Tropical House Cricket Gryllodes sigillatus

abstract: Microplastic (MP) is now considered ubiquitous in our ecosystems. Microplastics have been confirmed to be present in terrestrial environments, yet the majority of studies have focused on the effects of MPs on aquatic biota. I tested the effect of microplastic exposure on the growth of the cricket Gryllodes sigillatus. Crickets were fed a diet containing different concentrations of fluorescent polyethylene MP beads (75-105μm) or untreated polyethylene terephthalate microfibers until adulthood. Weight and body length were measured weekly and MP ingestion was confirmed through fluorescence microscopy and inspection of frass. I found no effect of polyethylene MP ingestion on growth rate of G. sigillatus, yet females experienced a reduction in size and weight at high concentrations of polyethylene terephthalate microfibers in their diet. These results suggest that polyethylene MP beads can be passed through the cricket's gut without a substantial effect on their growth, but polyethylene terephthalate microfibers cannot.


title: Validation of Smartphone-Based Cognitive Assessments for Individuals with Major Depressive Disorder

abstract: Cognitive deficits are often present in major depressive disorder (MDD) and negatively impact functional outcomes. However, it remains challenging to assess these impairments in clinical and research settings. Smartphone applications provide the opportunity to measure cognitive impairments in an accessible way. In this study, 24 individuals with MDD and 34 healthy controls (HC) completed the Trail Making Tests (TMT), and the smartphone-based versions, named the Jewels Trail Tests (JTT). Significant positive relationships between the JTT and TMT were observed with a moderate concurrent validity for Parts A and strong concurrent validity for Parts B. The intraclass correlations showed moderate test-retest reliability for Part A of the JTT and good reliability for Part B. This study did not find significant differences between the MDD and HC groups completion time. Lastly, higher sleep quality was associated with a faster completion time on the speed processing task over a period of three months.


title: Leading Canada's Sustainable Energy Transition: Does Gender Matter?

abstract: Canada is failing to effectively address the slew of sustainability problems stemming from its energy sector, leading to a deterioration of its ecosystems and putting the health of Canadians and the long-term vitality of its economy at risk. In order to improve this situation, research suggests that a novel form of leadership is required. Through a review of literature and interviews with 18 leaders in Canadian energy sector firms, this thesis explores not only what kind of leadership Canada needs to address its contemporary sustainability problems, but also where this leadership can be found. The findings of this thesis suggest that women may be the sustainable energy transition leaders that Canada needs, and therefore supporting women so they can advance in Canadian energy sector firms will serve to facilitate Canada's sustainable energy transition. In short, I argue that gender matters when it comes to leading Canada's sustainable energy transition.


title: MicroRNA regulation and expression in the anoxia-tolerant red-eared slider turtle, Trachemys scripta elegans

abstract: The red-eared slide turtle (Trachemys scripta elegans) is able to survive prolonged episodes of anoxia without suffering any apparent damage. This feat is underscored by a complex set of regulatory mechanisms to achieve metabolic rate depression (MRD) including microRNA (miRNA)-mediated gene silencing. Immunoblotting of relative protein abundance was used to analyze miRNA biogenesis under anoxic and reoxygenated conditions in liver and muscle, finding tissue-specific regulation of miRNA production. Cytoplasmic granule proteins were also assessed to inspect mRNA fate, the results of which indicated that mRNA sequestration to stress granules or processing bodies was also tissue specific. Next, the miRNAome was analyzed using RNA sequencing and bioinformatic analyses, revealing anoxia-induced suppression of processes associated with cell cycle progression and protein turnover. Altogether, these results indicate that miRNA targeting of mRNA transcripts occurs in a tissue specific manner with a particular focus on the suppression of energetically expensive processes.


title: Elucidating the Role of LRRK2 Kinase Activity in the Innate Immune System

abstract: Mutations in LRRK2 are linked to three distinct diseases: Parkinson's disease (PD), Crohn's disease, and leprosy. The main pathogenic variant of LRRK2 associated with PD is the p.G2019S mutant, which causes increased kinase activity. Recently, a role for LRRK2 has been implicated in the immune system; however, the exact contribution of the kinase activity in this function remains unknown. We have used mice with a Lrrk2 kinase-dead mutation and three distinct infection paradigms to investigate this role. We demonstrated that in the context of two systemic infection models, Lrrk2 kinase is not required for the host's immune response to control virulent pathogens and may in fact be protective in certain paradigms. Additionally, we have shown that Lrrk2 seems to function predominantly in the periphery rather than the brain, and that the p.G2019S mutation confers a gain-of-function. Taken together, these data will provide important insights into LRRK2 biology and PD pathogenesis.


title: A Numerical and Experimental Analysis of a Transcritical, CO2 Heat Pump Water Heater

abstract: Due to the environmental concerns regarding traditional refrigerants, carbon dioxide (CO2) is being studied as an alternative refrigerant in HPWHs. In this study, a commercially available, transcritical CO2 HPWH was numerically and experimentally assessed. This included developing a model of the CO2 HPWH and calibrating it with experimental data. The model was theoretically verified and utilized to predict the cycle pressures and compressor isentropic efficiency. While the predicted discharge pressures were within the expected range, the significant biases indicate that further work is required to increase the model accuracy. Additionally, study of the control system indicated that the water outlet temperature controls the water pump, the ambient temperature controls the compressor and evaporator fan, and that the expansion valve controls the high side pressure. Lastly, the performance data shows that the HPWH achieves the best performance at ambient air temperatures above 0°C and at water inlet temperatures below 30°C.


title: Exploring the Moderating Role of Self-Compassion on Family Achievement Guilt and Psychological Ill-being in First-Generation and Non-First-Generation University Students

abstract: The study examined the relationship between family achievement guilt, psychological ill-being, and self-compassion in university students. I hypothesized that family achievement guilt would be related to psychological ill-being and that self-compassion would attenuate the relationships between family achievement guilt and psychological ill-being. Supplemental analyses examined differences in family achievement guilt and psychological ill-being in first-generation and non-first-generation students. Using a cross-sectional design, participants (N = 533) completed an online survey. Though family achievement guilt was significantly related to psychological ill-being (βs = .20 - .28), self-compassion did not attenuate the relationships between family achievement guilt and psychological ill-being, even when only first-generation students were in the analyses. First-generation students reported significantly higher levels of family achievement guilt compared to non-first-generation students (d = .39). Researchers should investigate the possible adaptive features of family achievement guilt and ways in which the maladaptive consequences of family achievement guilt may be reduced.


title: The Evolutionary Ecology of Flash Displays and Other Transiently Visible Anti-predation Signals

abstract: Hidden signals is an umbrella term used to describe anti-predation signals that are not consistently visible but only exposed transiently. These signals have evolved independently numerous times in taxa ranging from insects to mammals. In spite of the fact that hidden signals are both conspicuous and abundant, we know relatively little about their evolution and function. The aims of this study are to answer two fundamental questions, 1. how do hidden signals generate a fitness benefit, and 2. what ecological circumstances precipitate their evolution? In order to address these questions, I have combined custom-built computer games and phylogenetic character analysis. The computer games use humans as model predators, and allowed us to simulate the deployment of hidden signals while manipulating specific parameters. The phylogenetic character analysis has allowed us to test whether certain morphological and behavioural traits are correlated with the evolution of hidden signals. By combining these two independent approaches we have been able to comprehensively evaluate a variety of hypotheses regarding the evolution of hidden signals. Chapter 1 summarizes the current knowledge of hidden signals. Chapter 2 describes an experimental "proof of concept", to determine if flash displays can generate a survival benefit through one specific proposed mechanism, namely a "decoy" effect. Chapter 3 describes a phylogenetic analysis used to test whether body size (a well-known predictor of predation risk), is correlated with the evolution of hidden signals across a range of insect taxa. Chapter 4 describes an experimental test of the efficacy of startle signals in deterring an insect predator. Chapter 5 combines an experimental and phylogenetic evaluation of the implications of flight initiation distance on the anti-predation benefit of flash displays. Finally, in Chapter 6 I summarize my thoughts on the collective implications of my thesis work. Overall, I argue that hidden signals are an ecologically important adaptation that can prevent attacks through multiple mechanisms and may be selected for by a variety of predator taxa.


title: Reflections on Building a House: Testing the Capabilities of a Digital Workflow, Designing for Affordable Sustainability, and Reassessing the Recipe for Small Space Living

abstract: I believe the way we design and make buildings is transiting through a major point in history where the flow of ideas through to workmanship is being restructured. As the format changes, opportunities are emerging to provoke a new wave of design innovation. Through a full scale housing experiment, taking shape as a design-build research tiny house, I explore a prototypical alternative housing project aimed at exploring the capability of building production utilizing a complete digital workflow, what it takes to build an affordable sustainable home, and how spatial organization can pull everything together. This full scale experiment serves to help advance how we think about building housing in the 21st century.


title: Development and Validation of the Attitude toward Sexual Aggression against Women (ASAW) Scale

abstract: There is consensus in the social psychological literature that attitudes (i.e., positive or negative evaluations of a psychological object) can be important determinants of behaviour. To facilitate more rigorous research on the relationship between attitudes and sexually aggressive behaviour, the purpose of this thesis was to develop and validate a measure of attitudes toward sexual aggression, namely, the Attitude toward Sexual Aggression against Women (ASAW) scale. To develop the ASAW, a large pool of potential items designed to assess favourable or unfavourable evaluations of a wide range of sexually aggressive behaviours was administered to three independent samples of men from the community. Items were selected based on psychometric and structural analyses, with the primary objective of selecting non-redundant items with the highest response variance (to reduce floor effects). The resulting 13-item scale demonstrated excellent internal consistency and factor analyses suggested it is unidimensional. To test the validity of the ASAW's scores, I conducted two separate studies. The first study provided preliminary evidence of discriminant and incremental validity. Factor analyses indicated that ASAW items were distinct from the items of three commonly used measures of offence-supportive cognition, and that the ASAW explained unique variance in sexually aggressive behaviour after accounting for these other measures. The second study consisted of an experimental test of construct validity based on following reasoning: if scores on the ASAW are sensitive to a well-established attitude-change manipulation (i.e., persuasive communication; Stiff & Mongeau, 2016), this would suggest that the ASAW is measuring attitudes toward the target of the manipulation. Results of the randomized experiment were mixed, suggesting that scores on the ASAW tended to be sensitive to the attitude-change manipulation, but not significantly more so than a measure of a related but distinct construct (i.e., rape myth acceptance). Taken together, these studies provide preliminary evidence for the ASAW's validity, including structural, discriminant, incremental, and construct validity. If additional tests provide more conclusive evidence of construct validity, then the ASAW should be used in future research to examine the role that attitudes may play in the perpetration of sexual aggression against women.


title: Genetic Discrimination and Beyond – A Proposal for Ethical Life Insurance

abstract: The Canadian Genetic Non-discrimination Act prohibits service providers such as life insurance companies from using genetic test results in their risk assessment procedures. From a practical standpoint, however, this law does not change much for those seeking life insurance. The law does not change much for these individuals because it is reflective of what I call a 'genetic test exceptionalism' policy rather than the broader 'genetic exceptionalism' policy. What this means is that insurers are still free to request other sources of genetic information such as those from family history of genetic disease and the results of non-genetic tests that, nonetheless, reveal genetic information. These may similarly render genetically disadvantaged persons ineligible for insurance and/or increase their premiums, which are outcomes that the law is attempting to reduce. In this thesis, I critique both genetic exceptionalism and genetic test exceptionalism as ways to protect genetically disadvantaged persons and defend an alternative response to the problem of unjustified discrimination in life insurance. Without equating all genetic discrimination to "unjustified discrimination", I argue that every life insurance customer ought to be offered two options: (1) a substantive no-questions-asked guaranteed insurance; and (2) insurance based on full disclosure of information. When a person seeks insurance coverage above the no-questions-asked limit but below a maximum limit, the premium cost ought to be shared between the insured (who pays for what is controllable) and the state (who pays for what is based on "bad luck" and leads to disadvantage/expresses a negative message).


title: A Genealogy of “Rape Culture”: Knowing and Governing Sexual Violence

abstract: In 2015, the Ontario government cited "rape culture" as the driving force behind provincial legislation requiring universities to count incidences of sexual violence through bolstered reporting mechanisms. The term is often described as a relic of 1970s radical feminism, and the contemporary reemergence of the phrase rape culture in social, political, and legal discourses marks a need to examine how understandings of sexual violence continue to be framed as part of a wider cultural problem. Using Michel Foucault's genealogical method and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ideas of rhizomes and assemblages, I map the empirical, affective, and sociolegal dimensions of a rape culture paradigm. In doing so, I ask: What are the social and historic conditions that give rise to the rape culture paradigm? What are epistemological frameworks that galvanize the social ontology of rape culture? In what ways is the concept deployed and how does it shape efforts to regulate and criminalize sexual and gender-based violence? Beginning with an examination of radical feminist activism in the US and Canada from the late 1960s onwards, I consider how the idea of rape culture expands traditional definitions of corporeal harm to include cultural forms of gendered violence. The making of the rape culture concept rests in mapping pathology beyond individual rapists and theorizing the attitudes towards rape—and acts of sexual assault—as cultural pathology. This relies upon challenging traditional psy knowledges related to rapists and deviancy in favour of highlighting the normality and ubiquity of rapists. Contemporary calls to combat rape culture have centred on the regulation of sexual violence on university campuses. This project also considers the specific discursive technologies used to construct the "rape campus." It argues that recent political and legal responses to rape culture on university campuses is folded into existing carceral and punitive assemblages that seek to criminalize sexual violence. Thus, this dissertation contributes to a historicization of the rape culture concept, its deployment, and how it shapes understandings of sexual violence theory and governance.


title: A Multilocus Approach to Examining Genetic Susceptibility to Stress and Depression Among Young Adults

abstract: Depression is thought to arise from a combination of stressful experiences and genetic susceptibility as it has been shown that genes regulating the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal (HPA)-axis, not only modulate physiological stress reactivity, but have likewise been associated with depressive phenotypes. To explore genetic susceptibility, we examined the relation between a validated multilocus genetic profile score (MGPS), comprising genes that regulate HPA axis activity, with mental health outcomes and peripheral biomarkers levels in the context of stressful life experiences. We observed interactions between the MGPS score with traumatic experiences revealing that when individuals were exposed to high levels of trauma, those with lower MGPS, displayed higher stress, depressive, and anxiety symptoms. This study calls attention to the importance of environmental factors when examining genetic susceptibility to mental illnesses. Ultimately, these data suggest that experiences of trauma could potentially "set boundaries" on the impact of genes, overriding genetic predisposition to depression.


title: Three Essays on Macroeconomics and Trade

abstract: Chapter 2 estimates returns-to-scale at the industry level using the longest consistent dataset available for the U.S. economy. Since the late 1980s, the average estimate is 1, implying constant returns. An intuitive identity linking returns to scale, the markup, and the profit rate, gives a small implied average gross and value-added markups of approximately 5 and 10 percent, respectively, given our measure of the profit rate, over the past 30 years. This gross markup estimate is significantly less than the average gross markup estimates in the recent literature ranging from 30 - 40 percent during this period. Put differently, given our estimated profit rate, large markups imply strongly increasing returns, which are not evident in the aggregate data. Chapter 3 studies the effect of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on the exports of already exported products. I use 6-digit bilateral trade data and five FTAs to estimate the dynamic effects of the agreements on Canadian exports to its FTA partners. My difference-in-differences estimates show that (i) the export increases significantly in the short- and long-term for developed FTA partners. (ii) In cases where FTA partners are emerging, the impact is insignificant or negative in the short- and long-term. Regression Discontinuity Design estimates also suggest that the impact of FTA on the exports at intensive margins depends on whether the FTA partners are emerging or developed economies. The final chapter estimates tariff pass-through to the dollar value and unit prices of steel imports and its subsequent effect on domestic markets. Recent studies report that the overall burden of tariffs has entirely passed to U.S. firms and consumers. However, using 10-digits import data from U.S. Customs for 2018-219, I find that: First, foreign exporters have gradually decreased their prices, sharing almost 50 percent of the burden of increased tariffs for all steel products primarily determined by industrial supplies and materials. Second, the price and import elasticities for consumer steel products are substantially higher at 5 and - 8, respectively. Third, the immediate increase in prices of industrial supplies was near 100 percent, which decreased to slightly below 50 percent in the long run.


title: The Ethical Obligation of the State to Hear and Address Indigenous Claims for Justice

abstract: What are the implications of this profound power disparity in our struggles for land and freedom? Does it require that we vacate the field of state negotiations and participation entirely? Of course not. Settler-colonialism has rendered us a radical minority in our own homelands, and this necessitates that we continue to engage with the state's legal and political system. (Coulthard 2014, 179) In the very last paragraph of his book Red Skin White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Glen Coulthard arrives at the problem of the necessity to engage with the state. It is at this location of the analysis that I begin my investigation. How does the state listen to and engage with Indigenous peoples on issues of concern to them? How does the state respond in a relationship of profound power imbalance? What ethical moves can the state make to address the power imbalance in its relationships with Indigenous peoples? In this project, I listen to a range of Indigenous voices to begin to understand what justice means to them by listening to their experiences in seeking justice from the state as a structure that represents the majority of Canadians, who are non-Indigenous. I interview two senior government officials who largely understand the challenges of trying to address Indigenous justice claims within a large system. I also examine the state mechanisms of inquiries and commissions designed to listen to specific justice concerns and the state's reception of their recommendations and calls to action. Throughout, I apply Indigenous scholarship to better understand the nature of Indigenous justice, and feminist relational approaches as a tool to understand the relations of power within the structures that reinforce historical oppression, because those structures have not changed substantially from their original colonial design. With this approach, I begin the work of outlining the types of strategic moves that are necessary to shift the relations of power between Indigenous peoples and the state in Canada, such that Indigenous justice claims can be heard and ethically addressed.


title: Brewing Authenticity: Production, Consumption, and Middle-class Work Within the Ontario Craft Beer Community

abstract: This thesis is an ethnographic study of the Ontario craft beer community that looks at how middle-class craft beer workers and community members create authenticity through their involvement within the industry. Working within this community brewers, servers, and other workers attempt to find self fulfillment within the work they perform. I will also argue that the work done by craft brewery workers and community members attempt to build up the Ontario craft beer industry as an important region for craft beer in North America. Through their involvement in various forms of work within the community, craft beer workers hope to challenge both the growing commercialization and homogeneity of beer and the perceived norms of beer culture


title: Nonlinear Interactions Between Atmospheric Rossby Waves and Internal Gravity Waves  in a Baroclinic Fluid Flow

abstract: In this thesis, we use analytical and numerical methods to study a mathematical problem describing two types of waves in an atmospheric fluid flow, namely planetary Rossby waves resulting from the rotation of the Earth and internal gravity waves resulting from the gravitational and buoyancy forces. We consider a three-dimensional or baroclinic configuration and make the quasi-geostrophic approximation in the special case where the background flow velocity depends on a linear combination of the meridional (south-north) variable and the vertical variable. Both types of waves are forced at the same location and propagate upwards and southwards to a critical line where they interact with and modify the background mean flow and background mean temperature. We carry out a weakly nonlinear analysis to derive equations describing the rate of change of the wave-induced mean velocity and temperature with time due to the nonlinear interactions in the vicinity of the critical line. We also carry out numerical simulations using finite difference approximations and spectral methods. We compare the results obtained with combined gravity waves and Rossby waves with those obtained with Rossby waves only. We find that with the additional effects of the gravity waves, the background mean flow becomes more eastward, and the background mean temperature is higher around the critical line. In addition, in the presence of gravity waves, the amplitude of the Rossby wave zonal velocity is reduced, and the Rossby wave temperature is increased. These conclusions are consistent with observations of planetary wave dissipation and enhanced temperatures in the mesospheric inversion layer that occurs in the middle atmosphere.


title: Improving the Fire Resistance of Concrete Masonry Walls

abstract: Concrete masonry is a material with good fire resistance. However, unlike steel, reinforced concrete, and wood materials, there has been little done to improve upon its base fire resistance. The purpose of this research was to understand the fire resistance of existing masonry construction and learn how best to improve upon masonry's fire resistance. First, a literature review was done to determine the effects fire had on concrete, and how this could change with different mix designs and temperature ranges. These included common mixes (such as normal-weight and lightweight concrete) as well as novel mixes (such as fly ash, recycled aggregate, or glass aggregate concrete). As masonry units have different geometries, research was also done to determine the effects different geometries have on the fire resistance of materials. Once this baseline was established, research was done on insulation materials, to determine which materials might be suitable and compatible with concrete masonry. Full scale experimental data was collected to determine how standard masonry units and building techniques reacted to the standard fire. Then new geometries and mix designs were tested to evaluate how the fire resistance was affected by the changes. After experimental data had been collected, thermal models were created in order to validate the experimental results, as well as to determine which masonry units should be tested in the future. Finally, novel concrete mixes were modeled and compared to determine their effect on the fire resistance of concrete masonry walls.


title: The Juxtaposition of the Child as a Witness and a Victim: An Analysis of Legal Policy Affecting Young Witnesses in Canada

abstract: The role of a witness presents the complex responsibility to convince a court of the alleged criminally deviant actions committed against them. My research analyzes how this role is further complicated when a child is a sole witness, often in child sexual abuse cases. I explore how their agency and competency is addressed within the policies that facilitate their testimonies and how it manifests in practice. Pervasive discourses of developmental psychology theorized about a child's capability continuously captures the validation and implementation of protection-driven policies that reflect their differed capacity as witnesses compared to adults. Through a critical discourse and narrative analysis, this research challenges these dominant ideologies that invade interpretations of child's agency as victims and their ensuing capability as witnesses to testify. By drawing on newer sociologies of childhood and critical victimology, this thesis elucidates the confounds of protection-based policy and its hindrances on child witnesses' agency.


title: Creating Inclusive Object Narratives for Accessible Museum Exhibitions

abstract: This study explores how to improve access to museum exhibits through inclusive narratives for visitors with vision loss and offers a step forward for museums concerned with inclusive research and accessible exhibition practice. The work involved exploring how non-ocularcentric object narratives can be collected and created using an object examination exercise. The exercise draws on interdisciplinary research practices from material culture studies and participatory design, while acknowledging the distinct sensory abilities and insights of individuals with congenital and early-onset blindness. A thematic analysis was developed to inform inclusive exhibit narratives and an integrated accessible exhibition design module that was compared with an existing ocularcentric exhibit. The broader results from the study provide insights to support multisensory and socially inclusive research in material culture studies and non-ocularcentric research practice. This experimentation with research methods supports the participation of people with non-visual mental models in curatorial research and museum exhibition development.


title: Improving VR Selection using Progressive Refinement with Multi-Touch Marking Menus

abstract: Many selection techniques have been introduced to improve selection performance; nonetheless, 3D selection is still cumbersome. We developed a technique to improve selection time and accuracy concurrently. Our technique, Multi-Touch Progressive Refinement (MTPR), enhanced conventional progressive refinement's quad menu object selection by using CountMarks, a multi-finger touch-based technique previously developed to facilitate marking menu selection on smartphones. In a first user study, we compared our technique with progressive refinement and multi-touch in terms of selection time, and accuracy. The results showed that the multi-touch was fastest and progressive refinement was most accurate. However, we found that participants were slightly confused by MTPR. Therefore, we enhanced our technique by ordering objects inside menu and labelling them. We ran a second study comparing our Improved Multi-Touch Progressive Refinement Selection Strategy (IMPReSS) with the previous two techniques. The result demonstrated that IMPReSS was the fastest and most accurate of all the techniques evaluated.


title: A Catholic Woman and a Catholic Queen: The Personal Religiosity of Mary Tudor

abstract: This thesis provides a detailed analysis of the identifiable aspects of Mary Tudor's personal religious beliefs and practices from childhood to the end of her reign. It carefully examines a variety of evidence including translations done by Mary, book and manuscript dedications written by and to Mary, correspondence, first-hand accounts, Mary's privy purse expenses, her will, and Marian acts and proclamations. This analysis puts Mary's personal religiosity in conversation with her religious policy as queen. Mary demonstrated pious dedication to the Mass and other traditionally Catholic liturgical elements and nearly unwavering dedication to Rome and the papacy. During her reign Mary and her government promoted a religious policy that was consistent with core aspects of Mary's personal religiosity. This thesis concludes that Mary was not only theologically Catholic and dedicated to the traditional liturgical rites, like her father Henry VIII, but also dedicated to England's ecclesiastical relationship with Rome.


title: Joint Modeling of Longitudinal and Survival Data

abstract: An important target of many biomedical and clinical research paradigms is to identify biomarkers, including risk scores, with strong prognostic capabilities. Biomarker evaluations are usually utilized to predict the progression of the disease under study. In such clinical studies, one major research objective is to identify immune response biomarkers measured longitudinally that may be associated with the risk of death, infection, or any other interesting event. Joint modeling of longitudinal and survival data has become incredibly beneficial for analyzing such clinical trial data. In this thesis, we propose and explore innovative joint models and methods for analyzing longitudinal response and time-to-event data, and also address the computational challenges associated with the likelihood inference. Specifically, we consider two approaches to obtain the estimates of the model parameters, the maximum likelihood (ML) method and approximate likelihood method based on the so-called h-likelihood. In both cases, we consider a joint model that assumes a latent process based on random effects to describe the association among longitudinal and survival data. We use the linear mixed-effects model for longitudinal measurements and Weibull frailty model for survival outcomes. The two submodels are linked through shared random effects, where the longitudinal and survival processes are conditionally independent given the random effects. We also investigate the impact of the association parameter on the regression estimators in a separate analysis of each outcome. In the case of strong associations, the separate analysis provides biased parameter estimates with poor coverage probabilities of the confidence interval. In this work, we also investigate the effect of a misspecified random effects distribution on the parameter estimates in joint models. We assess the robustness properties of the maximum likelihood estimators obtained under misspecified random effects distributions, i.e., when the random effect follows a non-normal distribution, such as the Chisquare or Gamma distribution. Our empirical study shows that the use of the t-distribution for random effects gives more robust estimates of model parameters, as compared to the commonly used normal distribution. As an application, we analyze a large clinical dataset of spesis patients obtained from a longitudinal study.


title: Show Me the Money: Four Essays on Remittance Transfer Costs, Channel Modality, and Informal Finance Gaps

abstract: Remittances, defined as funds sent by migrants to recipients in their region of origin or other transnational diaspora members, constitute a substantial portion of global financial flows. Regrettably, there exist sparse estimates regarding the volume and characteristics of informal remittances. If informal channels, such as hand-carried cash across borders, undeclared goods, and other transfers were accounted for, literature suggests that total flows would be substantially larger than currently reported. Policymakers have endorsed various initiatives, namely transfer cost reduction policies, by committing to targets and spurring competition to formalise informal flows. Divided into two main parts, each consisting of two papers or chapters, this dissertation explores topics in remittance behaviour, channel modality (or channel choice), and formalisation policies. In the first part, the dissertation explores the Canadian case study of the micro effects of transfer costs on remittance choices and channel modality using household survey data. As such, the first two papers explore the micro-level factors underlying remittance decision making. The first paper studies the micro-determinants, namely transfer costs, on the propensity to remit and the simultaneous decisions of the amount and frequency with which to remit. The second paper's analysis expands upon Canadian remitters' case study and unpacks the dichotomisation of formal versus informal methods to delve deeper into channel modality at the migrant and household levels. The second part of the dissertation broadens the scope of analysis to a global scale. The third paper delves into policy analysis and international relations theory to analyse the causal pathways that explain how the 2001 9/11 attacks shaped modern formalisation policies. The fourth paper builds upon this policy shift to study the slowdown in global formal remittance growth. Via proxy estimations of the informal sector, results indicate that while formalisation has contributed to the growth in formal remittances, formalisation efforts yield diminishing marginal returns over time. The multi-levelled approach across micro and macro chapters provides a holistic understanding of the gaps in each level of analysis and sheds light on the still liminal literature on remittance modality and formalisation.


title: Improving the Efficiency and Capacity of Virtual Genetics Clinics using Human Factors Design Methods

abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it significant challenges for healthcare as well as some opportunities. The Prenatal Genetics Clinic at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa moved to virtual care at the outset of the pandemic. Herein, we conducted a quality improvement study focused on developing a better understanding of factors influencing the efficiency of prenatal Genetics Counsellors to support virtual care and related patient activities, with the intent of developing strategies to improve workflow. Within the context of the pandemic, we used remote and field methods of quantitative and qualitative inquiry to develop a better understanding of clinical workflows after the implementation of virtual care. This included diary studies to track time on task and naturalistic observation sessions at the Clinic. The strategies suggested fall within real-world project constraints, which included the inability to increase the number of GCs and inability to renovate the current clinic space.